Writings about music

Auckland. It is just a name. But the sound of it conveys the idea of distance. Unexpectedly, the term points to the refreshing character of Pierre's thinking.
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Daniel Steibelt is one of those composers who have been lost sight of in music history. His rehabilitation will take some time. The process has, however, begun in the last few years and it will no doubt accelerate during this year, 2015, it being the 250th anniversary of the composer’s birth.
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"Salvation through art" is a widespread idea. It suggests that art has the power to do away with pain or make it legitimate somehow. However, such an idea arguably dwells on a misconception of art as well as a dramatic representation of pain. The therory therefore proves to be downright illusion. We shall call it artistic illusion and will consider how we can possibly avoid it.
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Because of their fascination with the sea, in common with nineteenth-century bards and painters, France’s marine bards sometimes have direct family connections with the Navy: Rear-Admiral Jean Cras, for example, represents an illustrious line of French naval officers who sailed the high seas, joining ranks with the likes of Antoine Mariotte, Albert Roussel and, to a lesser extent, Jacques Ibert, between two ‘escales’
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Over the past few years, the French melody has been reinventing itself. The genre appeared in the 1850s and orginated from romance literature that remained popular up to the 1830s. Melody embraced the romance genre when composers chose to adapt texts that were increasingly complexe and rich.
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The piano music composed between 1800 and 1815 does not seem, so far, to have received all the attention it deserves, considering its diversity. Those fifteen years are indeed far more famous for the battles between the conservative monarchies and the revolutionary, republican then imperial France than for the interesting music that flourished at the time.
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