Music reviews and criticism Books
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi Analysis of Jazz
Book SynopsisIn this groundbreaking volume, Laurent Cugny examines and connects the theoretical and methodological processes that underlie all of jazz. Jazz in all its forms is researched and analysed by performers, scholars, and critics. This book is required reading for any serious study of jazz.
£27.96
University Press of Mississippi Adrian Rollini
Book SynopsisAdrian Rollini, an American jazz multi-instrumentalist, played the bass saxophone, piano, vibraphone, and an array of other instruments. This book draws on oral history, vintage articles, and family archives to trace Rollini's life, from his family's arrival in the US to his development and career as a musician, to his retirement and death.
£77.35
University Press of Mississippi American Antebellum Fiddling
Book SynopsisA unique volume that is the only book solely about antebellum American fiddling. It includes more than 250 easy-to-read and clearly notated fiddle tunes alongside biographies of fiddlers and careful analysis of their personal tune collections.
£27.96
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi Groove Theory The Blues Foundation of Funk
Book SynopsisPresents an innovative history of funk music focused on the performers, regarding them as intellectuals who fashioned a new aesthetic. Utilizing musicology, literary studies, performance studies, and African American intellectual history, Tony Bolden explores what it means for music, or any cultural artifact, to be funky.
£81.75
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi The Amazing Jimmi Mayes Sideman to the Stars
Book SynopsisFor more than fifty years, Chicago drummer Jimmi Mayes served as a sideman behind some of the greatest musicians and musical groups in history. This sideman to the stars witnessed music history from the best seat in the house - behind the drum set.
£23.96
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi Damaged Musicality and Race in Early American
Book SynopsisOffers the first book-length portrait of punk as a musical style with an emphasis on how punk developed in relation to changing ideas of race in American society from the late 1960s to the early 1980s. The book provides fresh interpretations of race and American society during this period and illuminates the contemporary importance of that era.
£81.75
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi Poetic Song Verse BluesBased Popular Music and
Book SynopsisInvokes and critiques the relationship between blues-based popular music and poetry in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The volume is anchored in music from the 1960s, when a concentration of artists transformed modes of popular music from entertainment to art-that-entertains.
£23.70
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi The Real Ambassadors Dave and Iola Brubeck and
Book SynopsisTells the story of Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, and Iola Brubeck and the stand they took against segregation by writing and performing a jazz musical titled The Real Ambassadors. First conceived in 1956, the musical's journey to the stage tracks extraordinary twists and turns across the backdrop of the civil rights movement.
£19.96
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi Making Tracks A Record Producers Southern Roots
Book SynopsisProvides a widely accessible study in the craft of recording. Billington demonstrates varying ways of achieving the mutual goal of a great record. He also introduces the supporting cast of songwriters, musicians, and engineers crucial to the magic in each recording session.
£21.21
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi Songs of Slavery and Emancipation
Book SynopsisFeatures the lyrics of fifteen slave songs and fifteen abolitionist songs, placing them in proper historical context and making them available again to the general public. These songs not only express outrage at slavery but call for militant resistance and destruction of the slave system.
£77.35
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi Songs of Earth
Book SynopsisProvides a contemporary guide to understanding and exploring Cantometrics, the system developed by Lomax and Victor Grauer for analysing the formal elements of music related to human geography and sociocultural patterning.
£26.06
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi Improvising the Score Rethinking Modern Film
Book SynopsisProvides an original, vivid investigation of innovative collaborations between renowned contemporary jazz artists and prominent independent filmmakers. The book explores how these integrative jazz-film productions challenge us to rethink the possibilities of cinematic music production.
£78.40
University Press of Mississippi All I Want Is Loving You
Book SynopsisFocuses on the white, female artists of the 1950s, a time that predated the chart-topping girl groups of the early 1960s. These popular performers, many of whom graduated out of the big bands of the 1940s, impacted popular music in a huge way.Trade ReviewAuthors have long neglected the fabulous females of the fifties, but Steve Bergsman makes up for that neglect with this fascinating, fact-filled book. All I Want Is Loving You fills a major gap in pop music history and Bergsman is the author who should fill it." - Peter Benjaminson, author of The Story of Motown, Mary Wells: The Tumultuous Life of Motown's First Superstar
£78.29
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi Learning Jazz Jazz Education History and Public
Book SynopsisStudies on jazz learning typically focus on one of two methods: institutional education or the kinds of informal mentoring relationships long associated with the tradition. Ken Prouty argues that this distinction works against a common identity for audiences and communities.Trade ReviewBringing together early jazz scholarship, archival materials, and Twitter feeds, this engaging book generates important new discussions about jazz education and advocacy in a historical and contemporary context." - David Borgo, professor of music at University of California San Diego
£81.75
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi Roots Punk
Book SynopsisPunk rock evokes dissent and disruption, abrasive and anarchic musicality, and a host of countercultural aesthetics. Featuring interviews and over one hundred images, this volume focuses on how punk merged with roots music to create a rich style that incorporated honky-tonk, rockabilly, doo-wop, reggae, ska, jazz, folk, blues, and labour ballads.Trade Review[With] thorough, enticing interviews and incisive commentary, Roots Punk offers an important counternarrative to standard histories of punk." - David Pearson, author of Rebel Music in the Triumphant Empire: Punk Rock in the 1990s United States
£77.35
University Press of Mississippi Roots Punk
Book SynopsisPunk rock evokes dissent and disruption, abrasive and anarchic musicality, and a host of countercultural aesthetics. Featuring interviews and over one hundred images, this volume focuses on how punk merged with roots music to create a rich style that incorporated honky-tonk, rockabilly, doo-wop, reggae, ska, jazz, folk, blues, and labour ballads.Trade Review[With] thorough, enticing interviews and incisive commentary, Roots Punk offers an important counternarrative to standard histories of punk." - David Pearson, author of Rebel Music in the Triumphant Empire: Punk Rock in the 1990s United States
£26.06
