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The systematic academic study of music gave rise to works of description, analysis and criticism, by composers and performers, philosophers and anthropologists, historians and teachers and by a new kind of scholar - the musicologist. This series makes available a range of significant works encompassing all aspects of the developing discipline.

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178 results in Cambridge Library Collection - Music

Page 5 of 9

A Grammar of Music
  • To which are Prefixed Observations Explanatory of the Properties and Powers of Music as a Science and of the General Scope and Object of the Work
  • Thomas Busby
  • Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    27 June 2013
    First published in:
    1826
  • The writer, composer and organist Thomas Busby (1754–1838) is best remembered for his highly entertaining Concert Room and Orchestra Anecdotes (1825), which paints a vivid picture of musical life at the time. The son of a coach painter, Busby was originally articled to the composer Jonathan Battishill but found the experience unrewarding. His compositions (many now lost) include songs, theatre music, The Divine Harmonist, and the oratorios The Prophecy and Britannia. Throughout his working life he continued his extensive literary activities, musical and otherwise, contributing to journals such as the Monthly Magazine and Public Characters, and publishing several books, among them A General History of Music (also reissued in this series). First published in 1818, the present work is a primer on music theory and the principles of composition. Busby intended it to be 'a compendium … modern and amusing in its style … to impart knowledge and facilitate execution'. Reissued here is the second edition of 1826.

Clara Schumann
  • An Artist's Life, Based on Material Found in Diaries and Letters
  • Volume 2
  • Berthold Litzmann
  • Translated by Grace E. Hadow
  • Preface by W. H. Hadow
  • Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    05 September 2013
  • Clara Schumann (1819–1896), child prodigy, celebrated concert pianist, composer, and friend of Brahms, was also the wife of composer Robert Schumann. Her father Friedrich Wieck's implacable opposition to their marriage, the sublime music she inspired in Schumann and his tragic death at a cruelly young age underlie one of music's great romances. The German literary historian Berthold Litzmann (1857–1926) first published his biography in three volumes between 1902 and 1908, based on the diaries and letters of Robert and Clara Schumann. Appearing in 1913, this two-volume English translation by Grace Hadow (1875–1940) is an abridged version of the German fourth edition, offering a lucid portrait of a central figure in nineteenth-century European musical life. A preface is provided by the translator's elder brother, William Henry Hadow (1859–1937), the music historian. Volume 2 covers the years 1850 to 1896.

Clara Schumann
  • An Artist's Life, Based on Material Found in Diaries and Letters
  • Volume 1
  • Berthold Litzmann
  • Translated by Grace E. Hadow
  • Preface by W. H. Hadow
  • Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    05 September 2013
  • Clara Schumann (1819–1896), child prodigy, celebrated concert pianist, composer, and friend of Brahms, was also the wife of composer Robert Schumann. Her father Friedrich Wieck's implacable opposition to their marriage, the sublime music she inspired in Schumann and his tragic death at a cruelly young age underlie one of music's great romances. The German literary historian Berthold Litzmann (1857–1926) first published his biography in three volumes between 1902 and 1908, based on the diaries and letters of Robert and Clara Schumann. Appearing in 1913, this two-volume English translation by Grace Hadow (1875–1940) is an abridged version of the German fourth edition, offering a lucid portrait of a central figure in nineteenth-century European musical life. A preface is provided by the translator's elder brother, William Henry Hadow (1859–1937), the music historian. Volume 1 covers the years 1819 to 1850.

