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,...

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...

REPRINT SERIES  Ralph Vaughan Williams’s On Christmas Night is a one‐act masque co-created in 1926 with choreographer Adolph Bolm. Loosely drawing on Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol, it integrates singing, dancing and mime into a...

Darius Milhaud's Agamemnon Op. 14 is an early dramatic work that engages with themes drawn from Greek tragedy. The piece reflects Milhaud’s initial exploration of modern compositional techniques, employing polytonal harmonies and clear rhythmic...

Gerald Finzi’s orchestral setting of the Magnificat presents a measured, introspective interpretation of the biblical text, rendered through clear and refined orchestration. Unlike the more familiar organ version, this arrangement highlights the...

REPRINT SERIES Ralph Vaughan Williams’ In Windsor Forest is a five-movement cantata for SATB choir and orchestra (or piano and strings), adapted from his opera Sir John in Love. Based on Shakespeare’s The Merry Wives of Windsor, the work...

REPRINT SERIES  On Wenlock Edge is a song cycle originally composed for tenor, piano, and string quartet in 1909, which Vaughan Williams later orchestrated for tenor and full orchestra. Based on six poems from A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire...

Richard Strauss's Four Last Songs, composed in 1948, represents the culmination of the composer’s career and a profound reflection on life and mortality. Scored for soprano and orchestra, these four songs—Frühling (Spring), September,...

REPRINT SERIES   Ralph Vaughan Williams' Magnificat, composed in 1932, is a fascinating and unconventional setting of the biblical text traditionally associated with the Virgin Mary's song of praise. Unlike many settings of the Magnificat, which...

REPRINT SERIES The text to both songs comes from one of Prokofiev's favorite poets, Konstantin Balmont. The two choruses in this set were entitled "The White Swan" and "The Wave." The former was premiered in 1910, with the composer conducting a...

REPRINT SERIESVaughan Williams often tended to focus on the composition of works in a specific genre at certain periods in his career. In 1913, for example, he wrote incidental scores to no less than seven plays (five by Shakespeare), and in 1920 he...

REPRINT SERIES Composed during the Second World War (most of it at a Budapest monastery) and completed in 1944, Missa Brevis was first performed in 1945, just after the end of the war, at the Budapest Opera House (where Kodály and his wife had...

Renard: histoire burlesque chantée et jouée, or The Fox: burlesque tale sung and played, is a chamber opera-ballet for four male voices and 16 instrumentalists written in 1916 by Igor Stravinsky. Its original Russian text, by the composer,...

Milhaud’s Service sacré  for baritone (cantor), narrator, mixed chorus and organ or orchestra is one of the few authentic masterpieces of twentieth century liturgical music. Composed in 1947 for San Francisco’s Temple Emanu-El, it...

Finzi wrote incidental music for a BBC broadcast of the Shakespeare's play in 1946, reworked it for a special stage presentation in 1952, and finally extracted a 10-number suite for small orchestra. The  most important of these, in Finzi's view, are...