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In this Very Short Introduction, Thomas Forrest Kelly provides not only a compact overview of the music itself, but also a lively look at the many attempts over the last two centuries to revive it. Kelly shows that the early-music revival has long been grounded in the idea of spontaneity, of excitement, and of recapturing experiences otherwise lost to us - either the rediscovery of little-known repertories or the recovery of lost performing styles, with the conviction that, with the right performance, the music will come to life anew. Blending musical and social history, he shows how the Early Music movement in the 1960s took on political overtones, fueled by a rebellion against received wisdom and enforced conformity. Kelly also discusses ongoing debates about authenticity, the desirability of period instruments, and the relationship of mainstream opera companies and symphony orchestras to music that they often ignore, or play in modern fashion.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49537417314577,"sku":"GOR004790552","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49730706571537,"sku":"NGR9780199730766","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50156624937233,"sku":"CIN0199730768G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50450236866833,"sku":"GOR009826175","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":51000194466065,"sku":"NIN9780199730766","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":51717759795473,"sku":"CIN0199730768VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":53216654754065,"sku":"GOR004402949","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0199730768.jpg?v=1751101716"},{"product_id":"capturing-music-book-thomas-forrest-kelly-9780393064964","title":"Capturing Music","description":"An entertaining history of how musicians learned to record music for all time, filled with art that sings.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49540011393297,"sku":"GOR006263404","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":49731234726161,"sku":"NGR9780393064964","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50127287353617,"sku":"CIN0393064964G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ WELL_READ \/ SBYB","offer_id":50905870893329,"sku":"CIN0393064964A","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":52103531790609,"sku":"CIN0393064964VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0393064964.jpg?v=1751440916"},{"product_id":"role-of-the-scroll-book-thomas-forrest-kelly-9780393285031","title":"The Role of the Scroll","description":"A beautifully illustrated, full colour history of scrolls and their uses in medieval life.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":49580715344145,"sku":"GOR009771709","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50350749778193,"sku":"CIN0393285030G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ LIKE_NEW \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":51376575774993,"sku":"GOR010537829","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ VERY_GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":53396557037841,"sku":"CIN0393285030VG","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0393285030.jpg?v=1751006931"},{"product_id":"first-nights-book-thomas-forrest-kelly-9780300077742","title":"First Nights","description":"This lively book takes us back to the first performances of five famous musical compositions: Monteverdi's Orfeo in 1607, Handel's Messiah in 1742, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in 1824, Berlioz's Symphonie fantastique in 1830, and Stravinsky's Sacre du printemps in 1913. 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In First Nights at the Opera, the renowned music scholar Thomas Kelly narrates the social history of European opera during its golden age by taking us behind the scenes at the premiere performances of five extraordinary and influential operas: Handel's Giulio Cesare (London, 1724), Mozart's Don Giovanni (Prague, 1787), Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots (Paris, 1836), Wagner's Das Rheingold (Bayreuth, 1876), and Verdi's Otello (Milan, 1887). What was it like to be there, to see and hear and perform these operas for the very first time? Kelly takes us behind the curtains to introduce us to the nervous composers, the anxious impresarios, and the performers who had never sung these words to an audience before. Members of the audience, eager with expectation, take to their seats and boxes: What will appear on stage? Will someone miss a line? Will it be a triumph or a humiliation for the composer? Richly illustrated and briskly narrated, this glittering introduction to the world of opera will delight aficionados and neophytes alike.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":49999799648529,"sku":"CIN0300100442G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ VERY_GOOD \/ INTERNAL","offer_id":50058345906449,"sku":"GOR003541598","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0300100442.jpg?v=1751038068"},{"product_id":"exultet-in-southern-italy-book-thomas-forrest-kelly-9780195095272","title":"The Exultet in Southern Italy","description":"The Exultet rolls of southern Italy are parchment scrolls containing text and music for the blessing of the great Easter candle; they contain magnificent illustrations, often turned upside down with respect to the text so that they can be seen by observers. 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While previous art-historical studies have concentrated on the illustrations in these rolls, Kelly's book also looks at the particular place of the Exultet in changing ceremonial practices, provides background on the texts and music used in southern Italy, and inquires into the manufacture and purpose of the Exultets--why they were made, who owned them, and how they were used.