Concert Room and Orchestra Anecdotes of Music and Musicians, Ancient and Modern
  • Volume 3
  • Thomas Busby
  • Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    05 September 2013
  • The writer, composer and organist Thomas Busby (1754–1838) was originally articled to the composer Jonathan Battishill before setting out to make his living from both musical and literary labours. His compositions (many now lost) include songs, theatre music and oratorios. His written output comprised journal articles and monographs, among them A Grammar of Music and A General History of Music (both reissued in this series). The present work, his most endearing, was first published in 1825. Gossipy, informative and highly entertaining, it yields all manner of insights into musical life through history. Approximately a thousand anecdotes are assembled across the three volumes as a delightful potpourri, interspersed with pen portraits of eminent musicians. Volume 3 includes entries on the music of ancient Greece and Rome, madrigals, the velocity of sound, church bells, and The Beggar's Opera. The volume concludes with an index to the whole work.

Memoirs of Rossini
  • By the Author of the Lives of Haydn and Mozart
  • Stendhal
  • Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    22 August 2013
  • Marie-Henri Beyle (1783–1842), better known by his pen name Stendhal, is remembered today for such novels as Le Rouge et le Noir. Over the course of his life, he wrote in a variety of literary genres and under a multitude of names, or anonymously. Reissued here is the 1824 English translation of his Vie de Rossini of the same year, which was accused of being partly plagiarised from Giuseppe Carpani's Le Rossiniane, following similar claims regarding his biographies of Haydn and Mozart (which are also reissued together in translation in this series). Best known for William Tell and The Barber of Seville, Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) was by far the most popular opera composer of his day, adored by his public. Colourful, vigorous and forthright, Stendhal's brilliant though somewhat unreliable biography offers an opinionated contemporary critique of 'Signor Crescendo'.

Concert Room and Orchestra Anecdotes of Music and Musicians, Ancient and Modern
  • Volume 2
  • Thomas Busby
  • Published online:
    05 March 2014
    Print publication:
    05 September 2013
  • The writer, composer and organist Thomas Busby (1754–1838) was originally articled to the composer Jonathan Battishill before setting out to make his living from both musical and literary labours. His compositions (many now lost) include songs, theatre music and oratorios. His written output comprised journal articles and monographs, among them A Grammar of Music and A General History of Music (both reissued in this series). The present work, his most endearing, was first published in 1825. Gossipy, informative and highly entertaining, it yields all manner of insights into musical life through history. Approximately a thousand anecdotes are assembled across the three volumes as a delightful potpourri, interspersed with pen portraits of eminent musicians. Volume 2 includes a tale about Louis XI's request to hear a concert of hogs, along with entries on the Italian castrato Farinelli, English lutist Thomas Mace, Handel's despotism and Mozart's benevolence.

Brother Musicians
  • Reminiscences of Edward and Walter Bache
  • Constance Bache
  • Published online:
    05 February 2014
    Print publication:
    06 June 2013
    First published in:
    1901
  • Francis Edward Bache (1833–58) and his younger brother Walter (1842–88) were active during a rich period of musical life in Britain. The Philharmonic Society and Crystal Palace concerts in London, the Hallé Orchestra in Manchester, and the Birmingham and Three Choirs festivals were all well established, while celebrated composer/conductors from Berlioz to Wagner and virtuosi including violinist Joseph Joachim and pianist Anton Rubinstein were in great demand. Edward, a pupil of Sterndale Bennett, was a promising organist and composer whose potential was tragically ended by his early death from tuberculosis. Walter, a pupil of Liszt from 1862 to 1865, became a dedicated promoter of the pianist/composer's music to the British concert-going public through annual concerts that he financed. First published in 1901, this affectionate account of the brothers' lives by their sister Constance (1846–1903) includes many letters as well as lists of Edward's compositions and Liszt's orchestral works performed at Walter's concerts.

Catechism of Musical Aesthetics
  • Hugo Riemann
  • Translated by H. Bewerunge
  • Published online:
    05 February 2014
    Print publication:
    18 April 2013
    First published in:
    1895
  • One of the most important musicologists of his age, Hugo Riemann (1849–1919) influenced an entire generation in its thinking. He held several teaching posts before settling at the University of Leipzig in 1895. A prolific writer on music theory, publishing works on almost every aspect of the subject, he is best remembered for his celebrated Musik-Lexikon (1882). These three lectures, setting out his thinking on how we listen to music, were first published in 1888 as Wie hören wir Musik? and in 1895 in this English translation by Heinrich Bewerunge (1862–1923), plainchant scholar at St Patrick's College, Maynooth. Each lecture deals with a different aspect of the overarching question posed in the original title, revealing Riemann's thoughts on the transformation of hearing into feeling, the different psychological effects of dynamics, emotional responses to rhythm and harmony, and passive and active listening.

