Price: $49.95

Format:
Paperback 880 pp.
83 b/w, 7" x 9.9"

ISBN-10:
0195384849

ISBN-13:
9780195384840

Publication date:
July 2009

Imprint: OUP US

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Music in the Early Twentieth Century

Richard Taruskin

The universally acclaimed and award-winning Oxford History of Western Music is a magisterial five-volume survey of the traditions of Western music by one of the most prominent and provocative musicologists of our time, Richard Taruskin.

Now this renowned work is available in paperback--both as a set and (for the first time) individually. Each volume in this magnificent set illuminates--through a representative sampling of masterworks--those themes, styles, and currents that give shape and direction to each musical age. This volume examines the music of the early twentieth century, ranging from Mahler and Strauss to Gerswhin and Copeland. Taking a critical perspective, Taruskin sets the details of music, the chronological sweep of figures, works, and musical ideas, within the larger context of world affairs and cultural history. He combines an emphasis on structure and form with a discussion of relevant theoretical concepts in each age, to illustrate how the music itself works, and how contemporaries heard and understood it. He also describes how the context of each stylistic period--key cultural, historical, social, economic, and scientific events--influenced and directed compositional choices.

Attractively illustrated and laced with brilliant observations, memorable musical analysis, and a panoramic sense of the interactions between history, culture, politics, art, literature, religion, and music, this volume is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand twentieth-century music.