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This chapter focuses on Brahms' Concerto in A minor for Violin, Cello, and Orchestra, Op. 102. It sketches a musical family tree for the “Double” Concerto — a network of models in which Robert Schumann and the members of his extended creative family play a crucial role. The sketch will focus on two levels of the concerto's genealogy. On the one hand, it will address the extent to which the work was bound up with Schumann's aesthetic of the concerto in general and with his late works for soloists and orchestra in particular. On the other hand, it will attempt to reveal Brahms' debt to an idiom — transmitted to him principally through Joachim — about which most critics of the concerto have said little of substance: the style hongrois that is, the musical language employed by Western composers to evoke the performing manner of the Hungarian gypsies.

This chapter provides perhaps the most fascinating part of the story, bringing to light a series of circumstances not previously known outside the close circle of family and friends. The cello version of the concerto is discussed and the extended negotiations with Boosey & Hawkes are traced with numerous copies of correspondence included in the appendixes. The most revealing section relates to the involvement of violist Burton Fisch and cellist David Soyer, who gave the first ever read-through of the concerto to an invited audience at the home of Tibor Serly in New York in February 1948. The renditions were recorded shortly after at the apartment of Peter Bartók. The involvement of William Primrose and the subsequent changes that occurred pave the way to much of the controversy in the interpretation of the work.

After the war Samuel Barber was discharged from the United States army. His compositions were continuously loved by its patrons as well as critics, and he was awarded once more, this time the Fifth Annual Award of the Music Critics Circle of New York. He continued to trailblaze his way into music history, with his Cello Concerto dubbed as one of the most challenging contemporary cello compositions. This chapter describes his most “American work”: Knoxville: Summer of 1915. He was reputed to be one of the most promising American composers of his time. Barber even took an interest in ballet, for which he produced the piece Medea. This was however, dampened by the news of his father's deteriorating health and the stress it placed in Barber's mother.

This concluding chapter includes brief discussions of some of Young’s later works (including Chronos Kristalla and Just Charles & Cello) and seeks to draw together the various strands of Young’s oeuvre using Daniel Albright’s examination of the figure of Laocoön. Albright outlines the concepts of the “decorum of time” and “the decorum of space” as they operate, respectively, in the arenas of music and visual art, and shows how they become blurred in the modernist era. Young’s works fit problematically within this framework, because his agenda of “getting inside the sound” results in works that conflate the temporal with the spatial. This chapter also considers the concept of teleology, or goal-directedness, and argues that even Young’s most temporally static, spatially oriented works have an element of teleology, grounded not in the music’s temporal unfolding but in its mystical aspirations.

When the Baroque cello is mentioned, Anner Bylsma always comes up. Bylsma took up the Baroque cello in the 1960s, by which time he already had a distinguished career as a modern cellist. In the ferment of the early music scene of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, it was inevitable that Bylsma would be drawn to the early cello. That he still plays both instruments makes him a sharp observer of their differing challenges, and of current issues in their use. He also spoke about one of his favorite composers, Antonio Vivaldi. Vivaldi was the most influential Italian composer of his day, but serious musical thinkers often dismiss him. Bylsma, however, thinks that musicians play and hear Vivaldi wrong; he believes that the key to Vivaldi is his interest in depicting character. This point may reflect changes in musical aesthetics. The chapter presents an interview with Anner Bylsma on Vivaldi’s music and the cello, the style of Baroque cello playing, the use of rubato, vibrato and portamento, and the difference between French and Italian string-playing.

This chapter sets the stage for Victor Herbert's upbringing. It traces Herbert's Irish roots and influential people in his life, such as his grandfather Samuel Lover who was an artist, author, composer, and entertainer and his mother Fanny Lover. Herbert's father, Edward Herbert tragically disappeared during a trip to Paris in 1862. Schooled in the arts by his mother and grandfather, Herbert was fluent in several languages. Since he was fluent in German, when the time came for Herbert's formal education, Fanny decided to have him educated in Germany where he took up the cello. After graduation the family's financial situation caused Herbert to find work. Herbert traveled to the United States to play in the Pittsburgh Orchestra and began touring. He met and married Theresa Forster, a dramatic soprano.

This chapter narrates a piece wherein Samuel Barber directly involves the performer in its creation. In this case, it was the Cello Sonata, premiered by Orlando Cole, the cellist. The two would meet regularly, with Cole offering suggestions for improvements to the music. This fresh new take in composing music was instantly recognized by friends and audience alike. The founder of the Curtis Institute, Mary Bok, took further efforts in advancing Barber's as well as Menotti's career by conducting auditions with music companies. This resulted in publications of his work, as well as radio performances where Barber was recognized as a pianist, composer, and singer all in one. The chapter also describes Barber's second biggest orchestra work, Music from a scene of Shelly.

This chapter describes various pieces of a heterogeneous collection that receive scant notice from most commentators. In general they are regarded as mere footnotes to Schoenberg’s main creative work; but in fact they all have intrinsic interest, and help round-out the picture of their composer, especially in his lighter moods. Schoenberg’s most numerous “occasional” works were canons, vocal or instrumental. Like Bach or Brahms before him, he wrote many of these throughout his career; sometimes simply, one suspects, to keep his hand in with a little “tonal” composition in the old style, sometimes as riddles or as greetings or presents for friends, often fitted with whimsical texts of his own devising.

