{"title":"Series: The Bard Music Festival","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe Bard Music Festival\u003c\/strong\u003e series offers a rich tapestry of works across diverse fields including \u003cem\u003ephilosophy, finance, history, and health\u003c\/em\u003e. Readers can explore thought-provoking perspectives and practical insights that challenge conventional thinking, inviting a deeper engagement with both timeless and contemporary themes.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eFrom insightful travel narratives to guides on technology and personal well-being, this collection balances intellectual curiosity with accessible storytelling. It is ideal for those who appreciate books that inspire reflection and broaden understanding across multiple disciplines.\u003c\/p\u003e","products":[{"product_id":"martinu-and-his-world-9780226845739","title":"Martinu and His World","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA collection of essays and documents illuminating the work of Bohuslav Martinů, published in collaboration with the Bard Music Festival.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBohuslav Martinů was one of the most extraordinary and prolific composers of the twentieth century. \u003cem\u003eMartinů and His World\u003c\/em\u003e offers a portrait of the composer in all his complexity. Born in the present-day Czech Republic, Martinů was rendered stateless as a result of events around World War II and the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia. He lived for more than a decade in the United States, where he had great success, and died in Switzerland.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eMartinů composed more than four hundred works in all genres of instrumental and vocal music, and infused each with a special combination of the lyrical and the dramatic. Alongside an unerring sense of form, his works draw on a kaleidoscope of elements from such sources as Dvořák, American jazz of the 1920s, English Renaissance madrigals, the late Baroque concerto grosso, French Impressionism, Czech and Moravian folk songs, and the contemporary music of his day.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis volume pays special attention to Martinů’s little-known operatic works and presents for the first time both a recently discovered personal diary and a series of interviews with important figures who were part of his American years.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eMartinů and His World\u003c\/em\u003e reveals the composer as an essential voice of his time, an original thinker about music past and present, who lived through the political complexities of the twentieth century and stood up to them both as a human being and as an artist.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46792170733804,"sku":"9780226845739","price":66.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/b5793a97b0b906c9f6eefe3423ef99aa.jpg?v=1757060508"},{"product_id":"rachmaninoff-and-his-world-9780226823751","title":"Rachmaninoff and His World","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eA biography of composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, published in collaboration with the Bard Music Festival.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eOne of the most popular classical composers of all time, Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873–1943) has often been dismissed by critics as a conservative, nostalgic holdover of the nineteenth century and a composer fundamentally hostile to musical modernism.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe original essays collected in \u003ci\u003eRachmaninoff and His World\u003c\/i\u003e show how he was more responsive to aspects of contemporary musical life than is often thought, and how his deeply felt sense of Russianness coexisted with an appreciation of American and European culture. In particular, the essays document his involvement with intellectual and artistic circles in prerevolutionary Moscow and how the form of modernity they promoted shaped his early output.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis volume represents one of the first serious explorations of Rachmaninoff’s successful career as a composer, pianist, and conductor, first in late Imperial Russia, and then after emigration in both the United States and interwar Europe.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eShedding light on some unfamiliar works, especially his three operas and his many songs, the book also includes a substantial number of new documents illustrating Rachmaninoff’s celebrity status in America.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47427457482988,"sku":"9780226823751","price":66.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9780226823751.jpg?v=1774767552"},{"product_id":"vaughan-williams-and-his-world-9780226830452","title":"Vaughan Williams and His World","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams, published in collaboration with the Bard Music Festival.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRalph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958) was one of the most innovative and creative figures in twentieth-century music, whose symphonies stand alongside those of Sibelius, Nielsen, Shostakovich, and Roussel. After his death, shifting priorities in the music world led to a period of critical neglect. What could not have been foreseen is that by the second decade of the twenty-first century, a handful of Vaughan Williams’s scores would attain immense popularity worldwide. Yet the present renown of these pieces has led to misapprehension about the nature of Vaughan Williams’s cultural nationalism and a distorted view of his international cultural and musical significance.