Essays on Music

Hans Keller (1919–1985) was one of the most brilliant and stimulating writers on music of his day, and this is the first large selection of his essays.

Hans Keller (Author), Christopher Wintle (Edited by)

9780521673488, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 30 June 2005

292 pages, 6 b/w illus. 64 music examples
24.4 x 17 x 1.5 cm, 0.47 kg

'Christopher Wintle's outstandingly empathetic introduction that would seem best to encapsulate the style and ongoing purpose of this collection of musical (and I choose the word with care) writings as representative of 'Keller's crusade'.' Musical Times

Hans Keller (1919–1985) was one of the most brilliant and stimulating writers on music of his day, and this is the first large selection of his essays. His work draws on his rich and diverse experience as a string-player, composer, teacher, analyst and critic, and also reflects a deep interest in psychoanalysis. The first part of the book addresses psychological issues relating to critics, listeners, players and composers; the second analyses music by a wide range of composers from Haydn to the present day; and the third propounds his new theory of music, with essays on unity and contrast, motifs, themes, keys, timbre and rhythm. There is also a 'wordless functional analysis' of a Mozart piano sonata published here for the first time. The volume concludes with a magisterial account of what Keller deemed to be 'the principles of composition'.

Preface
Acknowledgments
A Note on the Text
Introduction
Part I. Criticism: 1. Problems in writing about music
2. Resistances to Britten's music: their psychology
3. National frontiers in music
4. Sport and art: the concept of mastery
5. Music and psychopathology
Part II. Composers and Their Music: 6. Art as departure (Haydn)
7. New Music: Beethoven's Choral Fantasy
8. Schubert: tune and melody
9. Little known greatness (Mendelssohn and Mozart)
10. Schumann was a symphonist
11. Tristan and the realism of adolescence (Wagner)
12. Resistances to Brahms
13. Elgar the progressive
14. The unpopularity of Mahler's popularity
15. The sentimental violin (Glazounov)
16. The 'Lucky' Hand and other errors (Schoenberg)
17. Natural master (Schmidt)
18. Schoenberg: A Survivor from Warsaw
19. Film music: The Harry Lime theme (Karas and Weill)
20. Mátyás Seiber 1905–1960
21. Gloriana as music drama (a reaffirmation) (Britten)
22. Shostakovich's Twelfth Quartet
23. Stravinsky v. Stravinsky
24. The state of the symphony: not only Maxwell Davies's
25. Britten's last masterpiece
26. The Man and the Music (Simpson)
Part III. Towards a Theory of Music: 27. Towards a theory of music
28. The musical analysis of music
29. Functional Analysis No. 9A: Mozart's Piano Sonata in A minor, K 310
30. A slip of Mozart's: Its analytical significance (1956/57)
31. Knowing things backwards
32. Mozart's wrong key signature
33. Key characteristics
34. Strict serial technique in classical music
35. Schoenberg: the future of symphonic thought
36. Whose fault is the speaking voice? 37. Why this piece is about Billy Budd
38. Rhythm: Gershwin and Stravinsky
39. Principles of composition
Notes
Index.

Subject Areas: Western "classical" music [AVGC]