The Piano Quartet and Quintet: Style, Structure, and Scoring (Clarendon Paperbacks) - Softcover

Smallman, Basil

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0198166400 ISBN 13: 9780198166405

Publisher: Clarendon Press, 1996

Synopsis

Designed as a companion volume to the author's earlier study, The Piano Trio, this book surveys the development of the piano quartet and quintet from their beginnings in the mid-eighteenth century to the present day. Developments during the first four decades of the nineteenth century resulted not only in Schubert's renowned Trout Quintet, but also in works of much brilliance by Dussek, Hummel, Weber, and others in which the piano predominates in a concerto-like role. Subsequently, Schumann's epoch-making quintet of 1842 initiated a broadly "symphonic" style, with large-scale structures and closely integrated textures, which was taken up by many later composers, including Brahms, Dvorak, Cesar Franck, Faure, and Elgar. The author also examines the numerous changes in the nature of the genres which have occurred in recent times, and gives special consideration to a number of works by leading twentieth-century composers, in which "mixed" media are formed by combining wind instruments with the normal strings-and-piano ensembles.

About this title

About the Author:

Basil Smallman is at Liverpool University.

Review:

"This book should be on the shelves of all music libraries. Professor Smallman possesses the enviable ability to say what the music is like with an economy of means and a minimum of technical jargon; his writing is clear, lively, and acute. Each reader will find something new."--Brio.

About this edition

• Publisher: Clarendon Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0198166400
• ISBN 13: 9780198166405
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 208