ABSTRACT
'I listen to a piece and ask myself what has made the greatest impression on me. What has moved me the most about it, what has excited me the most, what it is I want to write about, what sets my mind working, what sets off my imagination.' Derrick Puffett's description to a group of Cambridge graduate students of his approach to listening and writing about music is clearly evident in the articles reprinted in this collection. For the first time, the book makes available in one place writings previously widely dispersed amongst many journals and symposia. Resonances emerge that cross from essay to essay, with the result that a larger, coherent project is revealed. Insistent on the need of music analysis to be accompanied by a wider historical knowledge, Puffett believed strongly that the methods to be adopted on each occasion must be dictated by the music at hand. His work on Bruckner, Strauss, Webern, Zemlinsky, Delius and Debussy is of enduring importance to the study of music. With a prose style distinguished for its elegance and clarity, Puffett's writings will enhance the understanding and enjoyment of the music that he discusses amongst students and teachers alike.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|2 pages
The Analyst Speaks
part II|2 pages
Liner and Programme Notes
part III|2 pages
English Music
part IV|2 pages
Russian and French Music
part V|2 pages
Opera
part VI|2 pages
Vienna
chapter Twenty-six|51 pages
Transcription and Recomposition: The Strange Case of Zemlinsky’s Maeterlinck Songs
chapter Twenty-eight|41 pages
Gone with the Summer Wind; or, What Webern Lost
chapter Twenty-nine|77 pages
‘Music that Echoes within One’ for a Lifetime: Berg’s Reception of Schoenberg’s Pelleas und Melisande
part VII|2 pages
German Music