General Musical Instruction
  • Adolf Bernhard Marx
  • Translated by George Macirone
  • Published online:
    05 June 2013
    Print publication:
    14 June 2012
    First published in:
    1854
  • Adolf Bernhard Marx (1795–1866) was an influential music theorist, critic, composer and pedagogue. He believed that music should be part of everyone's general education and lobbied the Prussian government for a comprehensive national music-education scheme. This English translation by George Macirone of Marx's 1839 Allgemeine Musiklehre was published in 1854 as the first work in the series Novello's Library for the Diffusion of Musical Knowledge. The series, described by the publisher as 'a collection of standard treatises on the art of music written by the most esteemed English and foreign masters', was devised in response to a growing demand for training books and manuals to support domestic music-making. It also included Berlioz's famous treatise on instrumentation (also reissued in this series). Marx's work covers the basic elements of music theory, musical instruments, compositional techniques, forms of music, performance advice, and the importance of musical education in general.

Chinese Music
  • J. A. Van Aalst
  • Published online:
    05 April 2013
    Print publication:
    22 March 2012
    First published in:
    1884
  • First published in 1884 by the Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs in Shanghai, this work is probably best known as a source of musical material for Puccini's opera Turandot. It was reprinted several times and remained the primary source in a Western language of detailed information on Chinese music until the mid-twentieth century. Van Aalst, born in Belgium in 1858, spent his working life with the Imperial Maritime Customs Service where his ability as a musician was noticed by the Inspector General, Robert Hart. It is thought likely that the work was published to coincide with the London Health Exhibition of 1884 in South Kensington to which Van Aalst had been sent to lecture. Different types of music (ritual and popular), the range of instruments, and musical notation are all explained, the intention being to enable a better understanding of Chinese music by those in the West.

Alfred Day's Treatise on Harmony
  • Alfred Day
  • Edited by G. A. Macfarren
  • Published online:
    05 February 2013
    Print publication:
    19 January 2012
    First published in:
    1885
  • Alfred Day (1810–49) first published this controversial work in 1845 to substantial negative criticism. He was encouraged in his enterprise by the composer George Alexander Macfarren (1813–87) who remained a staunch supporter of Day's theories. The work begins with an introduction to Day's new approach to the figured bass and then moves on to set out his concept of diatonic (or strict) harmony and chromatic (or free) harmony. Each is discussed in depth, with sections devoted to common chords and their inversions, discords, pedals and modulation together with a large number of musical examples. This second edition of 1885 by Macfarren includes an additional preface discussing the genesis of the work and supporting its basic premise, together with an extensive appendix presenting his additions and differences of view, developed during the intervening period. Despite its complexity, Day's thinking had considerable influence on later writers on harmony.

Music
  • How It Came to Be What It Is
  • Hannah Smith
  • Published online:
    05 November 2012
    Print publication:
    20 October 2011
    First published in:
    1898
  • Hannah Smith (1849–1939) was a composer for children and an educator. In 1903 she published the popular Founders of Music, a series of biographical sketches of composers written for children. Written in 1898, when Wagner had been dead for only fifteen years, this is a concise history of music and instruments, aimed at the enthusiast. Covering broad subjects rather than concentrating on a few composers, Smith discusses not just the development of musical styles but also how musical notation developed, how the ear functions and how musical instruments produce the sounds they do. The tastes of the time are evident, particularly in the surprisingly detailed discussion of the Oratorio: however, the book allows us to see how music and its progress were regarded at the turn of the twentieth century, before composers such as Stravinsky and Schoenberg shook the musical establishment.

