Charles Hall?as one of the leading musicians of the nineteenth century and intimate with almost all of the great composers and performers of his time, as well as a friend of the Royal Family and known as much as a pianist and chamber musician as a conductor, in London, throughout the country and abroad, in addition to Manchester. Robert Beale presents a new perspective on Hall? life and achievement, constructed mainly from primary sources, which serves to dispel many of the inaccuracies and omissions that have stemmed, to a great extent, from Hall? own autobiographical account of 1896. His edited memoirs omit much of the competition and controversy, struggles and disappointments of his career in Manchester, and, indeed, hardly convey the scope of his activities elsewhere. Hall?as a key figure in the shift from contemporary to ?classical? repertory in orchestral concerts and piano performance. Not only did he found the Manchester orchestra, in 1862-3 he also gave the first known cycle of Beethoven's piano sonatas. His early annual ?recital? series in London marked a new era in the musical history of his time. The formation of the modern 'symphony orchestra' took place during the period of Hall? professional life, and he was a pioneer in the process, in both artistic and business terms. Having adopted the role of orchestral conductor when it was itself relatively novel, he became one of the acknowledged masters of the craft over four and half decades - as well as continuing to appear as solo pianist and chamber musician, and in addition he was enormously influential as musical pedagogue and educationist.

This volume of essays brings together a selection of the most significant and representative writings on Mendelssohn from the last fifty years. Divided into four main subject areas, it makes available twenty-two essays which have transformed scholarly awareness of this crucial and ever-popular nineteenth-century composer and musician; it also includes a specially commissioned introductory chapter which offers a critical overview of the last half century of Mendelssohn scholarship and the direction of future research. The addition of new translations of two influential essays by Carl Dahlhaus, hitherto unavailable in English, adds to the value of this volume which brings back in to circulation important scholarly works and constitutes an indispensable reference work for Mendelssohn scholars.

Musical biography has rarely been an object of theoretical and methodological reflection. Our present-day perception of the lives of prominent composers and performers of the past has been largely formed by cultural and political assumptions of nineteenth-century biographers and their twentieth-century followers. While older biographies are being scrutinized for veracity and 'updated' with new evidence, their historiographical premisses and narrative techniques remain largely unchallenged. The epistemological upheavals in the humanities since the 1960s have generated a body of theoretical thought that has undermined many of the assumptions of traditional biography. Consequently, many of these assumptions have lost their hold as viable underpinnings for present-day scholarly biography. For example, the accumulation of facts is no longer believed to bring us closer to an understanding of the subject; nor are the traditional views of the unified self and the self as a foundational idea taken for granted. This volume brings together musicologists and historians who explore, through individual case studies, the rich potential of these new theories for writing musical lives. The authors of this volume examine how the insights provided by these theories illuminate our critical reassessment of older biographies - and the interpretations of musical works these biographies were used to construe - and help forge new approaches to musical biography. The authors also explore the functions musical biographies served in different historical contexts, the relevance of biography for musical criticism, the reliability of archival evidence, the ethics of biography, the demands placed on biography by feminist and gender history, and the new possibilities offered by cinema. The contributors to this volume challenge the view that biography has little importance for music history, analysis, and criticism. Collectively, they reassert biography's centrality and relevance, and dem