Arnold Whittall

Biographic Data

ID411610
NAMEArnold Whittall
GIVEN NAMESArnold
FAMILY NAMEWhittall
SIGNATUREWHITTALL A
AFFILIATIONSKing's College London
VERIFIEDNo
TOTAL WORKS103
TOTAL CITATIONS114
WORKS AS AUTHOR103
WORKS AS EDITOR0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1964
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2024
H-INDEX2

  • Britten’s Donne, Hardy and Blake Songs

    Open AccessArnold WhittallARTICLEMusic and Letters2024

    Journal Article Britten's Donne, Hardy and Blake Songs: Cyclic Design and Meaning. Gordon Cameron Sly Get access Britten's Donne, Hardy and Blake Songs: Cyclic Design and Meaning. By Gordon Cameron Sly. Pp. xix+177. Aldeburgh Studies in Music, 15. ( The Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2023. ISBN 978-1-78327-771-1, £70.) Arnold Whittall Arnold Whittall King's College, London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Music…

  • Composer–performer collaborations in the long twentieth century

    Arnold WhittallBOOKDistributed Creativity2017Cited by: 106

    This account of a musical period centred around a modernist aesthetic provides a historical context for the contemporary case studies which follow in subsequent chapters. It surveys documented interactions of composers and performers in strongly contrasted contexts, from brief encounters to sustained involvement. In the latter case, such associations during the conception as well as the completion of works can have a decisive impact on the musica…

  • Metaphysical Materials

    Open AccessArnold WhittallARTICLEMusic Analysis2016References: 23

    Two Critical Forum contributions to Music Analysis in 2015 testified to the continuing scholarly concern with Schoenberg's musical thinking, and particularly with the possible connections and disconnections between tonality and the twelve‐note method. This response revisits the materials surveyed in 2015 and adds further references in order to underline the special circumstances of Schoenberg's move from Europe to North America, the profound tens…

  • Neoclassical Music in America

    Arnold WhittallARTICLEMusic and Letters2015

    As the twentieth century recedes, its history changes, and chroniclers attempting to propose continuities between what happened during its course and what has happened since are obliged to question received terminologies and categorizations, even as they strive to preserve them. With art music, the continued prominence of pre-1900 composers preserves the currency of such categories as Baroque, Classical, and Romantic; but derivatives of these—lik…

  • The Power of Robert Simpson

    Arnold WhittallARTICLEMusic and Letters2014

    After the Hyperion recording of Robert Simpson’s Ninth Symphony (1986) was released in 1988, David Fanning wrote in Gramophone magazine that ‘Simpson had found what Sibelius in the end seemingly despaired of finding—a way of uniting the essentials of symphonic momentum with the essentials of modern consciousness’. Such high claims—Fanning also described Simpson’s music as ‘uniquely invigorating’—were by no means exceptional. According to Donald M…

  • Sea-changes

    Arnold WhittallARTICLEMusic and Letters2013

    During the autumn of 1948, after discussions with E. M. Forster, Benjamin Britten decided that Billy Budd would be his next opera, with Forster and Eric Crozier as librettists. Between those initial discussions and the first performance at Covent Garden a little more than three years later, on 1 December 1951, Britten, now in his late thirties, fulfilled many other commitments: the completion of the Spring Symphony, the composition of Let’s Make …

  • John Adams's Nixon in China

    Arnold WhittallARTICLEMusic and Letters2012

    Journal Article John Adams’s Nixon in China: Musical Analysis, Historical and Political Perspectives. By Timothy A. Johnson. Get access John Adams’s Nixon in China: Musical Analysis, Historical and Political Perspectives. By Timothy A. Johnson. pp. xv + 278. ( Ashgate, Farnham and Burlington, Vt., 2011, £55. ISBN 978-1-4094-2682-0.) Arnold Whittall Arnold Whittall Emeritus, King’s College London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Ac…

  • BBC Music in the Glock Era and After

    Arnold WhittallARTICLEMusic and Letters2011

    The way this intriguing and absorbing book is organized means that it's quite near the end before we learn how Leo Black became a BBC employee and what (if only in retrospect) this way of life meant to him. A successful student at Oxford in the early 1950s, he writes that ‘I'd absorbed from somewhere a certain humanistic approach to great music, a belief in its connection with personality and human depths that helped save me from becoming a “musi…

  • Genetic Criticism and the Creative Process

    Arnold WhittallARTICLEMusic and Letters2011

    ‘Genetic criticism might appear to destabilize the final text, undermining the work-concept by privileging genesis over structure’ (p. 1). ‘All the more reason not to be defensive about it’ might be a common response to that editorial note of caution in today's musicological climate. But William Kinderman rightly seeks, in his Introduction, to underline the principled catholicity and comprehensiveness of the critical methods demonstrated in this …

