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These collections of specially commissioned essays present the latest musicological and theoretical research on individual high-profile composers. Written by leading scholars in the field, they consider the reception history, performance practice and life of the composer, and discuss the historical and analytical issues with reference to the major works.

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19 results in Cambridge Composer Studies

Wagner Studies
  • Edited by Steven Vande Moortele
  • Coming soon
  • Expected online publication date:
    June 2025
    Print publication:
    30 June 2025
  • While the music of Richard Wagner has long served as a touchstone for music-theoretical and analytical models both old and new, music analysts have often been intimidated by the complexity of his works, their multi-layeredness, and their sheer unwieldiness. This volume brings together ten contributions from an international roster of leading Wagner scholars of our time, all of which engage in some way with analytical or theoretical questions posed by Wagner's music. Addressing the operas and music dramas from Die Feen through Parsifal, they combine analytical methods including form-functional theory, Neo-Riemannian theory, Leitmotiv analysis, and history of theory with approaches to dramaturgy, hermeneutics, reception history, and discursive analysis of sexuality and ideology. Collectively, they capture the breadth of analytical studies of Wagner in contemporary scholarship and expand the reach of the field by challenging it to break new interpretative and methodological ground.

Telemann Studies
  • Edited by Wolfgang Hirschmann, Steven Zohn
  • Published online:
    14 July 2022
    Print publication:
    04 August 2022
  • Even as Georg Philipp Telemann's significance within eighteenth-century musical culture has become more widely appreciated in recent years, the English-language literature on his life and music has remained limited. This volume, bringing together sixteen essays by leading scholars from the USA, Germany, and Japan, helps to redress this imbalance as it signals a more international engagement with Telemann's legacy. The composer appears here not only as an important early Enlightenment figure, but also as a postmodern one. Chapters on his sacred music address the works' sensitivity to Lutheran and physico-theology, contrasting of historical and modern consciousness, and embodiment of an emerging opus concept. His secular compositions and writings are brought into rich dialogue with French musical and aesthetic currents. Also considered are Telemann's relationships with contemporaries such as Johann Sebastian Bach, the urban and courtly contexts for his music, and his influential position as 'general Kapellmeister' of protestant Germany.

Clara Schumann Studies
  • Edited by Joe Davies
  • Published online:
    25 November 2021
    Print publication:
    02 December 2021
  • Since the 1980s, when she re-emerged from the peripheries into a more central position in music studies, Clara Schumann (1819–1896) has exerted an enduring fascination over the scholarly and popular imagination. Revisionist biographies, the uncovering of primary sources (diaries, letters, memorabilia), and filmic and literary depictions of Schumann have all brought into sharper focus the details and reception of her life, while simultaneously drawing attention to how much there is still to learn about her creativity. This book brings together a team of leading scholars to reappraise Clara Schumann in three particular respects: first, by delving deeper into her social and musical contexts; secondly, by offering fresh analytical perspectives on her songs and instrumental music; and thirdly, by reconsidering her legacy as a pianist and teacher. In doing so, the volume not only contributes to a rounded picture of Schumann's creative vision, but also opens up new pathways in the wider study of women in music.

Thomas Adès Studies
  • Edited by Edward Venn, Philip Stoecker
  • Published online:
    18 November 2021
    Print publication:
    25 November 2021
  • Thomas Adès is a dominant force in contemporary music, whose work attracts significant attention and acclaim, and has been performed by many renowned ensembles. This volume – the first to present a range of scholarly essays on every aspect of Adès's music – offers authoritative accounts of Adès's major compositions from a variety of analytical, critical, cultural and historical perspectives. The opening chapters focus on Adès's earlier music, offering close readings of key works. Further essays focus on his engagement with forms and instrumental genres. The final chapters turn to Adès's texted music and highlight how themes introduced in earlier chapters cut across Adès's entire output. Richly illustrated with musical examples and supported by further online material, this book provides a multi-faceted portrait of Adès's work that opens up new ways of thinking about, and engaging with, his music.

