Thomas Nashe

J. B. Steane

'Pamphleteer, poet, story-teller, satirist, scholar, moralist and jester . . .' Thomas Nashe, a contemporary of Shakespeare, was writing in the 1590s, the zenith of the English Renaissance. Rebellious in spirit, conservative in philosophy, Nashe's brilliant and comic invective earned him a reputation as the 'English Juvenal' who 'carried the deadly stockado in his pen'. In its mingling of the devout and bawdy, scholarship and slang, its brutality and its constant awareness of the imminence of death, his work epitomizes the ambivalence of the Elizabethans. Above all, Nashe was a great entertainer, 'his stories are told for pleasure in telling, his jokes are cracked for the fun of them, and his whole style speaks of a relish for living'. In addition to The Unfortunate Traveller, this volume contains Pierce Penniless, The Terrors of the Night, Lenten Stuff and The Choice of Valentines, and extracts from Christ's Tears over Jerusalem, The Anatomy of Absurdity, and other works.

The Unfortunate Traveller and Other Works

Before the gramophone could do justice to an orchestra, it was able to reproduce the human voice with comparative fidelity. Steane examines the great mass of singing on record and follows the fortunes of modern singers as well as old, in song, opera, and choral singing. This corrected second edition includes a preface and bibliography.

Seventy Years of Singing on Record

The Grand Tradition

John Steane's subject, in all three sections of this book, is the art of singing. In the first part he takes the material, the voices themselves, in the second he considers the work and achievement of ten individual singers; and in the third he listens through the ears of an earlier generation of critics, finding much to learn. The 'Assortment of Voices' in Part I is a sorting, a distinguishing of voice-types with regard to timbre and quality as well as range, repertoire and power. Description of terms such as coloratura, soubrette, spinto and baryton-Martin involves the meaning and derivation of the words. The need is argued for a new category, the soprano-mezzo, and for a broader but more sharply delineated notion of the Heldentenor. The ten singers chosen for special attention in Part II range chronologically from the great baritone Mattia Battistini, who lived two-thirds of his long life in the nineteenth century, to Maria Callas and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf in our own day. Rosa Ponselle and Giovanni Martinelli are given special attention. Part III criticises the critics, from Dyneley Hussey and the veteran Herman Klein to Neville Cardus and the presiding authority Ernest Newman. These were entertaining writers as well as acute critics, and with John Steane's observant commentaries they provide a quickening of response to music in general and singing in particular.

J. B. Steane

About

Books

Join the club