Vindications essays on romantic music

Dec 30, Robin rated it it was amazing I never met Deryck Cooke, of course; he died when I was 4 years old.

Life[ edit ] Cooke was born in Leicester to a poor, working-class family; his father died when he was a child, but his mother was able to afford piano lessons.

Cooke acquired a brilliant technique and began to compose. His undergraduate studies were interrupted by the Second World War, during which he served in the Royal Artillery and took part in the invasion of Italy. Towards the end of the war he became pianist in an army dance band.

Back in Cambridge, a number of his compositions were successfully performed, but he was insecure about their unfashionably conservative idiom, and eventually destroyed most of his works.

After graduating in Cooke joined the BBC ; apart from an interlude —65 working as a freelance writer and critic, he worked for the corporation for the remainder of his life.

His job involved writing and editing scripts for the music department and broadcasting for radio and television, where his thoughtful, unaffected manner made him an ideal communicator.

In his first book The Language of Music argued that music is essentially a language of the emotions, and showed that composers throughout history had tended to choose the same musical phrases to express similar feelings or dramatic situations.

Beginning in the run-up to the Mahler centenary inCooke in association with Berthold Goldschmidt made his first attempt at producing a 'performing version' of the unfinished draft of Mahler's 10th Symphony.

Revised editions followed, with the composers David Matthews and Colin Matthews assisting Cooke and Goldschmidt in the attempt to produce an authentically Mahlerian orchestration. Finally seen into print by Cooke and his collaborators inthe work has now become a part of the repertoire.

Cooke's last years were marred by ill-health, and he died prematurely of a cerebral haemorrhage inat the age of During the final years of his life he had worked on a large-scale study of Wagner's massive operatic tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen.

However, only part of the first volume, dealing with the text, was finished; it was published after his death as I Saw the World End. The loss of what would almost certainly have been the definitive study of the music of the Ring is deeply regrettable.

A collection of Cooke's essays and talks was also published after his death as Vindications. Essays on Romantic Music posthumous collection of essays and broadcast scriptsFaber, ; reprinted Recordings[ edit ] An Introduction to Richard Wagner's " Der Ring des Nibelungen " audio, with extracts from the Solti version and some specially recorded demonstrations.

Recorded ; released on LP ; re-packaged and re-released ; remastered and re-released on CD Transcript of Cooke's Introduction. Ltd; revised version reprinted in Vindications: IV 1—Deryck Cooke on Romantic Music. An 11 page summation and analysis of several of the essays included in a posthumous publication of some of Deryck Cooke's writing: Vindications: Essays on Romantic Music.

Enter your mobile number or email address below and we'll send you a link to download the free Kindle App. Then you can start reading Kindle books on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - . The Romantic Era was a period in music in which there was much change during the s to the s in the theory and compositional practice of music.

Vindications: Essays on Romantic Music by Deryck Cooke | LibraryThing

The composers wrote their pieces with more artistic freedom, experimentation, and creativity than the artists of the classical era and this caused the melody to become the more dominant feature. Vindications: essays on romantic music Item Preview remove-circle Share or Embed This Item.

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Language English. Includes index Bookplateleaf Boxid IA Camera Canon EOS . Dec 29,  · In these essays Cooke defended his views on the language of music (a phrase that also serves as the title of his most important book) - which is to say, the non-verbal vocabulary composers throughout the age of tonal music used, especially through melody, to express emotions, states of mind, and an impression of sensuous beauty.

Deryck Cooke on Romantic Music. An 11 page summation and analysis of several of the essays included in a posthumous publication of some of Deryck Cooke's writing: Vindications: Essays on Romantic Music. The writer also outlines facts from a biographical memoir on Cooke, included in the book, that offers insight into Cooke's critical perspective.