Fauré Studies
  • Edited by Carlo Caballero, Stephen Rumph
  • Published online:
    17 April 2021
    Print publication:
    22 April 2021
  • Fauré Studies showcases new research from leading scholars in the United States, United Kingdom, and France into this influential French composer of the fin de siècle. This book features interpretations of individual works and musical analyses, as well as studies of compositional pedagogy, social history, and aesthetics. Accessible to a wide range of readers, this volume also provides a valuable overview of Fauré research from the composer's lifetime to the present. As part of Cambridge Composer Studies, Fauré Studies adds momentum to new research into this major composer, which includes recently launched critical editions of his music.

Beethoven Studies 4
  • Edited by Keith Chapin, David Wyn Jones
  • Published online:
    26 September 2020
    Print publication:
    17 September 2020
  • Did you know that Beethoven contemplated, however fleetingly, writing more than forty symphonies and that for the Missa solemnis he sought stimulus from a Latin-German dictionary? And what about the underappreciated sociable side of Beethoven's music to set alongside the familiar one of the heroic? Beethoven Studies 4 is a collection of ten chapters that approach the composer and his music from an appealing range of critical standpoints, aesthetic, analytical, biographical, historical and performance. Alongside essays that offer new information on Beethoven's compositional practice and broaden understanding of the music's contemporary and posthumous appeal, there are essays on his interaction with specific environments, Bonn and post-Napoleonic Austria, and vocal and piano performance practice. The volume will appeal to cultural historians and practitioners as well as Beethoven enthusiasts.

James MacMillan Studies
  • Edited by George Parsons, Robert Sholl
  • Published online:
    20 August 2020
    Print publication:
    06 August 2020
  • The Scottish composer Sir James MacMillan is one of the major figures of contemporary music, with a world-wide reputation for his modernist engagement with religious images and stories. Beginning with a substantial foreword from the composer himself, this collection of scholarly essays offers analytical, musicological, and theological perspectives on a selection of MacMillan's musical works. The volume includes a study of embodiment in MacMillan's music; a theological study of his St Luke Passion; an examination of the importance of lament in a selection of his works; a chapter on the centrality of musical borrowing to MacMillan's practice; a discussion of his liturgical music; and detailed analyses of other works including The World's Ransoming and the seminal Seven Last Words from the Cross. The chapters provide fresh insights on MacMillan's musical world, his compositional practice, and his relationship to modernity.

Duke Ellington Studies
  • Edited by John Howland
  • Published online:
    04 May 2017
    Print publication:
    11 May 2017
  • Duke Ellington (1899–1974) is widely considered the jazz tradition's most celebrated composer. This engaging yet scholarly volume explores his long career and his rich cultural legacy from a broad range of in-depth perspectives, from the musical and historical to the political and international. World-renowned scholars and musicians examine Ellington's influence on jazz music, its criticism, and its historiography. The chronological structure of the volume allows a clear understanding of the development of key themes, with chapters surveying his work and his reception in America and abroad. By both expanding and reconsidering the contexts in which Ellington, his orchestra, and his music are discussed, Duke Ellington Studies reflects a wealth of new directions that have emerged in jazz studies, including focuses on music in media, class hierarchy discourse, globalization, cross-cultural reception, and the role of marketing, as well as manuscript score studies and performance studies.

Ernest Bloch Studies
  • Edited by Alexander Knapp, Norman Solomon
  • Published online:
    09 February 2017
    Print publication:
    05 January 2017
  • Ernest Bloch left his native Switzerland to settle in the United States in 1916. One of the great twentieth-century composers, he was influenced by a range of genres and styles - Jewish, American and Swiss - and his works reflect his lifelong struggle with his identity. Drawing on firsthand recollections of relatives and others who knew and worked with the composer, this collection is the most comprehensive study to date of Bloch's life, musical achievement and reception. Contributors present the latest research on Bloch's works and compositional practice, including studies of his Avodath Hakodesh (Sacred Service), violin pieces such as Nigun, the symphonic Schelomo, and the opera Macbeth. Setting the quality and significance of Bloch's output in its historical and cultural contexts, this book provides scholarly analyses as well as a full chronology, list of online resources, catalogue of published and unpublished works, and selected further reading.

