Essays On Roberto Gerhard

For much of the mid-twentieth century, Roberto Gerhard found himself an outsider. He was airbrushed from much writing on contemporary music in Spain during the Franco regime, and was known in England more for his ‘commercial’ music for theatre, film and radio than his concert works. However, his significance as a musical innovator in developing serial technique and in the field of electro-acoustics is now being gradually recognised in both Spain and England, as well as further afield. The volume explores an extensive range of Gerhard’s work from the early Wind Quintet and the Spanish ballets Pandora and Don Quixote with their overt political overtones, through to the late period Metamorphoses and a newly discovered chance-based composition Claustophilia written in response to a request by John Cage for his book Notations. One of the key themes presented throughout the book is Gerhard’s innovative use of serialism. Gerhard’s development of Schoenberg’s technique led him to explore the serialization of both pitch and time. This volume suggests evidence for the first time that situates Gerhard’s idiosyncratic experiments alongside rather than after the total serialist works of his European counterparts Pierre Boulez, Olivier Messiaen and Karlheinz Stockhausen.

More than forty years after the composer's death, the music of Roberto Gerhard (1896-1970) continues to be recorded and performed and to attract international scholarly interest. The Roberto Gerhard Companion is the first full length scholarly work on this composer noted for his sharp intellect and original, exploring mind. This book builds on the outcomes of two recent international conferences and includes contributions by scholars from Spain, the USA and UK. The essays collected here explore themes and trends within Gerhard’s work, using individual or groups of works as case studies. Among the themes presented are the way Gerhard’s work was shaped by his Catalan heritage, his education under Pedrell and Schoenberg, and his very individual reaction to the latter’s teaching and methods, notably Gerhard’s very distinctive approach to serialism. The influence of these and other cultural and literary figures is an important underlying theme that ties essays together. Exiled from Catalonia from 1939, Gerhard spent the remainder of his life in Cambridge, England, composing a string of often ground-breaking compositions, notably the symphonies and concertos composed in the 1950s and 1960s. A particular focus in this book is Gerhard's electronic music. He was a pioneer in this genre and the book will contain the first rigorous studies of this music as well as the first accurate catalogue of this electronic output. His ground-breaking output of incidental music for radio and the stage is also given detailed consideration.

The contemporary music scene thus embodies a uniquely broad spectrum of activity, which has grown and changed down to the present hour. With new talents emerging and different technologies developing as we move further into the 21st century, no one can predict what paths music will take next. All we can be certain of is that the inspiration and originality that make music live will continue to bring awe, delight, fascination, and beauty to the people who listen to it. This book cover modernist and postmodern concert music worldwide from the years 1888 to 2018. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Classical Music contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on the most important composers, musicians, methods, styles, and media in modernist and postmodern classical music worldwide, from 1888 to 2018. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about modern and contemporary classical music.

Oxford University Press (OUP) offers a biographical sketch about the Spanish composer Roberto Gerhard (1896-1970). Gerhard composed chamber and instrumental works and orchestral pieces. Gerhard served as head of the music department of the Catalan Library in Barcelona and taught at various schools. Towards the end of his life, Gerhard worked as a freelance composer. An audio file of Gerhard's "Concerto for Orchestra" is available, as well as a discography and works list.

Modernism in music still arouses passions and is riven by controversies. Taking root in the early decades of the twentieth century, it achieved ideological dominance for almost three decades following the Second World War, before becoming the object of widespread critique in the last two decades of the century, both from critics and composers of a postmodern persuasion and from prominent scholars associated with the ‘new musicology’. Yet these critiques have failed to dampen its ongoing resilience. The picture of modernism has considerably broadened and diversified, and has remained a pivotal focus of debate well into the twenty-first century. This Research Companion does not seek to limit what musical modernism might be. At the same time, it resists any dilution of the term that would see its indiscriminate application to practically any and all music of a certain period. In addition to addressing issues already well established in modernist studies such as aesthetics, history, institutions, place, diaspora, cosmopolitanism, production and performance, communication technologies and the interface with postmodernism, this volume also explores topics that are less established; among them: modernism and affect, modernism and comedy, modernism versus the ‘contemporary’, and the crucial distinction between modernism in popular culture and a ‘popular modernism’, a modernism of the people. In doing so, this text seeks to define modernism in music by probing its margins as much as by restating its supposed essence.

This collection of new essays explores connections between dance, modernism, and modernity by examining the ways in which leading dancers have responded to modernity. Burt and Huxley examine dance examples from a period beginning just before the First World War and extending to the mid-1950s, ranging across not only mainland Europe and the United States but also Africa, the Caribbean, the Pacific Asian region, and the UK. They consider a wide range of artists, including Akarova, Gertrude Colby, Isadora Duncan, Katherine Dunham, Margaret H’Doubler, Hanya Holm, Michio Ito, Kurt Jooss, Wassily Kandinsky, Margaret Morris, Berto Pasuka, Uday Shankar, Antony Tudor, and Mary Wigman. The authors explore dancers’ responses to modernity in various ways, including within the contexts of natural dancing and transnationalism. This collection asks questions about how, in these places and times, dancing developed and responded to the experience of living in modern times, or even came out of an ambivalence about or as a reaction against it. Ideal for students and practitioners of dance and those interested in new modernist studies, Dance, Modernism, and Modernity considers the development of modernism in dance as an interdisciplinary and global phenomenon.

This practical and authoritative handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the issues and approaches to assuring quality in university teaching. Including contributions from major international figures, the book contains a wealth of ideas and practical advice to help universities commit to quality in teaching and offers insights into how the topics raised can be directly applied. The book initially identifies some of the key issues surrounding the topic, such as the evidence-based identification of teaching quality; the training of university lecturers and faculty; external and internal quality assurance; the tension between professional autonomy and governmental regulation; and the involvement of students in developing quality. It then moves on to present ideas and initiatives to address these problems, tackling the subject through four sections: Assuring Quality – questioning what quality assurance means and how it might be practised; Identifying Quality – examining what knowledge exists at present and how it might be further researched; Developing Quality – investigating the development of staff through teacher training and appraisal; Case Studies of Quality Assurance – reviewing six case studies of quality assurance in a range of contrasting subjects including the professional subjects of Medicine, Nursing and Teacher Training which are also addressed systemically in the first section. Full of practical advice, Handbook of Quality Assurance for University Teaching is an invaluable and unique resource for Faculty, Subject Leaders, University Administrators and Quality Assessors.