R. Larry Todd Libros

Although best known as the sister of Felix Mendelssohn, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805-47) was a virtuoso pianist and a composer of considerable merit in her own right. Her oeuvre of more than 400 compositions remained largely unknown for more than a century after her untimely death, and her newly rediscovered reputation as a composer rests chiefly with her piano music. This volume is the first American publication of her important early works. Reproduced directly from rare first editions, its contents include Vier Lieder für das Pianoforte, Op. 2, Op. 6, and Op. 8, in addition to two selections from S ix Mélodies pour le Piano , Op. 4 and Op. 5. Introduction.

Granddaughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and sister of the composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Fanny Hensel (1805-1847) was an extraordinary musician who left well over four hundred compositions, most of which fell into oblivion until their rediscovery late in the twentieth century. In Fanny The Other Mendelssohn , R. Larry Todd offers a compelling, authoritative account of Hensel's life and music, and her struggle to emerge as a publicly recognized composer.

Beethoven's Cello is the ideal companion for cellists, pianists, musicologists and chamber-music devotees desiring a comprehensive understanding of this beloved repertoire.

An extraordinary prodigy of Mozartean abilities, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was a distinguished composer and conductor. Now, in the first major Mendelssohn biography to appear in decades, Todd offers a remarkably fresh account of this musical giant.

The concert overtures A Midsummer Night's Dream, Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, and The Hebrides (Fingal's Cave), conceived by Mendelssohn before the age of twenty, have ranked amongst the most enduring of the nineteenth-century orchestral repertoire. R. Larry Todd offers a historical, stylistic, and analytical guide to these three remarkable works which secured for Mendelssohn no small measure of his fame. After placing the overtures in the context of Mendelssohn's astonishing compositional development during the 1820s, the volume disentangles the complex history of their creation and considers in turn their style and formal structure, their contents as programme music, aspects of their orchestration and their reception and influence. All this is supported by a wealth of primary documents, including Mendelssohn's correspondence, memoirs of his friends, and nineteenth-century critical reviews.

Focusing on Mendelssohn's formative years, this critical edition explores his composition exercises created during his studies with Carl Friedrich Zelter from 1819 to 1821. It provides insights into Mendelssohn's early musical development and showcases the techniques and influences that shaped his future works. The book serves as both a scholarly study and a resource for understanding the foundations of Mendelssohn's compositional style.

Follows the fascinating story of musical timekeeping, beginning in an age before the existence of external measuring devices and continuing to the present-day use of the Smartphone app.

The life and works of Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy are enjoying a considerable resurgence of interest. This volume presents the most recent trends in Mendelssohn research, covering three broad categories - reception history, historical and critical essays, and case studies of particular compositions. Much of the book depends on a wealth of primary nineteenth-century documents, including little-known autograph manuscripts, letters, and sketches of the composer. Four studies consider various facets of Mendelssohn reception in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Friedhelm Krummacher considers the abiding popularity of Mendelssohn's music in England, while Peter Ward Jones reviews Mendelssohn's business dealings with English publishers; Donald Mintz examines the composer's posthumous reputation from the perspective of the revolutionary agenda of mid-nineteenth-century Germany; and Lawrence Kramer considers dynamic multiple layers of meaning in the Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage Overture and The First Walpurgisnacht. Four essays, by Judith Silber-Ballan, J. Rigbie Turner, Wm. A. Little, and David Brodbeck, treat Mendelssohn's relationships with A. B. Marx, E. Devrient, Franz Liszt, and Friedrich Wilhelm IV. Finally, two studies by R. Larry Todd and Christa Jost focus on two major piano works, the Preludes and Fugues op. 35 and the Variations serieuses op. 54.

Perspectives on Mozart Performance, published during the Mozart bicentennial year, is the first volume in a new series. It includes essays by distinguished musicologists and performers, each exploring a different aspect of Mozart's music in performance. Several studies consider the eighteenth-century roots of Mozart's approach to performance and examine such issues as the role of ornamentation (Paul Badura-Skoda, Frederick Neumann), improvization (Katalin Komlós), cadenzas (Christoph Wolff), and Mozart's conception of tempos in a pre-metronomic age (Jean-Pierre Marty). Two studies examine Mozart's string writing (Jaap Schroeder) and the influence of his father's remarkably popular Violinschule (Robin Stowell). An essay by Peter Williams treats Mozart's use of the chromatic fourth and performance styles associated with that figura. Finally, the later, nineteenth-century response to Mozart is explored through the study of Mendelssohn's performances of Mozart (R. Larry Todd).

„Lange beklagte die Forschung das Fehlen einer neueren, profunden Monographie zum Leben und Schaffen von Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy – nun ist sie da“, hieß es 2004 in der Zeitschrift Musikforschung. Basierend auf seiner lebenslangen Beschäftigung mit dem Komponisten und akribischen Studien von Autographen, Briefen, Tagebüchern und Zeichnungen vermittelt R. Larry Todd ein detailreiches, frisches Bild des Komponisten und seiner Zeit – von seiner Familie und Jugend als Wunderkind bis zum legendären Pianisten und weit gereisten Dirigenten, der aber auch als Zeichner und Altphilologe aktiv wurde und eine bemerkenswerte, vielsprachige Bekanntschaft mit den kulturellen Eliten seiner Zeit pflegte. Meisterhaft verwebt Todd Biografie und musikalische Analyse, wobei nicht nur die beliebten Standardwerke, sondern auch die vielen unbekannten und unveröffentlichten Werke erwähnt werden. Weitere Themen sind Mendelssohns wachsendes Bewusstsein seines religiösen Erbes, die Beziehung zu seiner Schwester und Komponistin Fanny Hensel und Wagners bösartige antisemitische Attacke. Ein kulturhistorisch interessantes Buch für Kenner und Liebhaber. Zahlreiche Notenbeispiele, Abbildungen, Quellenzitate und Anmerkungen runden das Werk ab, das von den Mendelssohn-Experten Helga Beste und Thomas Schmidt-Beste ins Deutsche übertragen wurde.