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Book Cover
E-book
Author Allanbrook, Wye Jamison, author

Title The secular commedia : comic mimesis in late eighteenth-century music / Wye Jamison Allanbrook ; edited by Mary Ann Smart and Richard Taruskin
Published Berkeley : University of California Press, 2014

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Description 1 online resource (253 pages)
Series Ernest Bloch lecture series ; 15
Ernest Bloch lecture series ; 15
Contents Cover; THE SECULAR COMMEDIA; Title; Copyright; CONTENTS; List of Music Examples; Foreword; 1. Comic Flux and Comic Precision; 2. Comic Voice in the Late Mimetic Period; 3. The Comic Surface; 4. Comic Finitude and Comic Closure; Notes; Bibliography; Index
Summary Wye Jamison Allanbrook's The Secular Commedia is a stimulating and original rethinking of the music of the late eighteenth century. Hearing the symphonies and concertos of Haydn and Mozart with an ear tuned to operatic style, as their earliest listeners did, Allanbrook shows that this familiar music is built on a set of mimetic associations drawn from conventional modes of depicting character and emotion in opera buffa. Allanbrook mines a rich trove of writings by eighteenth-century philosophers and music theorists to show that vocal music was considered aesthetically superior to instrumental music and that listeners easily perceived the theatrical tropes that underpinned the style. Tracing Enlightenment notions of character and expression back to Greek and Latin writings about comedy and drama, she strips away preoccupations with symphonic form and teleology to reveal anew the kaleidoscopic variety and gestural vitality of the musical surface. In prose as graceful and nimble as the music she discusses, Allanbrook elucidates the idiom of this period for contemporary readers. With notes, musical examples, and a foreword by editors Mary Ann Smart and Richard Taruskin
Analysis 18th century culture
austrian composer
chamber music
classical music
classical period
concertos
cultural studies
ernest bloch lectures
franz joseph haydn
greatest classical composers of all time
haydn
historical
history of music
instrumental music
late 18th century music
mimetic association
mozart
music studies
music
musical influences
musical theorists
opera buffa
opera
operatic style
symphonies
theatre
vocal music
wolfgang amadeus mozart
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 219-230) and index
Notes English
Print version record
Subject Mimesis in music.
Music -- 18th century -- History and criticism.
Music -- 18th century -- Philosophy
MUSIC -- Genres & Styles -- Classical.
MUSIC -- Reference.
Mimesis in music
Music
Music -- Philosophy and aesthetics
Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc.
Form Electronic book
Author Smart, Mary Ann
Taruskin, Richard
ISBN 9780520958876
052095887X
1306859700
9781306859707
0520274075
9780520274075