MP-MPP University Press of Mississippi Poor Gal The Cultural History of Little Liza
Book SynopsisChronicles the origins and evolution of a folk tune beloved by millions worldwide. Dan Gutstein delves into the trajectory of the ‘Liza Jane’ family of songs, including the most popular variant ‘Li’l Liza Jane’. Likely originating among enslaved people on southern plantations, the songs are still performed and recorded centuries later.Trade ReviewAn insightful and informative study that traces the cultural history of the ‘Liza Jane’ family of songs." - Lauren Eldridge Stewart, assistant professor of ethnomusicology at Washington University in St. Louis
£81.75
University Press of Mississippi A Trumpet around the Corner
Book SynopsisThe first book to tell the full story of a century of jazz in New Orleans. Although there is still controversy over the racial origins and cultural sources of New Orleans jazz, Samuel Charters provides a balanced assessment of the role played by all of the city's musical lineages - African American, white and Creole - in jazz's formative years.Trade ReviewWhat Samuel Charters offers is a valentine to his first musical love and a fresh perspective on the pioneers and their progeny who helped define the Big Easy's signature music. As arguably the foremost and most prolific scholar of blues and African American vernacular music, with a career as an author and record producer spanning fifty years, Charters has undeniably brought an epic sweep and unique command to this narrative." - Joshua Berrett, Journal of Southern History"A lifetime of work, thought, and enjoyment goes into anything Samuel Charters write about jazz or New Orleans, and that personal history shines through A Trumpet around the Corner. . . . [B]oth specialists and general readers will find much of interest in Charters's story of New Orleans jazz." - Spencer Downing, Louisiana History"[Charters] skillfully traces the history of this music from its beginnings in the late nineteenth century. . . . A Trumpet around the Corner sheds new light on the development of New Orleans jazz and is a pleasure to read." - Charles Hersch, The Journal of American History"In A Trumpet around the Corner: The Story of New Orleans Jazz, Samuel Charters returns to his first musical love with an expanded perspective, offering valuable insights on the stylistic development of New Orleans jazz pioneers (white and black) by a close analysis of extant recordings, placed in historical context. This is one of the very few studies that treats New Orleans jazz in the 1920s, an often overlooked time when the music continued to grow in its home environment." - Bruce Boyd Raeburn, Curator, Hogan Jazz Archive, Tulane University
£23.96
Cornell University Press Stolen Song
Book SynopsisStolen Song documents the act of cultural appropriation that created a founding moment for French literary history: the rescripting and domestication of troubadour song, a prestige corpus in the European sphere, as French. This book also documents the simultaneous creation of an alternative point of origin for French literary historya body of faux-archaic Occitanizing songs.Most scholars would find the claim that troubadour poetry is the origin of French literature uncomplicated and uncontroversial. However, Stolen Song shows that the Frenchness of this tradition was invented, constructed, and confected by francophone medieval poets and compilers keen to devise their own literary history.Stolen Song makes a major contribution to medieval studies both by exposing this act of cultural appropriation as the origin of the French canon and by elaborating a new approach to questions of political and cultural identity. Eliza Zingesser shows that these quesTrade ReviewDemonstrat[ing] a solid knowledge of her corpus and of the narratives she discusses... Eliza Zingesser offers readers a new way of reading Old French literature, looking at the adoption and conversion of materials to new purposes. She makes a strong case that medieval French authors subsumed Occitan. * SPECULUM *Zingesser approaches her carefully designed corpus through a persuasive combination of historical apprehension, manuscript expertise, close reading, and theory. She skillfully guides her readers through a vast amount of data with a clear, always elegant style. * H-France *Stolen Song is a testament to Zingesser's incisive powers of analysis. * Digital Philology *Thanks to Eliza Zingesser's carefully argued and painstakingly documented study, specialists of Old French and Old Occitan song may now better understand how Francophone authors and audiences sought to subsume Occitan literary prestige into their own cultural traditions. * Tenso *Stolen Song offers a welcome, fresh perspective on a medieval past. Zingesser's arguments are convincingly parsed out with great care and are solidly founded by primary source study alongside forerunning secondary scholarship, especially that of Sarah Kay—an obviously significant influence. * Comitatus *Table of ContentsIntroduction 1. Of Birds and Madmen: Occitan Songs in French Songbooks 2. Keeping Up with the French: Jean Renart's Francophile Empire in the Roman de la rose 3. Birdsong and the Edges of the Empire: Gerbert de Montreuil's Roman de la violette 4. From Beak to Quill: Troubadour Lyric in Richard de Fournival's Bestiaire d'amour 5. The Rustic Troubadours: Occitanizing Lyrics in France Epilogue
£28.49
John Wiley and Sons Ltd The New Music: Kranichstein Lectures
Book SynopsisA year after the end of the Second World War, the first International Summer Course for New Music took place in the Kranichstein Hunting Lodge, near the city of Darmstadt in Germany. The course, commonly referred to later as the Darmstadt course, was intended to familiarize young composers and musicians with the music that, only a few years earlier, had been denounced as degenerate by the Nazi regime, and it soon developed into one of the most important events in contemporary music. Having returned to Germany in 1949 from exile in the United States, Adorno was a regular participant at Darmstadt from 1950 on. In 1955 he gave a series of lectures on the young Schoenberg, using the latter’s work to illustrate the relation between tradition and the avant-garde. Adorno’s three double-length lectures on the young Schoenberg, in which he spoke as a passionate advocate for the composer whom Boulez had declared dead, were his first at Darmstadt to be recorded on tape. The relation between tradition and the avant-garde was the leitmotif of the lectures that followed, which continued over the next decade. Adorno also dealt in detail with problems of composition in contemporary music, and he often accompanied his lectures with off-the-cuff musical improvisations. The five lecture courses he gave at Darmstadt between 1955 and 1966 were all recorded and subsequently transcribed, and they are published here for the first time in English. This volume is a unique document on the theory and history of the New Music. It will be of great value to anyone interested in the work of Adorno and critical theory, in German intellectual and cultural history, and in the history of modern music.Trade Review“The lectures Adorno gave at Kranichstein between 1955 and 1966 provide an invaluable elaboration and clarification of his thinking on New Music, and in particular on his interpretation of Schoenberg’s early works. Wieland Hoban’s excellent translation does a great service to this magnificent scholarly edition edited by Klaus Reichert and Michael Schwartz of the T. W. Adorno Archive. Its publication in English is of great significance for our