Thomas Ades in Five Essays
Thomas Ades in Five Essays The British composer, conductor, and pianist Thomas Adès has achieved a level of recognition and celebrity within the world of classical music today that is almost…
Specifikacia Thomas Ades in Five Essays
Thomas Ades in Five Essays
The British composer, conductor, and pianist Thomas Adès has achieved a level of recognition and celebrity within the world of classical music today that is almost unmatched. Reaching for the music behind the celebrity, author Drew Massey deftly tackles the challenges of writing about a living figure with such far-reaching impact by focusing on representative moments in his compositional career and critical reception. Once seen as the heir to Benjamin Britten, both in his importance to British music and his reputation as the enfant terrible of the concert world, Adès is a fascinating figure of contemporary composition.
He not only traces the diverse historical forms and traditions that Adès taps into but also reflects on where he is steering the future of composition and performance. In this series of five interlocking essays, Massey provides an illuminating look at the formal characteristics of Adès's music, considers his work from the perspective of a contemporary listener, and places it within the larger context of developments in twentieth-century British music. An analysis of the key transitions in the artist's critical reception completes this book as the most comprehensive study of this pivotal figure of contemporary classical music in the English language to this day.