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Adolf Bernhard Marx (1795-1866) was an influential music theorist, critic, composer and pedagogue. He believed that music should be part of everyone's general education and lobbied the Prussian government for a comprehensive national music-education scheme. This English translation by George Macirone of Marx's 1839 Allgemeine Musiklehre was published in 1854 as the first work in the series Novello's Library for the Diffusion of Musical Knowledge. The series, described by the publisher as 'a collection of standard treatises on the art of music written by the most esteemed English and foreign masters', was devised in response to a growing demand for training books and manuals to support domestic music-making. It also included Berlioz's famous treatise on instrumentation (also reissued in this series). Marx's work covers the basic elements of music theory, musical instruments, compositional techniques, forms of music, performance advice, and the importance of musical education in general.

William Ashton Ellis (1852-1919) abandoned his medical career in order to devote himself to his Wagner studies. Best known for his translations of Wagner's prose works, Ellis also translated Wagner's letters to family and friends. In this 1899 publication, most of the letters are those which Wagner wrote to the wealthy retired silk merchant Otto Wesendonck, who provided Wagner with generous financial support and whose wife, Mathilde, provided the words for the Wesendonck Lieder. Also included here are letters to the German writer Malwida von Meysenbug, who was also a friend of Nietzsche, and to the novelist Eliza Wille, at whose house in Zurich, a meeting place for the cognoscenti, Wagner was a regular guest. She later published her memories of the composer. Despite the stylistic idiosyncrasies of the translations, these letters remain of value because they capture something of the colour of Wagner's prose and personality.

First published in 1884 by the Statistical Department of the Inspectorate General of Customs in Shanghai, this work is probably best known as a source of musical material for Puccini's opera Turandot. It was reprinted several times and remained the primary source in a Western language of detailed information on Chinese music until the mid-twentieth century. Van Aalst, born in Belgium in 1858, spent his working life with the Imperial Maritime Customs Service where his ability as a musician was noticed by the Inspector General, Robert Hart. It is thought likely that the work was published to coincide with the London Health Exhibition of 1884 in South Kensington to which Van Aalst had been sent to lecture. Different types of music (ritual and popular), the range of instruments, and musical notation are all explained, the intention being to enable a better understanding of Chinese music by those in the West.

Joseph Mainzer (1801-51), priest, music teacher and composer, had an important influence on the development of the choral movement in the first half of the nineteenth century. Forced to flee his native Germany in 1833 because of his political views, he arrived in London in 1839 via Brussels and Paris, where his singing classes for labourers were immensely successful. Although his musical compositions are largely forgotten, his mission to bring singing to the masses is not: he published a number of works on the subject and established Mainzer's Musical Times, which later became The Musical Times. First published in 1841, this short singing textbook for an English audience is a classic resource in music education, presenting the basics of the fixed sol-fa system together with a generous quantity of musical examples. Mainzer's 1848 work, Music and Education, has also been reissued in this series.

Published in 1848, this short work by Joseph Mainzer (1801-51) argues for the considerable value of music as part of general education. A German priest, teacher and composer, Mainzer had an important influence on the development of amateur music and the choral movement in the first half of the nineteenth century. Attracting large numbers of adult labourers, he gave free singing classes, using his own highly influential teaching system. Music, Mainzer argues here, not only brings direct moral and social benefits, but also takes the place of potentially harmful habits and leisure activities, such as the drinking of alcohol. The work defines music in relation to its educational value and potential, exploring the origins, development and moral influence of music since the ancient Greeks. Mainzer also discusses the ways in which music is taught at all levels.

Admired and studied by both Mozart and Beethoven, Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) imbued his life-enhancing compositions with wit, elegance and deep emotion. His output was prolific and included symphonies (most notably those written during his two visits to London, where he received a rapturous welcome), string quartets, chamber music, piano sonatas and choral works. This concise biography, first published in 1884, forms part of music critic Francis Hueffer's Great Musicians series, which was intended to provide succinct accounts of popular composers for the general reader. The author, Pauline D. Townsend, drew much of her material for the book from the painstaking research on Haydn published by the German musicologist Carl Ferdinand Pohl, archivist and librarian of the Vienna Society of the Friends of Music. A list of Haydn's works forms an appendix, based on the information in Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

In terms of musical composition, all but the first five of his thirty-five years were astoundingly productive for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91). A stream of glorious symphonies, piano concertos, chamber music, operas and the sublime but unfinished Requiem poured from his pen. German philologist and archaeologist Otto Jahn (1813-69) was inspired to write a scholarly biography of Mozart following a conversation at Mendelssohn's funeral in 1847. He immersed himself in intensive research on the composer and his music, publishing the first edition of this landmark work in four volumes between 1856 and 1859. A second edition followed in 1867, incorporating new material and making use of Kochel's 1862 catalogue of Mozart's works. It is from this edition that Pauline D. Townsend made her three-volume English translation, first published in 1882. Volume 1 covers Mozart's life to 1778, including tours with his father and employment under Archbishop Colloredo.