understanding of Adorno’s influential ideas at a key period in twentieth-century music.”Max Paddison, Durham University “This book demonstrates the contribution of one of the twentieth century’s most important thinkers to a pivotal moment in avant-garde composition.”Darmstädter Echo “With a high level of theoretical reflection and exceptional skills in technical composition, Adorno succeeded in mediating critical social theory and radical aesthetics.”Opernwelt “Adorno’s lectures show just how lucid and engaging a thinker he can be. These fluently translated lectures and discussions complement his published works on modern music. They offer accessible analysis of works by Schoenberg and others, as well as philosophically informed reflections on the challenges faced by composers, performers and listeners who take music seriously as a response to the modern world.”Andrew Bowie, Royal Holloway University of London, and author of Adorno and the Ends of PhilosophyTable of ContentsOverview Lecture Courses The Young Schoenberg (1955) Schoenberg’s Counterpoint (1956) Criteria of New Music (1957) Vers une musique informelle (1961) The Function of Colour in Music (1966) Notes for the Lectures Editors’ Notes Editors’ Afterword Index
£33.25
University of Pennsylvania Press Prousts Songbook
Book SynopsisIn Proust's Songbook, Jennifer Rushworth analyzes and theorizes the presence and role of songs in Marcel Proust's novel À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time). Instead of focusing on instrumental music and large-scale forms such as symphonies and opera, as is common in Proust musical studies, Rushworth argues for the centrality of songs and lyrics in Proust's opus. Her work analyzes the ways in which the author inserted songs at key turning points in his novel and how he drew inspiration from contemporary composers and theorists of song. Rushworth presents detailed readings of five moments of song in À la recherche du temps perdu, highlighting the songs' significance by paying close attention to their lyrics, music, composers, and histories.Rushworth interprets these episodes through theoretical reflections on song and voice, drawing particularly from the works of Reynaldo Hahn and Roland Barthes. She argues that songs in Proust's no
£49.30
University of Minnesota Press Bar Yarns and Manic-Depressive Mixtapes: Jim
Book SynopsisBar Yarns and Manic Depressive Mix Tapes distills thirty delirious, jam-packed years of some of the best music writing ever to come out of the Twin Cities. As a writer and musician, the ever-curious Jim Walsh has lived a life immersed in music, and it all makes its way into his columns and feature articles, interviews and reviews, including personal essays on life, love, music, family, death, and, yes, the manic-depressive highs and lows that come with being an obsessive music lover and listener. From Minneapolis’s own Prince to such far-flung acts as David Bowie, the Waterboys, Lucinda Williams, Parliament-Funkadelic, L7, the Rolling Stones, the Ramones, U2, Hank Williams, Britney Spears, Elvis Presley and Nirvana, Walsh’s work treats us to a chorus of the voices and sounds that have made the music scene over the past three decades. The big names are here, from Rosanne Cash to Bruce Springsteen to Bob Marley and Jackson Browne, but so are those a little shy of superstardom, like the Tin Star Sisters and Uncle Tupelo, Son Volt, the Gear Daddies, Semisonic, and The Belfast Cowboys. The book is also a tour (de force) of the Twin Cities' most celebrated music venues past and present, from the Prom Ballroom to Paisley Park to Duffy's. When Walsh isn't celebrating the sheer magic of live music or dreaming to tunes blasting from the car console, he might be surveying the scene with the Hamm's Bear at Grumpy's or the Double Deuce or singing the last night at the Uptown Bar blues. Whether he's dishing dirt with Yoko Ono or digging the Replacements' roots, giving an old rocker a spin or offering a mic to the latest upstart, Jim Walsh reminds us that in the land of a thousand lakes there are a thousand dances, and the music never dies.Capturing the pure notes and character of the sound of the Twin Cities and beyond, with a keen eye for trends and the telling detail, his book truly is a mix tape of thirty years of unforgettable music.Trade Review"Jim Walsh has been the introspective and thoughtful voice of a generation that reenergized Minnesota music and gave it to the world. This is a book about a man in love with music."—Chris Osgood of The Suicide Commandos"Most mere mortals would have burned out after so many years and so many decibels and late nights, but Jim Walsh is the battery rabbit of the local music scene. For him it really is all about the passion: his contagious joy, awe, and fierce fidelity to the communal spirit are there in everything he writes, and his voice is unmistakable."—Brad Zellar, author of Suburban World: The Norling Photos, Conductors of the Moving World, and House of Coates"Jim Walsh's Bar Yarns and Manic-Depressive Mixtapes is as much a chronicle of the past few decades of the Minneapolis scene as it is a pitch-perfect memoir of what it means to live for music. A crucial read for anyone who has spent their days and nights tangled in the tether of a song."—Jessica Hopper, author of The First Collection of Criticism by a Living Female Rock Critic"Jim Walsh’s Bar Yarns and Manic-Depressive Mixtapes is like a cicada come trilling out of the fertile past. Each chapter is a love song of old for the here and now, a desperate season in need of music elixir."—Nicole Helget, author of Summer of Ordinary Ways, The Turtle Catcher, and Stillwater"Walsh’s writing is musical, rhythmic and tuned, with a throughline of humanity."—MinnPost.com"Jim Walsh is a true believer: For him, rock ’n’ roll is more than music or culture and becomes religion. Published in Rolling Stone and The Village Voice, the Minnesota writer-musician is a good and heartfelt essayist and memoirist. "—Shepherd Express"Whether he’s discussing Prince, Springsteen or the Uptown Bar, Walsh is a man and a fan in touch with his feelings about songs, his own life and the communal spirit that music builds."—Star Tribune"There are a lot of rock critics who focus on the negative, or shrug off the humanity of music fandom in favor of cold logic and bloodless analysis. Walsh is not that kind of writer or critic: even when he struggles with what’s going on around him, even when life is unbearably shitty, his writing is usually positive and filled with hope."—PopMatters.com"Organized thematically, it demonstrates Walsh’s knack for using music as a springboard for writing about people’s lives and the communities they inhabit. Walsh’s intimate, nuanced prose makes you feel as if you’ve known him, and the people he writes about, for years."—Minnesota HistoryTable of ContentsContents Introduction Summerteeth Fly Me to the Moon Chickery Chick We Could Be Heroes Just For One Day Nye’s: The Long Goodbye 1. Spirit in the Night We’re Gonna Be Friends Baptism By Bruce Taken by a Photograph For a Dancer 2. On the Road to Find Out No Direction Home Side of the Road All Down the Line Legalize It Merry Christmas to the Thief Who Stole My CD Player 3. Showmen’s Rest Are You Lonesome Tonight? All Apologies Do You Remember Rock ’n’ Roll Radio? Meeting Across the River 4. Bar Yarns From the Land of Sky-Blue Waters Uptown Bar Blues Closing Time Ballad of the Tin Star Sisters Driftwood Nights 5. The Beautiful Ones The Gold Experience Salesmen and Racists Put a Little Love in It Magic 6. Manic-Depressive Mix #1 One Love Ooh La La This is the Sea All My Life Beautiful Day 7. Manic-Depressive Mix #2 Free Your Mind . . . Windfall Ballad of El Goodo Second to No One 8. Minneapolis Confidential Geese of Beverly Road Greetings from Lake We Be Gone Phantom of First Avenue Winter of Our Swedish Fiddler All These Weeks 9. Prince in the ’90s Emancipation Give Up the Funk Everyday People 10. Manic-Depressive Mix #3 I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For Peace on Earth The Ballad of Paul and Sheila Signed, Sealed, Delivered Love is the Law Toxic I Am the Cosmos Georgia On My Mind It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) 11. Manic-Depressive Mix #4 Singing in My Sleep Short Man’s Room After the Dance All About Chemistry I Saw the Light Times Like This Partners in Crime 12. Manic-Depressive Mix #5 Bittersweet Symphony Danny Boy How to Fight Loneliness She’s So Heavy Forever Young Looking for the Northern Lights Harriet If You Want To Sing Out, Sing Out Acknowledgments Index
