Royal Musical Association Monographs
About the Book Series
This series was originally supported by funds made available to the Royal Musical Association from the estate of Thurston Dart. Its purpose is to provide a medium for specialized investigations of a topic, concept or repertory - studies of a kind that would not normally be feasible for commercial publishers and that would be too long for most periodicals.
The RMA Monograph series follows the same policy for ethics in peer reviews as the Journal of the Royal Musical Association and RMA Research Chronicle. The full statement is available here: https://www.rma.ac.uk/publications/
Singing Dante: The Literary Origins of Cinquecento Monody
1st Edition
By Elena Abramov-van Rijk
November 04, 2014
This book takes its departure from an experiment presented by Vincenzo Galilei before his colleagues in the Florentine Camerata in about 1580. This event, namely the first demonstration of the stile recitativo, is known from a single later source, a letter written in 1634 by Pietro dei Bardi, son ...
Rosa Newmarch and Russian Music in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century England
1st Edition
By Philip Ross Bullock
November 28, 2009
Philip Ross Bullock looks at the life and works of Rosa Newmarch (1857-1940), the leading authority on Russian music and culture in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England. Although Newmarch's work and influence are often acknowledged - most particularly by scholars of English poetry, ...
Sacred Repertories in Paris under Louis XIII: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Vma rés. 571
1st Edition
By Peter Bennett
November 28, 2009
The study of sacred music under Louis XIII (r.1610-43) has advanced little in the past hundred years. Despite some important recent contributions by the late Denise Launay and others, much of our current perception of the Latin sacred music of the period is still informed by the pioneering research...
Bartók and the Grotesque: Studies in Modernity, the Body and Contradiction in Music
1st Edition
By Julie Brown
November 28, 2007
The grotesque is one of art's most puzzling figures - transgressive, comprising an unresolveable hybrid, generally focussing on the human body, full of hyperbole, and ultimately semantically deeply puzzling. In Bluebeard's Castle (1911), The Wooden Prince (1916/17), The Miraculous Mandarin (1919/...
MS Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magl. XIX, 164–167
1st Edition
By Anthony M. Cummings
January 31, 2007
Manuscript Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale, Magliabechiana XIX, 164-167 (FlorBN Magl. 164-7) has been the subject of considerable scholarly attention. The prevailing assumption had been that it was a Florentine source of the early sixteenth century. More recently, it has been argued that ...
'To fill, forbear, or adorne': The Organ Accompaniment of Restoration Sacred Music
1st Edition
By Rebecca Herissone
January 28, 2006
This is the first study to provide a systematic and thorough investigation of continuo realization styles appropriate to Restoration sacred music, an area of performance practice that has never previously been properly assessed. Rebecca Herissone undertakes detailed analysis of a group of organ ...
Repetition in Music: Theoretical and Metatheoretical Perspectives
1st Edition
By Adam Ockelford
February 28, 2005
This monograph examines the place of repetition in perceived musical structure and in theories of music. Following a preface and introduction, there are four main chapters: 'Theory', 'Analysis', 'Metatheory and Meta-analysis', and 'Cognition and Metacognition'. Chapter 2 (Theory) sets out the ...
Salomon and the Burneys: Private Patronage and a Public Career
1st Edition
By Ian Woodfield
November 27, 2003
Johann Peter Salomon, the celebrated violinist and impresario, made his debut in England in March 1781. History has credited Salomon with bringing Haydn to London, yet as Ian Woodfield reveals in this monograph, Salomon's introduction of the composer to the London musical scene owed as much to luck...
Szymanowski, Eroticism and the Voices of Mythology
1st Edition
By Stephen Downes
July 17, 2003
The desire to voice the artistic revelation of the truth of a precarious, multi-faceted, yet integrated self lies behind much of Szymanowski's work. This self is projected through the voices of deities who speak languages of love. The unifying figure is Eros, who may be embodied as Dionysus, Christ...
'Composing with Tones': A Musical Analysis of Schoenberg's Op.23 Pieces for Piano
1st Edition
By Kathryn Bailey
November 28, 2001
Schoenberg's Op.23 for solo piano, written between 1920 and 1923, represented a move from his atonal music of the preceding twelve years to 12-note music. In this analysis of the five pieces which make up Op.23, Kathryn Bailey discusses the ways in which Schoenberg clearly explores new ideas in ...
Institutional Patronage in Post-Tridentine Rome: Music at Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini 1550-1650
1st Edition
By Noel O'Regan
November 28, 1995
The archconfraternity of SS. Trinità was one of the less well-known institutions for musical patronage in sixteenth-century Rome. Yet in focusing on its activities in the period 1550-1650, this book sheds light on networks of urban patronage that were equally important in commissioning the sacred ...
The Impresario's Ten Commandments: Continental Recruitment for Italian Opera in London 1763-64
1st Edition
By Curtis Price, Judith Milhous
November 28, 1992
The extraordinary correspondence between the impresario Felice Giardini and his friend Gabriele Leone lies at the centre of this study of Italian opera in London in the eighteenth century. Hired by Giardini in 1763 to engage Italian performers for a season of opera and ballet at The King's Theatre,...