In terms of musical composition, all but the first five of his thirty-five years were astoundingly productive for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91). A stream of glorious symphonies, piano concertos, chamber music, operas and the sublime but unfinished Requiem poured from his pen. German philologist and archaeologist Otto Jahn (1813-69) was inspired to write a scholarly biography of Mozart following a conversation at Mendelssohn's funeral in 1847. He immersed himself in intensive research on the composer and his music, publishing the first edition of this landmark work in four volumes between 1856 and 1859. A second edition followed in 1867, incorporating new material and making use of Kochel's 1862 catalogue of Mozart's works. It is from this edition that Pauline D. Townsend made her three-volume English translation, first published in 1882. Volume 2 covers Mozart the man, the break with Colloredo, his move to Vienna, marriage, and Freemasonry.

In terms of musical composition, all but the first five of his thirty-five years were astoundingly productive for Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-91). A stream of glorious symphonies, piano concertos, chamber music, operas and the sublime but unfinished Requiem poured from his pen. German philologist and archaeologist Otto Jahn (1813-69) was inspired to write a scholarly biography of Mozart following a conversation at Mendelssohn's funeral in 1847. He immersed himself in intensive research on the composer and his music, publishing the first edition of this landmark work in four volumes between 1856 and 1859. A second edition followed in 1867, incorporating new material and making use of Kochel's 1862 catalogue of Mozart's works. It is from this edition that Pauline D. Townsend made her three-volume English translation, first published in 1882. Volume 3 discusses the Mozart-Da Ponte operas and the Requiem, and also includes a list of his works.

One of the most prolific composers of the nineteenth century, Sir George Alexander Macfarren (1813-87) produced operas, symphonies, and instrumental and choral works, and is remembered today for the overture Chevy Chace. Son of the London impresario George Macfarren, he studied composition with Cipriani Potter at the Royal Academy of Music, becoming a professor there in 1837. Despite encroaching blindness, which became total in 1860, he remained at the centre of British musical life, continuing to compose, lecture, write and teach. Following the death of William Sterndale Bennett in 1875, he became professor of music at Cambridge and principal of the Royal Academy of Music. Reissued here is the 1882 third edition of a series of lectures on harmony delivered at the Royal Institution in 1867, intended to enhance the amateur listener's musical appreciation. They are based on Alfred Day's controversial Treatise on Harmony (also reissued in this series).

An exceptional child prodigy at the keyboard, the organist and composer William Crotch (1775-1847) attracted the attention of both George III and Charles Burney, going on to become one of the most eminent musical figures of his day. Following a period of study in Cambridge, at the age of fifteen he was appointed organist at Christ Church, Oxford. At twenty-one he assumed the university's chair of music, a post he retained until his death. The first principal of the Royal Academy of Music between 1822 and 1832, Crotch is remembered today for his oratorio Palestine. The present work, which first appeared in 1831, made his expertise available to a wider audience. Based on popular lectures given in Oxford and London, the book includes a penetrating assessment of contemporary musical taste and a list of Crotch's sheet music. His Elements of Musical Composition (1812) is also reissued in this series.

A high-ranking official in the Imperial War Office in Vienna, Raphael Georg Kiesewetter (1773-1850) is better known for his musicological activities. An accomplished amateur musician, he studied with Albrechtsberger, hosted private concerts of early music, and was closely involved in the affairs of Vienna's Society of the Friends of Music. His important collection of scores is now in the Austrian National Library. He also wrote a number of books and articles, including a pioneering study of Arabic music which was the first to use original sources, owing to the assistance of orientalist Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall. Originally published in German in 1834 and reissued here in its 1848 English translation, the present work is considered Kiesewetter's most significant and remains accessible to the general reader. Based on an evolutionary approach influenced by the Enlightenment, the book presents seventeen epochs which are named after their most characteristic composers.