£17.99
University of Minnesota Press Circuit Listening: Chinese Popular Music in the
Book SynopsisHow the Chinese pop of the 1960s participated in a global musical revolution What did Mao’s China have to do with the music of youth revolt in the 1960s? And how did the mambo, the Beatles, and Bob Dylan sound on the front lines of the Cold War in Asia? In Circuit Listening, Andrew F. Jones listens in on the 1960s beyond the West, and suggests how transistor technology, decolonization, and the Green Revolution transformed the sound of music around the globe.Focusing on the introduction of the transistor in revolutionary China and its Cold War counterpart in Taiwan, Circuit Listening reveals the hidden parallels between music as seemingly disparate as rock and roll and Maoist anthems. It offers groundbreaking studies of Mandarin diva Grace Chang and the Taiwanese folk troubadour Chen Da, examines how revolutionary aphorisms from the Little Red Book parallel the Beatles’ “Revolution,” uncovers how U.S. military installations came to serve as a conduit for the dissemination of Anglophone pop music into East Asia, and shows how consumer electronics helped the pop idol Teresa Teng bring the Maoist era to a close, remaking the contemporary Chinese soundscape forever.Circuit Listening provides a multifaceted history of Chinese-language popular music and media at midcentury. It profiles a number of the most famous and best loved Chinese singers and cinematic icons, and places those figures in a larger geopolitical and technological context. Circuit Listening’s original research and far-reaching ideas make for an unprecedented look at the role Chinese music played in the ’60s pop musical revolution.Trade Review"Circuit Listening challenges our understanding of popular music as a Euro-American hegemony by demonstrating how the Sinophone music industries and markets partook of this global circuit through corporate expansion, as well as through local resistance and piracy. It is a long-awaited book on the way global popular music, in all its diversity, circularity, and promiscuity, should be re-historicized and reconceptualized."—Victor Fan, author of Cinema Approaching Reality: Locating Chinese Film Theory"Andrew F. Jones presents a complex transnational circuit with care and panache, explaining why mambo travels, how the Vietnam War created a demand for pirated recordings, and what Mao quotation songs had in common with British rock-and-roll hits. He guides the reader from transistor technology to rural electrification, from voice timbre to smuggling routes. Circuit Listening is cultural history at its richest."—Gail Hershatter, author of The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China’s Collective Past"Listening is a feast for film buffs."—Shepherd Express"Jones's grasp and analysis of historical materials is impressive. This is an important source and research model for students of Chinese history."—CHOICE"The book is packed with exacting research and close textual decodings of music and films... for Chinese music nerds, Circuit Listening is an absolute must-have."—Taipei TimesTable of ContentsContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction. The East is Red: Towards a Sonic History of the 1960s1. Circuit Listening at the Dawn of the Chinese 1960s2. Quotation Songs: Media Infrastructure and Pop Song Form in Mao’s China3. Fugitive Sounds of the Taiwanese Musical Cinema4. Pirates of the China Seas: Vinyl Records and the Military Circuit5. Folk Circuits: Rediscovering Chen Da6. Teresa Teng and the Network TraceAppendix: “Listening to Songs in the Streets of Taipei” Hsu Tsang-HoueiNotesIndex
£80.00
University of Minnesota Press Gold Experience: Following Prince in the ’90s
Book SynopsisThroughout the 1990s, Prince feuded with his record label, Warner Bros., over his rights as an independent recording artist—and made some of the most brilliant music of his career. During that time, Jim Walsh covered Prince for the St. Paul Pioneer Press and wrote about him passionately, thoughtfully, exhaustively. Here, in real time, is that coverage: a clip-by-clip look back at Prince in the ‘90s. Walsh’s newly unearthed interviews, essays, columns, and reviews make Gold Experience an essential slice of history for fans, scholars, and latecomers to the Minneapolis-born musical genius Prince Rogers Nelson (June 7, 1958–April 21, 2016).Join Walsh at the 1994 NBA All-Star game after party and release bash for the single “The Most Beautiful Girl in the World.” Accompany him to the after-hours clubs Erotic City, Glam Slam, and, of course, Paisley Park. Meet Prince’s wife and bandmate Mayte (and while you’re at it, take in the wedding and reception). Enjoy a two-hour sit-down interview with Prince. Explore Prince’s veganism, talk to fans in line for a Target Center show, preview the “Jam of the Year” concert and check in at the after party. The passions and influences, from Mozart to funk godfather Larry Graham; the gigs and the Paisley Park garage sale; Walsh’s open letter to the artist and his reflections on religion and spirituality. This is Prince as few have seen him, reported as only Jim Walsh can: a portrait of the artist from a dizzying array of angles, captured in living color for all time. Trade Review"Jim Walsh was front and center for one of the most prolific and controversial eras in Prince’s career, and Gold Experience offers an intimate, real-time account of this critical chapter in the evolution of a generation's greatest musician."—Alan Light, music journalist and author of Let’s Go Crazy: Prince and the Making of Purple Rain"A revealing look at Prince and his relentless quest for self-realization and truth during his most fascinating and misunderstood era."—Kevin Cole, Chief Content Officer, Host of the Afternoon Show KEXP"During a controversial era of Prince’s career that left most in the industry cynically scratching their heads and rolling their eyes, Jim Walsh kept a steady hand and a wide-open heart, covering the purple beat with passion, curiosity, and something sorely lacking in most newspaper reports: love. Walsh’s words don’t just sing and dance, they do the splits. It’s easy to envision Prince himself cracking a smile and leaping up to sing along."—Andrea Swensson, host at 89.3 The Current and author of Got to Be Something Here: The Origins of Minneapolis Sound"There was a time when Prince asked Jim, ‘Why are you my only friend in the media?’ You can feel his answer in this collection: Here is the most important artist in Minnesota's history, regularly playing in the middle of the night for 300 people or less, and here's the only reporter open hearted enough—everybody else was referring to TAFKAP as ‘Symbolina’ or worse—to serve as the Boswell of Paisley Park."—Steve Marsh, senior writer, Mpls.St.Paul Magazine"[Gold Experience] is wonderful reading for Prince fans and for those who like solid non-fiction writing and who appreciate the music scene."—Looking for a Good Book"Walsh showcases Prince as a complex musician and individual. As with Prince’s music, this title commands multiple readings and analysis."—Library Journal"Vividly capturing the hope and heartbreak of this waning musical epoch, Walsh’s Gold Experience paints a poignant portrait of the artist formerly known as Prince."—Star Tribune"Gold Experience is full of fascinating details about life with Prince (or, rather, the Artist Then-Formerly Known as Prince) in the '90s."—The Current"Walsh covers the Artist (sometimes known only as a symbol) with a music critic’s expertise and a fan’s unbridled enthusiasm."—Crave Online"Gold Experience is presented in a real-time fashion, bringing the reader back to the ‘90s."—Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder
£14.24
University of Minnesota Press Hungry Listening: Resonant Theory for Indigenous
Book SynopsisWInner of the Best First Book from the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Winner of the Labriola Center American Indian National Book Award Winner of the Ann Saddlemyer Award from the Canadian Association for Theatre ResearchReimagining how we understand and write about the Indigenous listening experienceHungry Listening is the first book to consider listening from both Indigenous and settler colonial perspectives. A critical response to what has been called the “whiteness of sound studies,” Dylan Robinson evaluates how decolonial practices of listening emerge from increasing awareness of our listening positionality. This, he argues, involves identifying habits of settler colonial perception and contending with settler colonialism’s “tin ear” that renders silent the epistemic foundations of Indigenous song as history, law, and medicine. With case studies on Indigenous participation in classical music, musicals, and popular music, Hungry Listening examines structures of inclusion that reinforce Western musical values. Alongside this inquiry on the unmarked terms of inclusion in performing arts organizations and compositional practice, Hungry Listening offers examples of “doing sovereignty” in Indigenous performance art, museum exhibition, and gatherings that support an Indigenous listening resurgence.Throughout the book, Robinson shows how decolonial and resurgent forms of listening might be affirmed by writing otherwise about musical experience. Through event scores, dialogic improvisation, and forms of poetic response and refusal, he demands a reorientation toward the act of reading as a way of listening. Indigenous relationships to the life of song are here sustained in writing that finds resonance in the intersubjective experience between listener, sound, and space. Trade Review"In this brilliant and wide-ranging work, Dylan Robinson refuses to write about anything. Instead he demonstrates what it means at the practical, ethical, and political levels to write relationally with other living beings, including music, sound, belongings, languages, lands, ancestors, and readers. In method and content, Hungry Listening is a challenge to settler colonial sensory and political orders as well as a powerful affirmation of Indigenous thought, practice, and art."—Beth Piatote, author of The Beadworkers and Domestic Subjects"Hungry Listening is a necessary and creative confrontation of the consequences of settler colonialism for Indigenous music and sound territories. Offering a robust critique of inclusionary performance as settler mis-audation, Dylan Robinson forwards a transformative politics of listening, a practice of guest listening that refuses capture and certainty. At once playful and intensely serious, Hungry Listening experiments with affective event scores and forms of direct address to allow readers to imagine approaches to visiting with Indigenous sound and performance."—Eve Tuck, University of Toronto"Dylan Robinson employs a xwélméxw (Stó:lō) reading, listening, and thinking practice to enact a decolonial critique of the ‘sonic encounters’ between Indigenous vocal traditions and Western classical and popular music. Hungry Listening, by one of the field’s most generous, perceptive, visionary, and generative scholars, will be a game changer in the areas of Indigenous, sound, and performance studies."—Michelle Raheja, author of Reservation Reelism: Redfacing, Visual Sovereignty, and Representations of Native Americans in Film"As a form of address, Hungry Listening is profoundly conscious of its multiple audiences, and enacts ethics of appropriate relationship, modeling to readers how musical scholarship can approach Indigenous creators, performers and musics in ways that respect Indigenous sovereignty and value Indigenous creations on their own terms."—Amodern"Robinson manages to pose compelling arguments as to how much first needs to be unsettled whilst establishing the new ground needed for Indigenous sound studies to flourish."—Feminist Review "An exemplary text which forges space for Indigenous epistemological and ontological existence through decolonial critique in the realm of sound studies."—Canadian Association of Music Libraries "Hungry Listening is a powerful piece of listening through reading that not only critiques settler listening but also candidly address the ways in which settler colonialism has impacted Indigenous sonic spaces."—MUSICulturesTable of ContentsContentsIntroductionWriting Indigenous Space1. Hungry ListeningEvent Score for Guest Listening I2.Writing about Musical Intersubjectivityxwélalà:m, Raven Chacon’s Report3. Contemporary Encounters Between Indigenous and Early Music Event Score for those who hold our songs4. Ethnographic Redress, Compositional ResponsibilityEvent Score for Responsibility: “qimmit katajjaq / sqwélqwel tl’ sqwmá:y”5. Feeling ReconciliationEvent Score to ActAcknowledgmentsConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex
£80.00
University of Minnesota Press Got to Be Something Here: The Rise of the
Book SynopsisBeginning in the year of Prince’s birth, 1958, with the recording of Minnesota’s first R&B record by a North Minneapolis band called the Big Ms, Got to Be Something Here traces the rise of that distinctive sound through two generations of political upheaval, rebellion, and artistic passion.Funk and soul become a lens for exploring three decades of Minneapolis and St. Paul history as longtime music journalist Andrea Swensson takes us through the neighborhoods and venues, and the lives and times, that produced the Minneapolis Sound. Visit the Near North neighborhood where soul artist Wee Willie Walker, recording engineer David Hersk, and the Big Ms first put the Minneapolis Sound on record. Across the Mississippi River in the historic Rondo district of St. Paul, the gospel-meets-R&B groups the Exciters and the Amazers take hold of a community that will soon be all but erased by the construction of I-94. From King Solomon’s Mines to the Flame, from The Way in Near North to the First Avenue stage (then known as Sam’s) where Prince would make a triumphant hometown return in 1981, Swensson traces the journeys of black artists who were hard-pressed to find venues and outlets for their music, struggling to cross the color line as they honed their sound. And through it all, there’s the music: blistering, sweltering, relentless funk, soul, and R&B from artists like Maurice McKinnies, Haze, Prophets of Peace, and The Family, who refused to be categorized and whose boundary-shattering approach set the stage for a young Prince Rogers Nelson and his peers Morris Day, André Cymone, Jimmy Jam, and Terry Lewis to launch their careers, and the Minneapolis Sound, into the stratosphere. A visit to Prince’s Paisley Park and a conversation with the artist provide a rare glimpse into his world and an intimate sense of his relationship to his legacy and the music he and his friends crafted in their youth.Trade Review"Got to Be Something Here nails the atmosphere that I grew up in. Clubs, policies, and things that didn’t make sense back then, after reading this book make all the sense in the world. I think anyone who wants to understand musicians who hailed from North Minneapolis needs to read it. There are answers in these pages."