Melodies and Memories
  • Nellie Melba
  • Published online:
    05 November 2012
    Print publication:
    20 October 2011
    First published in:
    1925
  • Dame Nellie Melba (1861–1931) was one of the most famous sopranos of her time. Born in Australia, Melba began her training in Melbourne but moved to Europe in 1882 to start her career. She found success in Brussels as Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto and was soon well known throughout the continent's opera houses. She debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1893. Her repertoire extended over twenty-five roles, and she was regarded as unmatched in ten of these, continuing to perform throughout her life, in concert recitals as well as in opera, to great acclaim, and becoming one of the earliest modern 'celebrities'. In this autobiography, published in 1925, Melba describes her childhood and her journey from the 'great Australian Bush' to the bright lights of the European and American stage, while also giving a colourful, first-hand account of the world of opera.

Harmony
  • Its Theory and Practice
  • Ebenezer Prout
  • Published online:
    05 November 2012
    Print publication:
    08 November 2011
    First published in:
    1903
  • The music scholar, composer and editor Ebenezer Prout (1835–1909) is best known for his edition of Handel's Messiah and as the man who put words to the fugue subjects in Bach's Well-tempered Klavier. He taught at the Royal Academy of Music (numbering Henry Wood amongst his pupils) and the reputation he established through his works on music theory gained him the post of Professor of Music at Trinity College, Dublin. This is the sixteenth (1903) edition, of his 1889 treatise on harmony which ran through over twenty editions, such was its popularity. This edition marks a significant change in Prout's approach to the theory of harmony, moving from a scientific exposition using the harmonic series to a more aesthetic style, which resulted in extensive re-casting of the work and an entirely new key to the exercises. This reprint includes the analytical key to the exercises.

On the Sensations of Tone as a Physiological Basis for the Theory of Music
  • 3rd edition
  • Hermann L. F. Helmholtz
  • Translated by Alexander J. Ellis
  • Published online:
    05 November 2012
    Print publication:
    04 October 2009
    First published in:
    1875
  • Hermann von Helmholtz (1821–94) was a leading scientist who made important contributions to physiology, psychology, physics, philosophy and early neuroscience. Following his foundational work in ophthalmics during the 1850s, he became Professor of Physiology at Heidelberg and, in 1863, published On the Sensations of Tone. This investigation into the physical theory of music remains a central text for the study of physiological acoustics and aesthetics. In it, Helmholtz applies physics, anatomy and physiology. He explains how tones are built from a base tone with upper partial tones, and his later discussions on consonance and musical scales develop this theory and discuss how the ear perceives these tones. His work on consonance and dissonance was of particular interest to composers and musicologists well into the twentieth century. This English translation, published in 1875 from the third German edition, retains the original's straightforward language, making this classic work accessible to non-specialists.

Memoir of Madame Jenny Lind-Goldschmidt
  • Her Early Art-Life and Dramatic Career, 1820–1851
  • Volume 2
  • Henry Scott Holland, William Smith Rockstro
  • Published online:
    05 November 2012
    Print publication:
    20 October 2011
    First published in:
    1891
  • Jenny Lind (1820–87) was one of Europe's most famous opera singers. Known as the 'Swedish Nightingale', she first rose to prominence in an 1838 performance of Weber's Freischütz. Despite her immense success over the next ten years, she retired from the stage at the age of twenty-nine. Seeking financial security to pursue her charitable interests, in 1850 she accepted the invitation of impresario P. T. Barnum to undertake a tour of the United States; this was another succession of triumphs. Henry Scott Holland (1847–1918), the theologian and social reformer, and music writer William Smith Rockstro (1823–95) used Lind's own documents, letters and diaries as the basis of this two-volume memoir, published in 1891, which focuses on the first thirty-one years of her life. Volume 2 discusses some of Lind's most memorable performances in Europe and the reasons for her first retirement; it ends with her departure for America.

