Edward J Dent: Selected Essays

by Edward J. Dent , Edited by Hugh Taylor

• ISBN13: 9780521106009
• ISBN10: 0521106001
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-04-02
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

During his long career, Edward Dent wrote on a variety of musical subjects, ranging from substantial articles in the most learned journals to less weighty pieces in Radio Times. This volume aims to reflect that variety. Some of the articles are now of primarily historical interest, others offer insights of a fundamental kind; all are informed by Dent's witty and distinctive prose style. In editing this collection, Hugh Taylor has drawn on writings from 1903 to 1951 and included two pieces originally written in Italian and published here in English for the first time. As well as providing footnotes, which amplify certain of Dent's statements and draw attention to subsequent research, Mr Taylor has listed sources for Dent's many textual references and quotations. Brought together in this way Dent's learned but always readable criticism will appeal to the reader with a general interest in music as well as to the music student and specialist.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The translation of operas

(Music for the Cambridge Greek plays)

Leonardo Leo

Italian chamber cantatas

Cecil Armstrong Gibbs

(The problems of modern music)

On the composition of English songs

Busoni's Doctor Faust

The style of Schubert

(Melody and harmony)

Bellini in England

Binary and ternary form

The historical approach to music

La rappresentazione di anima e di corpo

The teaching of strict counterpoint

The Victorians and opera

Corno di Bassetto

A pastoral opera by Alessandro Scarlatti

Verdi in English

Looking backward

Index

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