Pierre Boulez Studies
  • Edited by Edward Campbell, Peter O'Hagan
  • Published online:
    20 October 2016
    Print publication:
    13 October 2016
  • Pierre Boulez is acknowledged as one of the most important composers in contemporary musical life. This collection explores his works, influence, reception and legacy, shedding new light on Boulez's music and its historical and cultural contexts. In two sections that focus firstly on the context of the 1940s and 1950s, and secondly on the development of the composer's style, the contributors address recurring themes such as Boulez's approach to the serial principle and the related issues of form and large-scale structure. Featuring excerpts from Boulez's correspondence with a range of his contemporaries here published for the first time, the book illuminates both Boulez's relationship with them and his thinking concerning the challenges which confronted both him and other leading figures of the European avant-garde. In the final section, three chapters examine Boulez's relationship with audiences in the United Kingdom, and the development of the appreciation of his music.

Mozart Studies 2
  • Edited by Simon P. Keefe
  • Published online:
    05 October 2015
    Print publication:
    10 September 2015
  • Cultural, historical and reception-related contexts are central to understanding Mozart, one of the greatest and most famous musicians of all time. Widening and refining the lens through which the composer is viewed, the essays in Mozart Studies 2 focus on themes, issues, works and repertories perennially popular among Mozart scholars of all kinds, pointing to areas primed for future study and also suitable for investigation by musicians outside the scholarly community. Following on from the first Mozart Studies volume, internationally renowned contributors bring new perspectives to bear on many of Mozart's most popular works, as well as the composer's letters, biography, and reception. Chapters are grouped according to topics covered and collectively affirm the vitality of Mozart scholarship and the significant role it continues to play in defining and redefining musicological priorities in general.

Harrison Birtwistle Studies
  • Edited by David Beard, Kenneth Gloag, Nicholas Jones
  • Published online:
    05 May 2015
    Print publication:
    09 April 2015
  • This collection of essays celebrates the work of Sir Harrison Birtwistle, one of the key figures in European contemporary music. Representing current research on Birtwistle's music, this book reflects the diversity of his work in terms of periods, genres, forms, techniques and related issues through a wide range of critical, theoretical and analytical interpretations and perspectives. Written by a team of international scholars, all of whom bring a deep research-based knowledge and insight to their chosen study, this collection extends the scholarly understanding of Birtwistle through new engagements with the man and the music. The contributors provide detailed studies of Birtwistle's engagement with electronic music in the 1960s and 1970s, and develop theoretical explanations of his fascination with pulse, rhythm and time. They also explore in detail Birtwistle's interest in poetry, instrumental drama, gesture, procession and landscape, and consider the compositional processes that underpin these issues.

Elliott Carter Studies
  • Edited by Marguerite Boland, John Link
  • Published online:
    05 September 2012
    Print publication:
    26 July 2012
  • Over the course of an astonishingly long career, Elliott Carter has engaged with many musical developments of the twentieth and now twenty-first centuries - from his early neo-classic music of the interwar period, to his modernist works of conflict and opposition in the 1960s and 1970s, to the reshaping of a modernist aesthetic in his latest compositions. Elliott Carter Studies throws new light on these many facets of Carter's extensive musical oeuvre. This collection of essays presents historic, philosophic, philological and theoretical points of departure for in-depth investigations of individual compositions, stylistic periods in Carter's output and his contributions to a variety of genres, including vocal music, the string quartet and the concerto. The first multi-authored book to appear on Carter's music, it brings together research from a distinguished team of leading international Carter scholars, providing the reader with a wide range of perspectives on an extraordinary musical life.

Schenker Studies 2
  • Edited by Carl Schachter, Hedi Siegel
  • Published online:
    12 January 2010
    Print publication:
    22 April 1999
  • The second volume of studies based on the work of Heinrich Schenker, now recognised as the twenty-first century's most influential figure in the areas of music theory and analysis. The first section of the book contains three archival studies that derive from the contents of Schenker's Nachlass, recently made available to scholars. Schenker's unpublished papers also supplement several of the analytical studies in the second, larger section of the book. Eleven essays fall into four groups: studies in the Classic and Romantic repertory, studies in twentieth-century music, rhythmic studies and studies in the theory of Schenker's fundamental analytical constructs, the Urline and the Ursatz.