An exceptional child prodigy at the keyboard, the organist and composer William Crotch (1775-1847) attracted the attention of both George III and Charles Burney, going on to become one of the most eminent musical figures of his day. Following a period of study in Cambridge, at the age of fifteen he was appointed organist at Christ Church, Oxford. At twenty-one he assumed the university's chair of music, a post he retained until his death. The first principal of the Royal Academy of Music between 1822 and 1832, Crotch is remembered today for his oratorio Palestine. The present work, first published in 1812, made his expertise available to a wider audience. A clearly written primer on music theory, composition and figured bass, it includes an abundance of musical examples. Crotch's Substance of Several Courses of Lectures on Music (1831) is also reissued in this series.

John Curwen (1816-80), minister and music educationist, is remembered for his promotion in Britain of the tonic sol-fa system of teaching singing. He had an innate understanding of the social value of music in education, and it was in response to being asked in 1841 to recommend the best way of teaching music in Sunday schools that he developed Norwich schoolteacher Sarah Glover's system from her Scheme for Rendering Psalmody Congregational (1835). He would spend the rest of his life refining it. Not to be confused with John Hullah's 'fixed doh' system, Curwen's method spread rapidly and by the 1860s over 180,000 people in Britain were learning tonic sol-fa. First published in 1843 and reissued here in its revised and expanded edition of 1848, this thorough textbook sets out Curwen's method, complete with a wide range of exercises for class practice.

Hannah Smith (1849-1939) was a composer for children and an educator. In 1903 she published the popular Founders of Music, a series of biographical sketches of composers written for children. Written in 1898, when Wagner had been dead for only fifteen years, this is a concise history of music and instruments, aimed at the enthusiast. Covering broad subjects rather than concentrating on a few composers, Smith discusses not just the development of musical styles but also how musical notation developed, how the ear functions and how musical instruments produce the sounds they do. The tastes of the time are evident, particularly in the surprisingly detailed discussion of the Oratorio: however, the book allows us to see how music and its progress were regarded at the turn of the twentieth century, before composers such as Stravinsky and Schoenberg shook the musical establishment.

First published by the house of Novello in 1853, and later reprinted, this was one of the earliest treatises to take a scientific as well as a practical approach to the discussion of music. Written before Wagner had begun work on Tristan, this work can be seen as a response to the growing interest from the amateur in the 'science' of music. Little is known about the author, Daniel Reeves, who declares that that 'the idea of music comprises both an art and a science: the art consisting in the power of performing ... ; the science, in an acquaintance with the system on which the constituent sounds ... depend'. Using numerous examples, Reeves explains the basics of musical notation, and includes a lengthy mathematical analysis of the ratios of tones and intervals, underlining his belief that an understanding of music should be 'a necessary branch of every gentleman's education'.

The music scholar, composer and editor Ebenezer Prout (1835-1909) is best known for his edition of Handel's Messiah and as the man who put words to the fugue subjects in Bach's Well-tempered Klavier. He taught at the Royal Academy of Music (numbering Henry Wood amongst his pupils) and the reputation he established through his works on music theory gained him the post of Professor of Music at Trinity College, Dublin. This is the sixteenth (1903) edition, of his 1889 treatise on harmony which ran through over twenty editions, such was its popularity. This edition marks a significant change in Prout's approach to the theory of harmony, moving from a scientific exposition using the harmonic series to a more aesthetic style, which resulted in extensive re-casting of the work and an entirely new key to the exercises. This reprint includes the analytical key to the exercises.

Dame Nellie Melba (1861-1931) was one of the most famous sopranos of her time. Born in Australia, Melba began her training in Melbourne but moved to Europe in 1882 to start her career. She found success in Brussels as Gilda in Verdi's Rigoletto and was soon well known throughout the continent's opera houses. She debuted at the Metropolitan Opera in New York in 1893. Her repertoire extended over twenty-five roles, and she was regarded as unmatched in ten of these, continuing to perform throughout her life, in concert recitals as well as in opera, to great acclaim, and becoming one of the earliest modern 'celebrities'. In this autobiography, published in 1925, Melba describes her childhood and her journey from the 'great Australian Bush' to the bright lights of the European and American stage, while also giving a colourful, first-hand account of the world of opera.