Frances-Marie Uitti charts a lifelong discovery of the potential of an instrument, in this case the cello, through multiple collaborations with composers and through her own ground-breaking exploratory work, including the creation of altogether new instruments. At the heart of this process, she reveals the development of her musical ear which then translates to a distinctive artistic voice.

This chapter analyzes the first movement in Luigi Boccherini's cello sonata in E♭major. It contends that the sense of reciprocity in the process of identification of Western classical music is not entirely wistful or metaphorical, but functions as a real relationship. It argues that this relationship is not fantastic, incidental, or inessential to musicology and that it can and should be a primary source of knowledge about the performed work of art. It also asserts that carnal musicology bears witness to a genuinely reciprocal relationship between performer and composer.

This chapter analyzes the following works: concertos and ouvertures: Brandenburg Concertos (BWV 1042, 1066, 1069); violin, cello, and flute solos: Sei Solo a violino senza basso (BWV 1001–6), Six Suites for solo cello (BWV 1007–12), Solo in A minor for flute (BWV 1013); and sonatas with obbligato harpsichord or continuo: Sei Sonate a Cembalo certato e Violino solo (BWV 1014–19), BWV 1034, 1039, 1021.

Of the extralegal murders to occur in Florida during the 1940s, the lynching of Cellos Harrison in Marianna in 1943 is exceptional. The white community in Jackson County exhibited an unusual degree of restraint, initially allowing the court system to determine Harrison's fate, including being indicted, tried, and sentenced to death twice between 1941 and 1943. This fact may have owed less to the desire for due process on the part of Jackson County's white citizenry than to the painful memories of the national infamy the community suffered after the horrific public lynching of Claude Neal less than a decade earlier.

After two years of waiting for the courts to decide Cellos Harrison's fate, whites in Jackson County took matters into their own hands by kidnapping the thirty-one-year-old Harrison from the local jail and lynching him. In the aftermath of Harrison's lynching, federal agencies, the Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) made an uncharacteristically valiant effort to investigate the killing. President Franklin Roosevelt and his administration were concerned that the Nazi propaganda machine pointed to instances of lynching and racial violence to point out racial blind spots in America's democratic creed. Despite these important developments, the perpetrators of the crime were never identified or brought to justice.

Much has been written on the professional and personal trajectories of the two luminaries of Soviet/Russian music, Sergei Prokofiev and Dmitri Shostakovich. Their true relationship, however, has yet to be seriously explored. Many writers have focused on the composers’ alleged personal and professional antagonisms, caused by their supposed individual claims to the title of “the greatest Soviet composer,” referencing anecdotes of questionable reliability. This chapter compares the two composers’ contributions to certain genres; their typical compositional procedures; their collaborations with other highly regarded exponents of Soviet cultural life, and their common predecessors. It also contrasts the two composers’ written assessments of one another’s compositions, and compares their works, in which we can observe not only how Prokofiev influenced his younger contemporary but also how each composer might have inspired the other.

Ligeti’s first major commissio brought him some security, and with it the chance to focus on codifying the compositional techniques he had developed during the previous years. The sketches for the Requiem—especially the Kyrie and Dies irae movements—show explicit forms of rulemaking that differ from those associated with Boulez, Stockhausen, and others using the integral serial approach. Ligeti’s approach to rhythm is further refined in Lux aeterna and Lontano, and the Cello Concerto represents the synthesis of the static and wild textures developed so meticulously in the previous works. The Cello Concerto also reuses types of musical material created in Aventures, referencing specific episodes from the earlier work in an instrumental setting.

This chapter focuses on Barber’s earliest involvement of the performer in the creative process of a composition, in this case the Cello Sonata, premiered by Orlando Cole. The two would meet regularly, with Cole offering suggestions for improvements to the music. This fresh new take in composing music was instantly recognized by friends and audience alike. The founder of the Curtis Institute, Mary Bok, made further efforts in advancing Barber’s and also Gian Carlo Menotti’s careers by conducting auditions with music publishers. This resulted in publications of Barber’s work by G. Schirmer, as well as national radio performances where he was recognized as a pianist, composer, and singer. The chapter also describes Barber’s second large orchestral work, Music for a Scene from Shelley. He also wrote incidental music for a play by Mary Kennedy, One Day of Spring, presented at the Annie Russell Theater in Winter Park, Florida.

After his discharge from the Army, Barber continued work with the Office of War Information but was able to work at home. He received a commission from John Nicholas Brown for a Cello Concerto for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Serge Koussevitzky. Written to include the strengths and predilections of cellist Raya Garbousova, the concerto is considered one of the most challenging contemporary works of the genre and won Barber the Fifth Annual Award of the Music Critics Circle of New York. Reputedly one of the most promising American composers of his time, Barber also composed music for Martha Graham’s ballet about Medea, Cave of the Heart. In 1947, under the shadow of his father’s deteriorating health and Louise Homer’s impending death, Barber composed his most “American work,” Knoxville: Summer of 1915, for voice and orchestra. It is set to a nostalgic prose-poem by James Agee and was premiered by the Boston Symphony with Eleanor Steber as soloist. Following this, Barber composed a piano sonata for Vladimir Horowitz, a work that had the most stunning impact on the American musical world.