Shostakovich Studies
  • Edited by David Fanning
  • Published online:
    22 October 2009
    Print publication:
    09 November 1995
  • Few composers' posthumous reputations have grown as steadily as Shostakovich's. Yet outside the concert hall the focus of attention seems to have been on the extraordinary circumstances of his life rather than on the music itself. This book seeks to show that the power of his work stems as much from its craftsmanship as from its political and personal context. The theoretical chapters lay the foundation for a proper understanding of Shostakovich's musical language for the first time in the West. The social context is not neglected, however, and alongside many new insights spread through the book, a substantial and provocative chapter considers the issues surrounding the composition of the Fifth Symphony. The eleven essays in the volume draw together some of the finest scholars of Russian music in Europe, Russia and America.

Haydn Studies
  • Edited by W. Dean Sutcliffe
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    22 October 1998
  • The advances in Haydn scholarship would have been unthinkable to earlier generations, who honoured the composer more in word than in deed. Haydn Studies deals with many aspects of a composer who is perennially fresh, concentrating principally on matters of reception, style and aesthetics and presenting many interesting readings of the composer's work. Haydn has never played a major role in accounts of cultural history and has never achieved the emblematic status accorded to composers such as Beethoven, Debussy and Stravinsky, in spite of his radical creative agenda: this volume broadens the base of our understanding of the composer.

Tippett Studies
  • Edited by David Clarke
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    04 February 1999
  • Michael Tippett (1905–98) was one of the major figures of British music in this century. This volume of essays provides the first substantial writing on the composer for over a decade and includes the work of established scholars as well as several new voices. Essays encompass a range of genres and style periods, but a number of recurring themes may be detected. Broadly speaking, the book moves between technical discussion focused on individual works and wider questions of context - the 'external' factors that shaped the composer's musical production such as his relationship to the past, his fascination with ancient Greece and his pursuit of the transcendent. What emerges from this book is a rich portrait of a composer whose work reflects the century's triumphs and tragedies with particular intensity and who, at the end of his composing career, was increasingly acknowledged by younger composers as a major influence and example.

Janácek Studies
  • Edited by Paul Wingfield
  • Published online:
    22 September 2009
    Print publication:
    21 October 1999
  • This book is the first major publication devoted to the music of Janácek, now widely regarded as one of the most important composers of the early twentieth century. The essays, all by leading scholars, deal with a broad range of subjects relating to opera, symphonic poem, instrumental music, cultural context and reception. Some topics, such as the sources of Janácek's musical expressivity, questions of narrative, Janácek as musical analyst and Janácek as realist, are considered seriously for the first time, whilst other more conventional topics, such as 'speech melody' and Janácek's ethnographic activities, are reappraised. A transcription of Janácek's analytical study of 'Jeux de vagues' from Debussy's La mer is published for the first time, and this document is considered in the light of Janácek's theory of music as a whole and of the reception of La mer.

Berlioz Studies
  • Edited by Peter Bloom
  • Published online:
    14 September 2009
    Print publication:
    10 September 1992
  • This volume contains nine substantial essays by the world's leading Berlioz scholars. They cover various aspects of Berlioz's life and works and represent an important contribution to Berlioz research. The book includes essays based on documents, both biographical and musical, that give us, among other things, a portrait of the artist as a young man and a revealing view of an important but little-studied work of his maturity. There are readings of Romeo et Juliette and La Damnation de Faust that wrestle anew with the problems of the relationships between literature and music and - as Berlioz's music nearly always requires - with the problems of genre. Two views of Berlioz's Les Nuits d'été are presented which ask when and why the work was conceived, and how the work coheres. The practical question of Berlioz's metronome marks are here thoroughly studied for the first time. The volume closes with a novel piece, in dialogue form, by the elder statesman of Berlioz scholars, Jacques Barzun, who treats with exceptional grace the profound issues raised by Berlioz the man and musician.