Edmund Rubbra: Symphonist - Softcover

Black, Leo

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1843839334 ISBN 13: 9781843839330

Publisher: Boydell Press, 2014

Synopsis

The music of Edmund Rubbra (1901-1986) has been unjustly neglected - arguably because its wide-ranging nature makes it difficult to categorise. He is perhaps best known as a symphonist; his eleven symphonies covered a period of musical and political upheaval (1934 - 1980), the first four reflecting the uneasy later 1930s, with a second global conflict no longer avoidable. The immediately-post-war ones document new emotional depths and his conversion, while the final symphonies show a man still in search of peace and reconciliation, overlooked by the world but certain he was on the right path. Leo Black, a pupil of Rubbra at Oxford in the 1950s, here presents a sympathetic full-scale study of these works (the first for some twenty years). A succinct biographical sketch throws light on legends about the BBC and Rubbra; there are full programme notes on each symphony, with shorter accounts of important non-symphonic works, in particular a 'triptych' of concertos from the 1950s and major liturgical pieces composed around the time of the Second Vatican Council, after Rubbra's conversion to Catholicism. He also deals with the vexed question of Rubbra's mysticism. LEO BLACK is a former BBC chief producer for music and author of the highly-acclaimed Franz Schubert: Music and Belief (2003).

About this title

About the Author

LEO BLACK is a former BBC chief producer for music and author of the highly-acclaimed Franz Schubert: Music and Belief [2003].

Review

This handsomely produced volume can be read with profit by amateurs, connoisseurs, and scholars alike ...Thoughtful, erudite and compelling. A labor of love, it is also the brief of a skilled advocate; Rubbra's music, now lost in the twilight of musical limbo, fully merits such a committed redeemer. NOTES The reader is treated to a wide-ranging discussion that is stylishly written and invitingly presented. MUSICAL TIMES(An) excellent new biography. TLSSuch are (Black's) skill and insights that there are few works about which he does not have something penetrating to say. His discussion of individual works engages the interest of the lay reader in a way that eludes...most other writers on matters musical. He brings the music and the issues it raises alive...This is an important book that should be in the library of every self-respecting music lover. INTERNATIONAL RECORD REVIEW (Robert Layton)

About this edition

• Publisher: Boydell Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1843839334
• ISBN 13: 9781843839330
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256