Memoir of Madame Jenny Lind-Goldschmidt
  • Her Early Art-Life and Dramatic Career, 1820–1851
  • Volume 1
  • Henry Scott Holland, William Smith Rockstro
  • Published online:
    05 October 2012
    Print publication:
    20 October 2011
    First published in:
    1891
  • Jenny Lind (1820–87) was one of Europe's most famous opera singers. Known as the 'Swedish Nightingale', she first rose to prominence in an 1838 performance of Weber's Freischütz. Despite her immense success over the next ten years, she retired from the stage at the age of twenty-nine. Seeking financial security to pursue her charitable interests, in 1850 she accepted the invitation of impresario P. T. Barnum to undertake a tour of the United States; this was another succession of triumphs. Henry Scott Holland (1847–1918), the theologian and social reformer, and music writer William Smith Rockstro (1823–95) used Lind's own documents, letters and diaries as the basis of this two-volume memoir, published in 1891, which focuses on the first thirty-one years of her life. Volume 1 covers Lind's Swedish childhood and early singing career, and a brief but critical period when she suffered damage to her vocal cords.

Music and Morals
  • H. R. Haweis
  • Published online:
    05 October 2012
    Print publication:
    08 November 2011
    First published in:
    1871
  • The English cleric and writer H. R. Haweis (1838–1901) considers the philosophical side of music and how it is connected with emotions and morals in this 1871 publication. Containing an interesting mixture of musical philosophy and facts, the book is divided into four sections - Philosophical, Biographical, Instrumental and Critical - each of which comprises a series of short entries or essays on a wide range of subjects. Haweis provides informative biographies of a number of great composers, including Handel, Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, together with analysis of some of their best-known works. He takes an in-depth look at a selection of instruments, including violins and pianos, and concludes with a section of short essays on a wide range of topics including brass bands, musical tastes in England, conductors and opera. Quirky and engaging, the book contains a wealth of information and will appeal to any music-lover.

The Philosophy of Music
  • Being the Substance of a Course of Lectures Delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, in February and March 1877
  • William Pole
  • Published online:
    05 October 2012
    Print publication:
    01 December 2011
    First published in:
    1879
  • The physics, or natural philosophy, of music has fascinated scholars and scientists since ancient times: from Pythagoras' concept of celestial harmony, to the work of Galileo, Mersenne, Euler and Ohm, culminating in the nineteenth century with Helmholtz's definitive work On the Sensations of Tone. William Pole (1814–1900) was a civil engineer and musicologist. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1861 and was a founder member of the Royal Musical Association. First published in 1879, this work brings together his series of lectures on the theory of music, from the nature of sound to the physics of harmony, given in 1877 at the invitation of the Royal Institution. They were intended as an introduction to Helmholtz's research for the student or lay person, and include discussions of sound, scales, intervals, harmony and counterpoint (covering both historical and theoretical aspects), all illustrated with musical examples.

The Power of Sound
  • Edmund Gurney
  • Published online:
    05 October 2012
    Print publication:
    20 October 2011
    First published in:
    1880
  • Edmund Gurney (1847–88) is today best known for his work on psychical research, but from a young age he harboured the ambition to be a composer and performer. Frustrated in this aim, he began writing on the philosophy and psychology of music. This work of 1880 was an attempt to apply a strictly scientific method of enquiry to music, and it is regarded as one of the most important and original treatises from the nineteenth century on musical aesthetics. Gurney discusses the sensations of pleasure and pain in relation to the senses, and goes on to examine how the listener differentiates between 'noises' and 'tones'. He explores whether there is an elemental difference between a 'good' and a 'bad' melody, the ultimate futility of the critic trying to describe music, and the 'moral' conclusion to be drawn from a preference for the music of Rossini over that of Beethoven.

Page 5 of 9