—André Cymone"Anyone seeking to understand the community of black culture workers that birthed Prince and his peers should read Andrea Swensson's definitive history of the rise of the Minneapolis sound."—Zaheer Ali, New York University"Prince didn't come from nowhere (though Chanhassen is pretty close!). In Got to Be Something Here, Andrea Swensson explains the roots and context of a musician who changed the world. The book is scholarly and supremely well-researched, but as cool, gripping, and fun as any of his Purple Majesty's finest grooves."—Jim DeRogatis, author and co-host of Public Radio’s Sound Opinions"This is a book that reminds us that culture has no dead ends, only detours."—City Pages"Got to Be Something Here is both an inspiring and an infuriating read."—The Current"Andrea Swensson, is the first major book to discuss the Twin Cities’ unique contributions to African American music; it should go without saying that it comes highly recommended to anyone who reads dance / music / sex / romance."—Princesongs.org"What’s surprising about Got to Be Something Here is how much farther and deeper it goes, how richly detailed it is, how it captures a past at risk of fading away."—MinnPost"An illuminating slice of Twin Cities cultural and political history."—Star Tribune"Andrea Swensson’s new book, Got to Be Something Here: The Rise of the Minneapolis Sound, is a tour de force that sheds light on a greater story that needed telling."—Twin Cities Geek"By combining these political and cultural realities, Swensson provides readers with a comprehensive vision of not only the best in popular music studies but also how individuals within disrupted neighborhoods can survive and prosper nonetheless, making sense, finding relevance, and taking pleasure in their everyday lives."—Minnesota History "As a denizen of the city [Swensson] has a geographical advantage to many writing on Prince and brilliantly draws on local detail." —Matt Thorne, The Social "Got To Be Something Here is an important and necessary book, but it’s also a really fun read. Swensson clearly writes with a lot of knowledge, but also with a lot of love for all of the musicians who toiled away in the Twin Cities without ever getting their proper respect. Hopefully this book will not only educate you, but will inspire you to go listen to a lot of these overlooked gems." —Scratched Vinyl
£14.24
University of Minnesota Press Let Me Take You Down
Book SynopsisThe conception, creation, recording, and significance of the Beatles' Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever John Lennon wrote Strawberry Fields Forever in Almería, Spain, in fall 1966, and in November, in response to that song, Paul McCartney wrote Penny Lane at his home in London. A culmination of what was one of the most life-altering and chaotic years in the Beatles' career, these two songs composed the 1967 double A-side 45 rpm record that has often been called the greatest single in the history of popular music and was, according to Beatles producer George Martin, the best record we ever made. In Let Me Take You Down: Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields Forever, Jonathan Cott recounts the conception and creation of these songs; describes the tumultuous events and experiences that led the Beatles to call it quits as a touring band and redefine themselves solely as recording artists; and details the complex, seventy-hour recording process that produced seven minutes of indelible music. In writing about these songs, he also focuses on them as inspired artistic expressions of two unique ways of experiencing and being in the world, as Lennon takes us down to Strawberry Fields and McCartney takes us back to Penny Lane. In order to gain new vistas and multiple perspectives on these multifaceted songs, Cott also engages in conversation with five remarkable people: media artist Laurie Anderson; guitarist Bill Frisell; actor Richard Gere; Jungian analyst Margaret Klenck; and urban planner, writer, and musician Jonathan F. P. Rose. The result is a wide-ranging, illuminating exploration of the musical, literary, psychological, cultural, and spiritual aspects of two of the most acclaimed songs in rock and roll history.
£17.09
Boydell & Brewer Ltd A Companion to Wagner's Parsifal
Book SynopsisNew essays demonstrating and exploring the abiding fascination of Wagner's controversial work. Richard Wagner's Parsifal remains an inexhaustible yet highly controversial work. This "stage consecration festival play," as the composer described it, represents the culmination of his efforts to bring medieval myth and modern music together in a dynamic relationship. Wagner's engagement with religion--Buddhist as well as Christian--reaches a climax here, as he seeks through artistic means "to rescue the essence of religion by perceiving its mythical symbols . . . according to their figurative value, enabling us to see their profound, hidden truth through idealized representation." The contributors to this collection break fresh ground in exploring the text, the music, andthe reception history of Parsifal. Wagner's borrowings-and departures-from the medieval sources of the Grail legend, Wolfram's Parzival and Chrétien's Perceval, are considered in detail, and the tensional relation of the work to Christianity is probed. New perspectives emerge that bear on the long genesis of the text and music, its affinities to Wagner's earlier works, particularly Tristan und Isolde, and the precise way in which the music was composed. Essays address the work's bold, modernistic musical language and its unprecedented soundscape involving hidden choruses and other unseen sources of sound. The turbulent, astonishing, and sometimes disturbing history of Parsifal performances from 1882 until 2004 is traced in vivid detail for the first time, demonstrating the abiding fascination exerted by this uniquely challenging work of art. Contributors: MaryA. Cicora, James M. McGlathery, Ulrike Kienzle, Warren Darcy, Roger Allen. William Kinderman and Katherine Syer teach at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and often lead study seminars during the Wagner Festival in Bayreuth, Germany.Trade ReviewThis collection of essays makes a major contribution to Parsifal interpretation.... A must read for all Parsifalians. * OPERA TODAY *This marvelous Companion to Parsifal offers something of value to anyone interested in finding out more about Wagner's last work.... * GERMAN QUARTERLY *Kinderman and Syer have effectively succeeded in emulating a Wagnerian quality: to stimulate our appetite for more. * GERMAN STUDIES REVIEW *Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Challenge of Wagner's Parsifal - William Kinderman Medievalism and Metaphysics: The Literary Background for Parsifal - Mary Cicora Erotic Love in Chrétien's Perceval, Wolfram's Parzival, and Wagner's Parsifal - James M McGlathery Parsifal and Religion: A Christian Music-Drama? - Ulrike Kienzle The Genesis of the Music - William Kinderman Unseen Voices: Wagner's Musical-Dramatic Shaping of the Grail Scene of Act 1 - Katherine R. Syer "Die Zeit ist da": Rotational Form and Hexatonic Magic in Act 2 Scene 1 - Warren Darcy Die Weihe des Hauses (The Consecration of the House): Houston Stewart Chamberlain and the Early Reception of ParsifalParsifal - Roger Allen The Production History - Katherine R. Syer