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"US \/ GOOD \/ SBYB","offer_id":50345409970449,"sku":"CIN0195095278G","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52143127298321,"sku":"NLS9780195095272","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0195095278.jpg?v=1751069919"},{"product_id":"beneventan-chant-book-thomas-forrest-kelly-9780521065979","title":"The Beneventan Chant","description":"From the High Middle Ages the dominance of Gregorian chant has obscured the fact that musical practice in early medieval Europe was far richer than has hitherto been recognized. Despite its historical importance, the \"Gregorian\" is not the most consistent and probably not the oldest form of Christian chant. The recovery and study of regional musical dialects having a common ancestry in the Christian church and Western musical tradition are reshaping our view of the early history of Christian liturgical music. Thomas Kelly's major study of the Beneventan chant reinstates one of the oldest surviving bodies of Western music: the Latin church music of southern Italy as it existed before the spread of Gregorian chant. Dating from the seventh and eighth centuries it was largely forgotten after the Carolingian desire for political and liturgical uniformity imposed \"Gregorian\" chant throughout the realm. But a few later scribes, starting apparently in the tenth century, preserved a part of this regional heritage in writing. 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Medieval thinkers such as St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and many others speak of the ineffable joy that cannot be expressed in words when music passes beyond the realm of words into that of pure praise. Most often the word describes those long florid passages that occur in medieval liturgical song--especially in solo chants, and especially in the music designed for the schola, the experienced singers.  This book is about the melisma as a phenomenon, how it works, how melismas appear when they are written in chant, and how they function as part of a text and as part of a song. Many scholars have dealt with this body of music, but this is the first book to treat it as a self-standing subject. Using the evidence of medieval creative minds, Thomas Forrest Kelly uncovers how melismas were heard, analyzed, and performed by medieval singers. He presents a vast assemblage of information: past studies are reviewed and analysed, and many medieval manuscripts are brought to bear through facsimiles. The chief investigative tool is the various sets of contemplative words that medieval creators added to melismas: careful study reveals that the words, and their patterning, their grouping, their accentuation, often reflect the poet's understanding of the underlying melisma.  If we attend carefully to the surviving manuscript evidence, Kelly posits, we can hear those wordless flights of music in something like their original form. Contributing to a deeper understanding of how medieval scribes wrote music and how medieval singers understood and sang it, these insights influence our understanding of music in the largest sense.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"- \/ - \/ -","offer_id":51202175009041,"sku":"","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ GARDNERS","offer_id":51202175303953,"sku":"NGR9780197763483","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52581187223825,"sku":"NIN9780197763483","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/0197763480.jpg?v=1751258258"},{"product_id":"plainsong-in-the-age-of-polyphony-book-thomas-forrest-kelly-9780521106894","title":"Plainsong in the Age of Polyphony","description":"From at least the eighth century and for about a thousand years the repertory of music known as Georgian chant, or plainsong, formed the largest body of written music AND was the most frequently performed and the most assiduously studied in Western civilisation. But plainsong did not follow rigid conventions. It seems increasingly clear that, whatever may have been intended with respect to uniformity and tradition, the practice of plainsong varied considerably within time and place. It is just this variation, this living quality of plainsong, that these essays address. The contributors have sought information from a wide variety of areas: liturgy, architecture, art history, secular and ecclesiastical history and hagiography, as a step towards reassembling the tesserae of cultural history into the rich mosaic from which they came.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52516740792593,"sku":"NLS9780521106894","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true},{"title":"US \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":53607552844049,"sku":"NIN9780521106894","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9780521106894.jpg?v=1760504654"},{"product_id":"sources-of-beneventan-chant-book-thomas-forrest-kelly-9781138375802","title":"The Sources of Beneventan Chant","description":"The area whose capital was the southern Lombard city of Benevento developed a culture identified with the characteristic form of writing known as the Beneventan script, which was used throughout the area and was brought to perfection at the abbey of Montecassino in the late eleventh century. This repertory, along with other now-vanished or suppressed local varieties of music, give a far richer picture of the variety of musical practice in early medieval Europe than was formerly available. Thomas Forrest Kelly has identified and collected the surviving sources of an important repertory of early medieval music; this is the so-called Beneventan Chant, used in southern Italy in the early middle ages, before the adoption there of the now-universal music known as Gregorian chant. Because it was deliberately suppressed in the course of the eleventh century, this music survives mostly in fragments and palimpsests, and the fascinating process of restoring the repertory piece by piece is told in the studies in this book. A companion volume to this collection also by Professor Kelly details the practice of Medieval music.","brand":"WoB","offers":[{"title":"GB \/ NEW \/ INGRAM","offer_id":52648104034577,"sku":"NLS9781138375802","price":0.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0784\/4072\/6801\/files\/9781138375802.jpg?v=1762041215"}],"url":"https:\/\/www.worldofbooks.com\/collections\/author-books-by-thomas-forrest-kelly.oembed","provider":"World of Books ","version":"1.0","type":"link"}