Hugh Reginald Haweis (1838-1901) was a clergyman and writer. Published in 1884, this memoir deals with one of his great interests: music. He was a proficient violinist, and his musical writings included books on church bell-ringing, violins, and the best-selling Music and Morals (also reissued in this series), which had reached its sixteenth edition by his death. As curate of St James, Westmoreland Street, he used musical events as a way of turning an empty church into a fashionable one. He acted as music critic for Truth and the Pall Mall Gazette, in addition to lecturing and writing on religious subjects. The book recounts a lifetime of making and enjoying music, and conveys Haweis' emotional response to music from an early age. It is a record of nineteenth-century musical performances and changing tastes, which also demonstrates Haweis' belief in the reforming influence of music on morals and society.

The English cleric and writer H. R. Haweis (1838-1901) considers the philosophical side of music and how it is connected with emotions and morals in this 1871 publication. Containing an interesting mixture of musical philosophy and facts, the book is divided into four sections - Philosophical, Biographical, Instrumental and Critical - each of which comprises a series of short entries or essays on a wide range of subjects. Haweis provides informative biographies of a number of great composers, including Handel, Schubert, Mozart, Beethoven and Mendelssohn, together with analysis of some of their best-known works. He takes an in-depth look at a selection of instruments, including violins and pianos, and concludes with a section of short essays on a wide range of topics including brass bands, musical tastes in England, conductors and opera. Quirky and engaging, the book contains a wealth of information and will appeal to any music-lover.

Joseph Goddard (1833-1910) was a philosopher, theorist and historian of the music of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, who developed some highly influential ideas about the relationship between music and human evolution. First published in 1868, this study presents Goddard's theory on the connection between music and the human spirit, in which he argues that two major counterparts of emotion - instinctive and abstract - correlate directly with two key elements of music: melody and harmony. He demonstrates this through a fascinating and thorough comparative analysis of the works of Mozart, Beethoven, Haydn and Mendelssohn, and moves on to show how emotion is expressed in the melodic and harmonic styles of sacred music and opera. Concluding with a detailed analysis of how mental progress has influenced the development of music, this thorough and judicious work remains of interest in the fields of music history, philosophy, and theory.

Alfred Day (1810-49) first published this controversial work in 1845 to substantial negative criticism. He was encouraged in his enterprise by the composer George Alexander Macfarren (1813-87) who remained a staunch supporter of Day's theories. The work begins with an introduction to Day's new approach to the figured bass and then moves on to set out his concept of diatonic (or strict) harmony and chromatic (or free) harmony. Each is discussed in depth, with sections devoted to common chords and their inversions, discords, pedals and modulation together with a large number of musical examples. This second edition of 1885 by Macfarren includes an additional preface discussing the genesis of the work and supporting its basic premise, together with an extensive appendix presenting his additions and differences of view, developed during the intervening period. Despite its complexity, Day's thinking had considerable influence on later writers on harmony.

Henry Charles Banister (1831-97) is best-remembered for Music, his textbook on harmony published in 1872 which ran through many editions during his life, and for his biography of the composer Sir George Macfarren. In his capacity as a professor at the Royal Academy of Music and the Guildhall School of Music, a teacher at the Royal Normal College for the Blind, and a member of the National Society of Professional Musicians, he gave many lectures and papers to widely varying audiences. Three of these form this volume, first published in 1887. The first, given to the National Society in 1887, discusses the nature of music as a profession and his thoughts on the difference between the professional and the amateur. The second and third papers consider approaches to the study of the theory and structure of music, its appreciation as an art form and its role in society.

The author and clergyman William Coxe (1748-1828), noted for his travel works, was the stepson of Handel's amanuensis, German-born John Christopher Smith (1712-95). First published in 1799, the present work is a valuable source of first-hand information about two men at the heart of eighteenth-century English music: George Frideric Handel (1685-1759), whose inventive and sensitive melodic genius and exuberant brilliance in depicting the spectacular are best displayed in his Messiah and Zadok the Priest, and Smith, a composer of attractive and fashionable music, who settled in London in 1720, took lessons with Handel and later supported the great composer as his eyesight failed. Smith was also organist at the Foundling Hospital until 1770. This publication, profits from which were intended to support Smith's family, draws on the works of John Hawkins and Charles Burney, and on anecdotes claimed to be 'derived from unquestionable authority'.