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eVaughan Williams and His World\u003c\/em\u003e traces the composer’s stylistic and aesthetic development in a broadly chronological fashion, reappraising Vaughan Williams’s music composed during and after the Second World War and affirming his status as an artist whose leftist political convictions pervaded his life and music. This volume reclaims Vaughan Williams’s deeply held progressive ethical and democratic convictions while celebrating his achievements as a composer.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47433255878892,"sku":"9780226830452","price":66.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9780226830452.jpg?v=1774765339"},{"product_id":"debussy-and-his-world-9780691090429","title":"Debussy and His World","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eClaude Debussy's Paris was factionalised, politicised, and litigious. It was against this background of ferment and change—characterising French society and music from the Franco-Prussian War to World War I—that Debussy re-thought music. \u003cem\u003eDebussy and His World\u003c\/em\u003e captures the complexity of the composer's restless personal and artistic identity within the new picture emerging of the musical, social, and political world of fin-de-siècle Paris.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eDebussy's setting did not simply mould his style. Rather, it challenged him to define a style and then to revamp it again and again as he situated himself simultaneously via the present and the past. These essays trace Debussy's perpetual reinvention, both social and creative, from his earliest to his last works. They explore tensions and contradictions in his best-known compositions and examine lesser-known pieces that reveal new aspects of Debussy's creative appropriation from poetry, painting, and non-Western music.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe contributors reveal the extent to which Debussy's personal and professional lives were intertwined and sometimes in conflict. Belonging to no one group or class, but crossing many, Debussy abjured the orthodox. A maverick who reviled all convention and searched for a music that authentically reflected experience, Debussy balked at entering any situation—salons, musical societies, or factions—that would categorise and thus distort him. Because of this, music lovers still argue over the degree to which Debussy's music is Impressionist, symbolist, or even French.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAptly, the volume's editor reads Debussy's last works as a dialogue with himself that reflects his inherently pluralistic, paradoxical, negotiated, and ever-changing identity. William Austin's description of Debussy as \"one of the most original and adventurous musicians who ever lived\" is often repeated. This book illustrates how right Austin was and shows why Debussy's unclassifiable art continues to fascinate and perplex his historians even as it enthrals new listeners.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThe contributors are Leon Botstein, Christophe Charle, John Clevenger, Jane F. Fulcher, David Grayson, Brian Hart, Gail Hilson-Woldu, and Marie Rolf.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"NewSouth Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47455543296236,"sku":"9780691090429","price":114.0,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/71PsLGDcfQL._SL1500.jpg?v=1774781469"},{"product_id":"berlioz-and-his-world-9780226837666","title":"Berlioz and His World","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"book-description\"\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eA collection of essays and short object lessons on the composer Hector Berlioz, published in collaboration with the Bard Music Festival.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eHector Berlioz (1803–1869) has long been a difficult figure to place and interpret. Famously, in Richard Wagner's estimation, he hovered as a \"transient, marvellous exception,\" a composer woefully and wilfully isolated. In the assessment of German composer Ferdinand Hiller, he was a fleeting comet who \"does not belong in our musical solar system,\" the likes of whom would never be seen again. For his contemporaries, as for later critics, Berlioz was simply too strange—and too noisy, too loud, too German, too literary, too cavalier with genre and form, and too difficult to analyse. He was, in many ways, a composer without a world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eBerlioz and His World\u003c\/em\u003e takes a deep dive into the composer's complex legacy, tracing lines between his musical and literary output and the scientific, sociological, technological, and political influences that shaped him. Comprising nine essays covering key facets of Berlioz's contribution and six short \"object lessons\" meant as conversation starters, the book reveals Berlioz as a richly intersectional figure. His very difficulty, his tendency to straddle the worlds of composer, conductor, and critic, is revealed as a strength, inviting new lines of cross-disciplinary inquiry and a fresh look at his European and American reception.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003c\/div\u003e","brand":"Unknown","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47470103888108,"sku":"9780226837666","price":66.99,"currency_code":"NZD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0705\/7784\/8556\/files\/9780226837666-berlioz-and-his-world.jpg?v=1775211973"}],"url":"https:\/\/bookhero.co.nz\/collections\/series-the-bard-music-festival.oembed","provider":"Book Hero","version":"1.0","type":"link"}