Progressive Country

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Christopher Hailey

"Alban Berg and His World" is a collection of essays and source material that repositions Berg as the pivotal figure of Viennese musical modernism. His allegiance to the austere rigor of Arnold Schoenberg's musical revolution was balanced by a lifelong devotion to the warm sensuousness of Viennese musical tradition and a love of lyric utterance, the emotional intensity of opera, and the expressive nuance of late-Romantic tonal practice. The essays in this collection explore the specific qualities of Berg's brand of musical modernism, and present newly translated letters and documents that illuminate his relationship to the politics and culture of his era. Of particular significance are the first translations of Berg's newly discovered stage work Night (Nocturne), Hermann Watznauer's intimate account of Berg's early years, and the famous memorial issue of the music periodical 23. Contributors consider Berg's fascination with palindromes and mirror images and their relationship to notions of time and identity; the Viennese roots of his distinctive orchestral style; his links to such Viennese contemporaries as Alexander Zemlinsky, Franz Schreker, and Erich Wolfgang Korngold; and his attempts to maneuver through the perilous shoals of gender, race, and fascist politics. The contributors are Antony Beaumont, Leon Botstein, Regina Busch, Nicholas Chadwick, Mark DeVoto, Douglas Jarman, Sherry Lee, and Margaret Notley. Bard Music Festival: Berg and His World Bard College Annandale-on-Hudson, New York August 13-15, 2010 and August 20-22, 2010.

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W.G. Sebald

W.G. Sebald completed this extraordinary and important -- and already controversial -- book before his untimely death in December 2001. On the Natural History of Destruction is W.G. Sebald's harrowing and precise investigation of one of the least examined "silences" of our time. In it, the acclaimed novelist examines the devastation of German cities by Allied bombardment, and the reasons for the astonishing absence of this unprecedented trauma from German history and culture. This void in history is in part a repression of things -- such as the death by fire of the city of Hamburg at the hands of the RAF -- too terrible to bear. But rather than record the crises about them, writers sought to retrospectively justify their actions under the Nazis. For Sebald, this is an example of deliberate cultural amnesia; his analysis of its effects in and outside Germany has already provoked angry and painful debate. Sebald's incomparable novels are rooted in meticulous observation; his essays are novelistic. They include his childhood recollections of the war that spurred his horror at the collective amnesia around him. There are moments of black humour and, throughout, the unmatched sensitivity of Sebald's intelligence. This book is a vital study of suffering and forgetting, of the morality hidden in artistic decisions, and of both compromised and genuine heroics.From the Hardcover edition.

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Ronald H. Wainscott

From World War I to the stock-market crash of 1929, New York theatre enjoyed a period of unequaled creative output and experimentation that redefined the direction of American theater - both mainstream and avant-garde - for decades to come, says Ronald Wainscott. In this handsomely illustrated book, Wainscott explores the emergence of the modern American theater in New York during a turbulent era of clashing artistic tastes and conflicting cultural, economic, and political events. He provides the first complete historical and cultural examination of the period he deems Broadway's most prolific and influential, and he offers an immense trove of material on plays and productions from 1914 to 1929.

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Kathleen M. Glenn and Janet Pérez

"Cristina Fernandez Cubas is, without question, one of the most important of the Spanish writers who have begun to publish since the end of the Franco dictatorship. Credited with playing a major role in the renaissance of the short story in Spain, she has won national and international acclaim for her fiction. Works by her have been translated into eight languages and have become a staple of university courses on contemporary Peninsular literature. Fernandez Cubas has created a remarkably coherent narrative world, nourished by a core of fundamental concerns. The eleven essays of Mapping the Fiction of Cristina Fernandez Cubas examine the intellectual preoccupations, narrative strategies, and rhetorical devices that distinguish the four volumes of short stories, two novels, the play, and the book of memoirs that she has published to date."--Jacket.