£31.34
Boydell & Brewer Ltd A Companion to Australian Aboriginal Literature
Book SynopsisThis international collection of eleven original essays on Australian Aboriginal literature provides a comprehensive critical companion that contextualizes the Aboriginal canon for scholars, researchers, students, and general readers. Australian Aboriginal literature, once relegated to the margins of Australian literary studies, now receives both national and international attention. Not only has the number of published texts by contemporary Australian Aboriginals risen sharply, but scholars and publishers have also recently begun recovering earlier published and unpublished Indigenous works. Writing by Australian Aboriginals is making a decisive impression in fiction, autobiography, biography, poetry, film, drama, and music, and has recently been anthologized in Oceania and North America. Until now, however, there has been no comprehensive critical companion that contextualizes the Aboriginal canon for scholars, researchers, students, and general readers. This international collection of eleven original essays fills this gap by discussing crucial aspects of Australian Aboriginal literature and tracing the development of Aboriginalliteracy from the oral tradition up until today, contextualizing the work of Aboriginal artists and writers and exploring aspects of Aboriginal life writing such as obstacles toward publishing, questions of editorial control (orthe lack thereof), intergenerational and interracial collaborations combining oral history and life writing, and the pros and cons of translation into European languages. Contributors: Katrin Althans, Maryrose Casey, Danica Cerce, Stuart Cooke, Paula Anca Farca, Michael R. Griffiths, Oliver Haag, Martina Horakova, Jennifer Jones, Nicholas Jose, Andrew King, Jeanine Leane, Theodore F. Sheckels, Belinda Wheeler. Belinda Wheeler is Associate Professor of English at Claflin University, Orangeburg, SC.Trade Review[The editor] and the contributors have used the book's position as one of the only international introductory texts on Australian Aboriginal literature as a gateway to understanding Aboriginal output more broadly. . . . * WASAFIRI *[C]hallenges the very notion of literature itself. . . . [I]nsist[s] on the literary quality and seriousness of Australian Aboriginal texts. . . . [H]ighly recommended. . . . [F]ills a large gap in Asia-Pacific literary and cultural studies. It will be of benefit to teachers and students, artists and critics, scholars and general readers, the indigenous and non-indigenous. * PACIFIC ASIA INQUIRY *This comprehensive anthology gives students and beginning researchers a clear overview of the issues at play in indigenous Australian literature today. . . . Handsomely produced and well indexed, this volume is a substantial contribution to the literature. . . . Highly recommended. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsForeword - Nichola Jose Acknowledgments Introduction: The Emerging Canon - Belinda Wheeler Chronology Indigenous Life Writing: Rethinking Poetics and Practice - Michael R. Griffiths Australian Aboriginal Life Writers and Their Editors: Cross-Cultural Collaboration, Authorial Intention, and the Impact of Editorial Choices - Jennifer Jones Contemporary Life Writing: Inscribing Double Voice in Intergenerational Collaborative Life-Writing Projects - Martina Horakova European Translations of Australian Aboriginal Texts - Danica Cerce and Oliver Haag Tracing a Trajectory from Songpoetry to Contemporary Aboriginal Poetry - Stuart Cooke Rites/Rights/Writes of Passage: Identity Construction in Australian Aboriginal Young Adult Fiction - Jeanine Leane Humor in Contemporary Aboriginal Adult Fiction - Paula Anca Farca White Shadows: The Gothic Tradition in Australian Aboriginal Literature - Katrin Althans Bold, Black, and Brilliant: Aboriginal Australian Drama - Maryrose Casey The "Stolen Generations" in Feature Film: The Approach of Aboriginal Director Rachel Perkins and Others - Theodore F. Scheckels A History of Popular Indigenous Music - Andrew King Notes on the Contributors Note on the Cover Artist Index
£81.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Reading Mahler: German Culture and Jewish
Book SynopsisExamines literary, philosophical, and cultural influences on Mahler's thought and work from the standpoint of the composer's position in German-Jewish culture. Gustav Mahler's music is more popular than ever, yet few are aware of its roots in German literary and cultural history in general, and in fin-de-siècle Viennese culture in particular. Taking as its point of departure the many references to literature, philosophy, and the visual arts that Mahler uses to illustrate the meaning of his music, Reading Mahler helps audiences, critics, and those interested in musical and cultural history understand influences on Mahler's music and thinking that may have been self-evident to middle-class Viennese a hundred years ago but are much more obscure today. It shows that Mahler's oeuvre, despite its reliance on texts and images from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is far more indebted to fin-de-siècle modernism and to an eclectic, proto-avantgardist agenda than has been previously realized. Furthermore, Reading Mahler is the first book to make Mahler's position within German-Jewish culture its analytical center. It also probes Mahler's problematic but often overlooked relationship with the musical and textual legacy of Richard Wagner. By integrating newer approaches in humanistic research - cultural studies, gender studies, and Jewish studies - Reading Mahler exposes the composer's critical view of German cultural history and offers a new understanding of his music. Carl Niekerk is Professor in the Department of German, the Program in Comparative and World Literature, and the Program in Jewish Culture and Society at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.Trade ReviewThought provoking . . . . Should be a part of all serious academic and public classical music collections. * AMERICAN JEWISH LIBRARIES REVIEWS *Although the Mahler literature is extensive and growing, one can find nothing quite like this volume.. Highly recommended. * CHOICE *Carl Niekerk's Reading Mahler is a notable addition to the composer's bibliography because it counters conventional images of Mahler as a 'nostalgic modernist' or a 'neoromanticist' . . . . Niekerk investigates Mahler in a rewarding and challenging way. His study also provides readers with a solid grounding in texts and sources that are not always considered in the field of Mahler studies. MUSICA JUDAICA ONLINE REVIEWS 'Riveting . . . . [A] compelling book, an example of interdisciplinary scholarship at its finest. It is a major contribution to our understanding of this pivotal epoch in Western civilization and represents an invaluable resource for any future research into the period as a whole'. -- Andrew Barker * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW *
