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Contrapuntal Order

Around the start of the seventeenth century, a new sense of the word “harmony” emerged. To that point, harmony in music had been produced by the pleasing opposition of two melodies according to the principles of counterpoint. In the 1600s, “harmony” began to denote the non-melodic . . . . Continue Reading »

The Imperial Conductor

Toscanini:  Musician of Conscience  by harvey sachs liveright, 944 pages, $39.95 When the first instruction manual for leaders of orchestras—Johann Mattheson’s Der vollkommene Capellmeister—appeared in 1739, it was a sign that the size of orchestral ensembles and the . . . . Continue Reading »

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