Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in good condition. Very slight tan to page edges.. Hardcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> Hans Pfitzner’s ‘musical legend’ Palestrina is considered in German-speaking coun-tries to be one of the supreme master-pieces of music and yet it is all but unknown elsewhere. The opera first performed in 1917 tells the story of the composer Palestrina his struggle to compose following the death of his wife and in the face of the threat of anti-musical decrees of the Church and his eventual composition of the Missa Papae Marcelli which so legend has it was dictated to him by angels and reconciled the Church to contrapuntal music. The story set against the historical back-ground of the Council of Trent is an allegory of the individual artist in society as well as a statement of Pfitzner’s own beliefs about the musical climate of its time. The music is of profound nobility constructed with enormous subtlety and skill. In this book the first to be written in English on Pfitzner’s masterpiece Owen Toller discusses the music and the drama-tic structure in detail. (SP)