Analyzing Opera: Verdi and Wagner

Analyzing Opera: Verdi and explores latest developments in analysis by considering, side by side, works of two greatest composers of nineteenth century. Although juxtaposition is not new, comparative studies have tended to view these masters as radically different both as musicians and as musical dramatists. Wagner and his symphonic opera set against Verdi the melodist is one of many familiar antitheses, and it serves to highlight particular terms from which comparisons are often made. In this book some of leading and most innovative music scholars challenge this view, suggesting that as we become more distant from nineteenth century, we may see that Verdi and Wagner confronted largely similar problems, and even on occasion found similar solutions.But more than this, Analyzing sets out to demonstrate richness and variety of modern analytical approaches to genre. As editors point out in their introduction, today's musical scholars increasingly question usefulness of organicist theories in analytical studies, and, as they do so, seems to become an ever more central area of investigation. Opera is peculiar: its clash of verbal, musical, and visual systems can produce incongruities and extravagant miscalculations. It invites a multiplicity of approaches, challenges orthodoxy, and embraces ambiguity. The sheer variety of essays presented here is witness to this fact and suggests that analyzing is one of liveliest (and most polemical) areas in modern-day musical scholarship.In addition to editors, contributors to volume are Philip Gossett, John Deathridge, James A. Hepokoski, Joseph Kerman, Thomas S. Grey, Matthew Brown, Anthony Newcomb, Martin Chusid, David Lawton, and Patrick McCreless.