Benjamin Britten’s Nocturne, Op. 60, was composed in August–September 1958 for tenor voice, seven obbligato instruments, and string orchestra. It lasts about 25 minutes, and its first performance was given on 16 October 1958 at Leeds Town...

Benjamin Britten’s Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings, Op. 31, was composed in 1943 for tenor, solo horn, and string orchestra and it is one of his most distinctive early wartime works. The work was written for Peter Pears and Dennis Brain, and...

REPRINT SERIES Richard Strauss’s Arabella, Op. 79, is a lyric comedy in three acts composed between 1930 and 1932 to a libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It was first performed at the Dresden State Opera on 1 July 1933 under Clemens Krauss...

Alban Berg’s Seven Early Songs (Sieben frühe Lieder) is a cycle for high voice and orchestra that Berg assembled and orchestrated in 1928 from songs he had originally composed between 1905 and 1908, while studying with Arnold Schoenberg. The...

Benjamin Britten’s Spring Symphony, Op. 44, was composed in 1948–49 on commission from the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Britten described it as “a symphony not only dealing with the Spring itself but with the progress of Winter to Spring...

REPRINT SERIES Vaughan Williams’s All hail the power is a 1938 arrangement of the eighteenth-century English hymn tune Miles Lane, traditionally associated with Edward Perronet’s text and the music of William Shrubsole. It is written for...

REPRINT SERIES  Die Liebe der Danae, Op. 83, is an opera in three acts by Richard Strauss to a German libretto by Joseph Gregor (after sketches by Hugo von Hofmannsthal). Strauss worked on the score in the late 1930s and completed it on 28 June...

Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, Op. 66 (composed 1961–62), is a large-scale choral-orchestral work written for the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral and intended as a musical act of remembrance and reconciliation. Britten interweaves...

REPRINT SERIES  Capriccio is Strauss’s final stage work (composed 1940–41), described by the composer as “a conversation piece for music.” The libretto was prepared with Clemens Krauss (and with input from Strauss) and the...

Respighi’s La bella dormente nel bosco is a “musical fairy tale” in three acts, originally composed in 1921 for Vittorio Podrecca’s Teatro dei Piccoli puppet theatre and later substantially revised in 1933 for full theatrical...

Manuel de Falla’s El retablo de maese Pedro (Master Peter’s Puppet Show) is a one-act puppet-opera with prologue and epilogue, set to a Spanish libretto drawn from Cervantes’s Don Quixote. The score is compact—about 27...

El Corregidor y la Molinera is a pantomime‑ballet in two tableaux composed by Manuel de Falla between 1916 and 1917 to a scenario by Gregorio Martínez Sierra after Pedro Antonio de Alarcón’s novella. The work combines spoken mime,...

REPRINT SERIES  Ravel’s setting of Clément Marot’s poem “D’Anne jouant de l’espinette” dates from 1896 as the second of his Deux épigrammes de Clément Marot (M.10), originally for voice and...

Luigi Dallapiccola’s Sicut Umbra (“Like a Shadow”) is a twelve-tone cantata for mezzo‑soprano and twelve instruments, set to poems by Juan Ramón Jiménez and composed in 1970. It unfolds as a single continuous span of...

REPRINT SERIES  Francesca da Rimini, Op. 25, is a “symphonic opera” in a prologue, two tableaux and an epilogue by Sergei Rachmaninoff to a Russian libretto by Modest Ilyich Tchaikovsky, based on the episode in Dante’s Inferno...

Jacques Ibert’s Suite Élisabéthaine, composed in 1942 as incidental music for Le Songe d’une nuit d’été (Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream), was published in 1945 and is structured in nine...

Luigi Dallapiccola’s An Mathilde (1955) is a cantata for soprano and orchestra setting five German poems by Heinrich Heine drawn from Romanzero and Letzte Gedichte. Lasting about 15 minutes, the work unfolds as a continuous sequence of...

Sir Arthur Bliss’s Serenade for Baritone and Orchestra (F. 163), was composed in 1929 and first performed on 18 March 1930 at a London concert under the composer’s baton with baritone John Goss as soloist. The cycle lasts approximately 26...