  • Elective Affinities

    Arnold WhittallARTICLEMusic and Letters2010

    Journal Article Elective Affinities: Musical Essays on the History of Aesthetic Theory. By Lydia Goehr. Get access Elective Affinities: Musical Essays on the History of Aesthetic Theory. By Lydia Goehr. pp. xxii + 386. ( Columbia University Press, New York, 2008, £20.50. ISBN 978-0-231-14480-3.) Arnold Whittall Arnold Whittall Emeritus, King’s College, London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Music and Lette…

  • Writing through Music

    Arnold WhittallARTICLEMusic and Letters2010

    Journal Article Writing through Music: Essays on Music, Culture, and Politics. By Jann Pasler. Get access Writing through Music: Essays on Music, Culture, and Politics. By Jann Pasler. pp. xiv + 513. ( Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford, 2008, £32.99. ISBN 978-0-19-532489-1.) Arnold Whittall Arnold Whittall Emeritus, King’s College London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Music and Letters, Volume …

  • Elliott Carter

    Arnold WhittallARTICLEMusic and Letters2009

    Despite their common purpose, these Carter centennial publications could hardly be more different. While the volume emanating from the Paul Sacher Foundation—repository of a major collection of Carter manuscripts and other documents—is weighty and beautifully produced, the Pendragon Press Festschrift is slim and, in many ways, rather shoddy. Proofreading is appalling, and the thinking behind it is also open to question—not least the idea that ext…

  • Maximum Volume

    Arnold Whittall, Henry-Louis De La Grange et al.ARTICLEThe Musical Times2008

  • Olivier Messiaen

    Arnold WhittallARTICLEMusic and Letters2008

    Timed to appear in advance of the 2008 Messiaen centenary, these volumes are more celebratory than critical. Nevertheless, they provide invaluable material from which balanced critical assesssment can begin to take its bearings. At the heart of the Music, Art and Literature symposium is an eighty-seven-page tour de force: Philip Weller's translation (printed alongside the original French) of L’Âme en bourgeon, the extraordinary poetic hymn to the…

  • Berio's Sequenzas

    Arnold WhittallARTICLEMusic and Letters2008

    Between 1958 and 2002, Berio wrote fourteen relatively short works, each called Sequenza. As a collection of pieces for single instruments, or single instruments in combination with other sound sources, they provide a temptingly concise repertory of materials for musicologists eager to pin down the essence of Berio's compositional thought, as it evolved over time, and which is so dauntingly complex and elusive in his major orchestral and dramatic…

  • Music, Theatre and Politics in Germany

    Arnold WhittallARTICLEMusic and Letters2008

    Journal Article Music, Theatre and Politics in Germany: 1848 to the Third Reich. Ed. by Nikolaus Bacht. Get access Music, Theatre and Politics in Germany: 1848 to the Third Reich. Ed. by Nikolaus Bacht. pp. xii + 315. ( Ashgate, Aldershot and Burlington, Vt., 2006, £55. ISBN 0-7546-5521-0.) Arnold Whittall Arnold Whittall King's College London Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Music and Letters, Volume 89, I…

  • Representing Sonatas

    Open AccessArnold WhittallARTICLEJournal of the Royal Musical…2008Cited by: 3

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  • A llen F orte in M usic A nalysis

    Open AccessArnold WhittallARTICLEMusic Analysis2007References: 10

    This article explores the engagement of an American music theorist with a British journal. Music Analysis excludes the word ‘theory’ from its title to avoid confusion with American journals. But many American theorists have welcomed the alternative it represents, and of these Allen Forte is pre‐eminent. His contributions began with Vol. 2/iii (October 1983) and have continued through to the present issue. As this survey suggests, those contributi…

  • Advance, Retreat

    Arnold Whittall, Tim HowellARTICLEThe Musical Times2007

  • Grasping the Subject

    Arnold Whittall, Lawrence KramerARTICLEThe Musical Times2007

  • Multi-Tasking

    Arnold Whittall, Michael SpitzerARTICLEThe Musical Times2007

  • Uppers and Downers

    Arnold Whittall, Helen WallaceARTICLEThe Musical Times2007

  • Matters Metaphysical

    Arnold Whittall, Charles YoumansARTICLEThe Musical Times2006

  • Wagner's Themes

    Arnold WhittallARTICLEMusic and Letters2006

    The compulsion to explain Wagner’s works in words is as old as the works themselves. Yet there are those who remain convinced that this compulsion represents nothing more than a misguided pedagogical belief that creations of such size and intensity cannot possibly be adequately comprehended directly, immediately, and comprehensively during performance; and those who think like this might even conclude that all attempts at verbal explanation are l…

  • Is Language a Music? Writings on Musical Form and Signification

    Arnold WhittallARTICLEMusic and Letters2006

    Journal Article Is Language a Music? Writings on Musical Form and Signification Get access Is Language a Music? Writings on Musical Form and Signification. By David Lidov. pp. x + 256. Musical Meaning and Interpretation. ( Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 2005, £28.95. ISBN 0-253-34383-6.) Arnold Whittall Arnold Whittall Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Music and Letters, Volume 87, I…