Actor and baritone Eduard Devrient (1801-77) first met Felix Mendelssohn (1809-47) in 1822, and they remained close friends thereafter. During his lifetime, Mendelssohn achieved celebrity status as a composer, virtuoso pianist and conductor, and it was Devrient who secured in 1829 the famous performance in Berlin, under Mendelssohn's direction, of the St Matthew Passion, which began the Bach revival. First published in German in 1869, this work is reissued here in the English translation of the same year by Natalia Macfarren (1827-1913), singer and wife of the composer Sir George Macfarren. Her work as a translator included the first English versions of Wagner's Lohengrin and Verdi's Rigoletto. Although Devrient does not always exactly reproduce the correspondence, particularly where Mendelssohn is critical of others, the letters and commentary here serve to illuminate the development of a great composer.

Of German birth, Sir August Friedrich Manns (1825-1907) secured for himself a central place in nineteenth-century British musical life. Appointed by George Grove in 1855 to conduct the orchestra at the relocated Crystal Palace in Sydenham, ande held the post for more than four decades, establishing a high reputation for the Saturday Concerts and attracting internationally recognised soloists. Manns was involved in every aspect, from developing the repertoire to taking rehearsals. Under his baton, many of the great works of Brahms, Schubert and Berlioz received their first British performances, alongside world premieres of pieces by British composers such as Sullivan and Macfarren. Secretary of the Guildhall School of Music, Henry Saxe Wyndham (1867-1940) published in 1909 this engaging portrait of a musician greatly esteemed by players and audiences alike.

Beethoven's symphonies captured the public imagination from the outset and remain compelling today. Revolutionary in their time, these life-enhancing works now sit at the centre of the classical music repertoire, retaining their ability to delight and inspire. The career of Sir George Grove (1820-1900) ranged from civil engineering to biblical scholarship, but he is best known for editing his celebrated Dictionary of Music and Musicians. A driving force at the heart of nineteenth-century British musical life, Grove organised important concerts at the rebuilt Crystal Palace in Sydenham, and he served as the first director of the Royal College of Music from 1883 to 1894. First published in 1896, and reissued here in its swiftly corrected and indexed second edition, this work is a classic of musical analysis, exploring the composition, structure, performance and reception of each symphony in turn. Intended for 'the amateurs of this country', it represents the culmination of a lifetime's research.

Sir George Smart (1776-1867), conductor, composer, singing teacher and organist, was a central figure in nineteenth-century British musical life. He is best remembered as one of the founder members of the Philharmonic Society, for which he often conducted. Notably, in 1826 he presided over the first performance in England of Beethoven's ninth symphony. Smart was also much in demand as a conductor at the major English musical festivals and on royal occasions. These edited journal entries, first published in 1907, provide insightful accounts of concert life at the time, and they are particularly valuable for Smart's detailed observations - gathered during his extensive tour of 1825 - on musical practice in Europe, including conducting methods and performing speeds. The journal extracts end in 1845 with an account of Smart's visit to Bonn for the unveiling of Beethoven's statue.

Hector Berlioz (1803-69) was one of the most original and colourful composers of his generation whose music was in many ways ahead of its time. He was also a respected journalist and critic. Begun in 1848, his celebrated Memoires were completed by 1865 but published posthumously in 1870. They are the best-known of his writings and reflect the man - passionate, imaginative, idealistic, opinionated and witty - and give a fascinating, first-hand, insight into his life. He shares his uncompromising thoughts on his contemporaries and the musical establishment in France, writes candidly about his love affairs and engagingly on his music and travels. This first English translation from the original French, published in 1884, will appeal to the music lover and the general reader. Volume 1 (1803-41) includes his childhood in the Isere, studies in Paris, struggles to establish himself and travels in Italy during 1831-2.

William Ashton Ellis (1852-1919) abandoned his medical career in order to devote himself to his Wagner studies. Best known for his translations of Wagner's prose works and of Carl Friedrich Glasenapp's multi-volume biography of the composer, Ellis published in 1911 this English translation of Wagner's Familienbriefe, spanning the years 1832-74. An inveterate letter writer, Wagner was the youngest-but-one of ten children and Ellis describes the character of these letters to his sisters, his mother, his brother-in-law and his nieces as a reflection of the composer in the 'driest and most neutral of lights', claiming that within the family it is impossible to be pretentious. An appendix by Glasenapp, giving brief biographical details of family members, is also included. Despite the stylistic idiosyncrasies of the translations, these letters remain of importance, capturing something of the tone of Wagner's prose style and shedding light on his extraordinary life.