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Wagner Probleme Und Andere Studien (Classic Reprint) (German Edition)

(Excerpt from Wagner Probleme und Andere Studien Fur eine...)

From Beethoven to Shostakovich : the psychology of the composing process.

From Beethoven To Shostakovich - The Psychology Of The Composing Process

(From Beethoven To Shostakovich- The Psychology of the Com...)

From Beethoven To Shostakovich- The Psychology of the Composing Process By MAX GRAF. Contents include: PART I. SOURCES OF MUSICAL IMAGINATION I. The Magic in Music 3 II Artistic Fancy 23 III. Classical and Romantic Fantasy 35 IV. The Erotic Forces of Fantasy 52 V. The Subconscious 77 VI. Forms and Figures in the Subconscious 118 VII. Childhood Memories 155 VIII. External and Internal Experiences 177 IX. Retrospect The Origin of Beethovens Ninth Symphony 221 PART II. THE WORK. OF MUSICAL FANTASY X Organizing the Musical Fantasy 245 XL Productive Moods 273 XIL Musical Conception 308 XIII. The Beginning of Critical Work The Sketches 329 XIV, The Composition Process 377 XV, Retrospect The Path of Musical Imag ination The Musical Work of Art 448 Index 462. PART I. Sources of Musical Imagination. CHAPTER I. THE AVERAGE music lover, listening to one of the great music works, does not give a thought to how these compositions may have originated. He enjoys their grand musical constructions, the sym phonies, sonatas, chamber music, songs and choruses. He derives pleasure from the tonal beauty and from the musical expression and feels his whole being elevated, his sensual powers augmented and his entire personality transformed. The world in which he ordinarily moves, and which is the scene of his activity, seems to vanish. He feels himself transplanted to another world wherein every thing that would normally catch his interest ceases to exist his work, his human relations, his worries and hopes and fears, his plans and his everyday sentiments. In this new and exalted world there are only sound ing forms, and within the tones only the lustre of beau ty a lustre that has always been sensed by all susceptible individuals by some more clearly than by others as a light coming from a loftier region, Even those who seek in the enjoyment of music mere ly the sensual pleasure of sounds, still sense in music firm order and a lawful form which elevate the simplest melody far above the tumult of everyday life. The attitude of musical audiences in the concert hall demonstrates most effectively the transformation of a crowd of people from its commonplace conduct to a new form of existence. Before the program starts, the audiences gossip and discuss their private affairs they laugh, exchange pleas antries., flirt, tell one another vicious or witty or mean ingless matters about life and society. As yet there is no audience in the concert hall, and no unity only groups or individuals. Then the conductor or the soloist makes his appear ance on the stag cmd as if at a given command, the conglomeration of listeners changes to a single audience that listens as if with a single ear. At the first sound of a tone or chord the attention of thousands converges in one direction. The listeners are transformed into a single being whose entire emo tional life is changed. It f seems as though the souls of thousands would merge fn a new, uniform soul that permits music to penetrate. There is a new tension in the souls of all those present sensations take on a higher degree of warmth emotions move more rapidly than in ordinary life. At this moment an event takes place in the concert halls similar to that in Catholic churches when, at the moment of Transubstantiation the music becomes si lent as the little bell rings through the high room. At this point the pious kneel down as the priest raises the monstrance, and out of hundreds of devout there emerges a single congregation in whose collective soul lives the identical mystic awareness of the presence of their God. One can observe something similar at every theatrical show, every mass meeting and at every sports event the transformation of a gathering of people, and of life and sentiments of thousands into a new, more strongly braced, intensified emotion...

Legend of a Musical City

(Legend of a Musical City - The Story of Vienna by Max Gra...)

Legend of a Musical City - The Story of Vienna by Max Graf is a story of Vienna - the musical center of the world. The author has enjoyed the intimate friendship of the musical stars of the last fifty years in which this book was written. Musical stars such as Bruckner, Brahms, and Richard Strauss. He gives a delightful as well as highly educational story of the development of Austrian music. Max Graf, a composer and music critic, the father of "Little Hans," was born October 1, 1873, in Vienna, where he died on June 24, 1958. The son of Joseph Graf, a Jewish writer and editor, he was educated in Vienna and Prague. After 1891 he studied at the law school of the University of Vienna but devoted most of his time to music and it was his intention to become a composer, according to Louis Rose (1986). He finished his legal studies in 1896 but devoted much of his time to music composition and criticism, and regularly took part in meetings of the literary group Jung-Wien. From 1902 to 1938 he taught the history of music and musical aesthetics at the Vienna Academy of Music, where he was appointed professor in 1909. Graf met Sigmund Freud in 1900 and his wife, Olga Graf (born Olga Hoenig), from whom he separated a few years later, was probably a patient of Freud's. Within the psychoanalytic movement he is known for being the father of "Little Hans," Herbert Graf, who was born in 1903. It was Max who supplied Freud with the material for his paper "The Analysis of a Phobia in a Five-Year Old Boy" (1909b). At the end of 1904, he took part in sessions of the Wednesday Psychoanalytic Society and, in December 1907, wrote an essay entitled "Methodik der Dichterpsychologie" (Methodology of the Psychology of the Poet). In early 1906 Freud wrote a short text on a somewhat unexpected topic, "Psycopathische Personen auf der Bühne" (Psychopathic Characters on the Stage). The text was never published in German, but Graf, to whom Freud had given the manuscript, kept it and had an English translation published (1942a 1905-1906). Graf emigrated to the United States in 1938 and taught until 1947 at the New School for Social Research in New York, where, in 1940, he created the first seminars in music criticism. He was a guest professor at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh and at Temple University in Philadelphia. In 1947 he returned to Austria and taught music criticism at the Mozarteum in Salzburg and elsewhere. In 1953 his autobiography, Jede Stunde war erfüllt: Ein halbes Jahrhundert Musik- und Theaterleben (Every Minute Filled: A Half-Century in Music and Theater), was published in Vienna, where he died in 1958.

Legend of a Musical City by Walker (1945-01-30)

Wagner-Probleme und Andere Studien. Erstes Tausend (German Edition)

(Leopold is delighted to publish this classic book as part...)

Die Wiener Oper

(Hardcover; 8 5/16 inches tall; blue cloth, attractive gil...)

Legend of a Musical City

Max Graf Edit Profile

composer musicologist writer

Career

He is also notable for his role in the history of psychoanalysis as the father of Little Hans. Graf"s book Composer and Critic is noted for its amicable style with M. A. Schubart of the New York Times stating, "Doctor Graf has written a charming, comprehensive, intelligent treatise on music criticism, drawing generously on his own large supply of knowledge and experience. The only major issue which I cannot reach agreement with Doctor Graf is his manner.

He is much too polite.

Number subject in the world deserves more rudeness than music criticism."

In the introduction to this book, Graf details his original interest in music criticism as having stemmed from attending the lectures of Anton Bruckner in Vienna. Graf died in Vienna.