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A sequence of critical essays surveys contemporary musical trends by analyzing major works, composers, and genres. The author critiques late Wagnerian drama and orchestration through readings of Parsifal and the Ring, considers questions of ethics and aesthetics, and explores the idea of national and religious drama. Extended essays address Richard Strauss, Italian opera of the day, song writing, and the modern oratorio, combining historical overview, aesthetic argument, and practical criticism to clarify how recent compositional practices and stagecraft reshape musical meaning.
A number of words in this book have both hyphenated and non-hyphenated variants. For those words, the variant more frequently used was retained.
Obvious punctuation errors were fixed.
Other printing errors, which were not detected during the revision of the printing process of the original book, have been corrected.
The cover was created by the transcriber and put in the public domain.