£27.89
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Wagner's Ring in 1848: New Translations of The
Book SynopsisMakes available in reliable English translation Wagner's original Siegfried libretto and his early essay on the Nibelung myth. In 1848 Richard Wagner began what would become the largest stage work of his career, the Ring of the Nibelung. In preparation for the task he composed an overview of the Nibelung myth designed to lead to a drama; he then composed the verse "libretto" Siegfried's Death. Although he abandoned the idea of a single opera on Siegfried in favor of the huge project that developed out of it in the succeeding years -- the Ring cycle -- he did consider the two early documents important enough to include them in his collected works. The present volume seeks to inform the English-speaking reader in three ways: by providing modern, reliable translations of the two Wagner texts, which are otherwise not available (the German original is provided on facing pages); by furnishing an overview of German scholarship available to Wagner and others working on the Nibelung legend in the first half of the nineteenth century; and by making available a bibliography of further reading. The volume will be useful to students of musicology, to students and historians of myth and legend, and to all Wagnerians interested in the genesis of the Ring cycle. Accessible to the general reader, it maintains scholarly rigor and provides information about materials not available in English. Edward R. Haymes is Professor in the Department of Modern Languages atCleveland State University.Trade Review[S]omething of a scholarly tour de force of historical exegesis. [Haymes] gives an absorbing and detailed account of how the Nibelung legend became part of the lingua franca of the developing sense of national identity that fed the heady revolutionary fervor of 1848. . . . [S]heds interesting new light on familiar material. . . . In making these primary texts available to the English reader in accessible translations and by giving an overview of German scholarship available to Wagner and others working on the Nibelungen legend in the first half of the nineteenth century, Haymes has done the cause of English-speaking Wagner research an essential and enduring service. * MUSIC & LETTERS *A gem of a book.. The introduction convincingly answers crucial questions Ring enthusiasts are forever asking: Which Icelandic, Old Norse . and Middle High German sources was Wagner familiar with? What sources were in Wagner's own library? Which . contemporary or German Romantic writers may have inspired Wagner? . Excellent English translation. * WAGNER NOTES *Excellent scholarship is evident, yet the book is accessible and interesting to the general reader.. Haymes's footnotes provide a superb bibliography for studies of the Ring. . Recommended. * CHOICE *
£23.74
University of North Texas Press,U.S. All Over the Map: True Heroes of Texas Music
Book SynopsisA lavishly illustrated collection of forty-two profiles of Texas music pioneers, most underrated or overlooked, All Over the Map: True Heroes of Texas Music covers the musical landscape of a most musical state. The first edition was published in 2005 to wide acclaim. This second edition includes updated information, a bonus section of six behind-the-scenes heroes, and fifteen new portraits of Lefty Frizzell, Janis Joplin, and others, spanning such diverse styles as blues, country, hip-hop, conjunto, gospel, rock, and jazz.D.J. Stout and Pentagram designed the reborn edition, with photographer Scott Newton providing portraits. Michael Corcoran has been writing about Texas music for more than thirty years, for the Dallas Morning News and Austin American Statesman, as well as in such publications as Texas Monthly and Spin. These pieces are based on his personal interviews with their subjects as well as in-depth research. Expertly written with flair, the book is a musical waltz across Texas.Trade ReviewA compelling summary of the breadth and depth of Texas music and a fascinating survey of stories and personalities."" - Robert Hardy, author of A Deeper Blue: The Life and Music of Townes Van Zandt ""Corcoran is masterful at incorporating personal narrative into reportage in a way that is both engaging and informative."" - Cathy Brigham, co-editor of Handbook of Texas Music""Corcoran's book is the work of a rock and roll detective . . ."" - Peter Stothard, The Times of London""All Over the Map is indispensable for anyone interested in Texas music or Texas history."" - Eddie Wilson, founder of the Armadillo World Headquarters""All Over the Map tells the story of Texas music that needed to be told, as broad and deep, dark and quirky as the state itself. These are the compelling stories of the artists and individuals who created a musical cultural that defies the usual stereotypes."" - Terry Lickona, producer, Austin City Limits""[Corcoran] profiles 42 Texas acts from, well, all over the state: Janis Joplin and Gatemouth Brown in East Texas, Geto Boys and DJ Screw in Houston, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Butthole Surfers (from 1986) and Calvin Russell in Austin. It's sharp, informative stuff from a guy who well and truly loves this state."" - Austin American-Statesman
£16.96
University of North Texas Press,U.S. For the Sake of the Song: Essays on Townes Van
Book SynopsisAfter he died, Townes Van Zandt found the success that he sabotaged throughout his short life despite the release of sixteen brilliant albums. Since his death, numerous albums both by and in honor of him have been released and many critical articles published, in addition to several books (including Robert Hardy’s A Deeper Blue by UNT Press).For the Sake of the Song collects ten essays on Townes Van Zandt from a variety of approaches. Contributors examine his legacy; his use of the minor key; his reception in the Austin music scene; and an exploration of his relationship with Richard Dobson, with whom he toured as part of the Hemmer Ridge Mountain Boys. An introduction by editors Ann Norton Holbrook and Dan Beller- McKenna provides an overview of Van Zandt’s literary excellence and philosophical wisdom, rare among even the best songwriters.Trade ReviewA tour de force that mirrors Townes’s life and art in spanning the ‘high, low, and in between." - Jason Mellard, author of Progressive Country
£23.96
University of North Texas Press,U.S. Rimsky-Korsakov's Harmonic Theory: Practical
Book SynopsisRimsky-Korsakov’s Harmonic Theory is the first comprehensive study of his concept of harmony that also traces the history of tonal relationships. Larisa P. Jackson describes and examines Rimsky-Korsakov’s distinctive harmonic theory using his Practical Manual of Harmony as a basis, and places it in historical context of nineteenth-century music theory. She explores in great detail a concept of tonal relationships, fundamental to Rimsky-Korsakov’s view of harmony, and relates this to ideas by German theorists of the period and the Russian theoretical tradition.Jackson examines the concept of modulation and of the relationship of keys and presents a model of his tonal space/map extrapolated from his harmonic system. She identifies specific treatises that help to trace ties between German theoretical ideas and Rimsky-Korsakov’s work.Trade Review“This is a significant and interesting piece of research—it makes a noteworthy contribution to the history of music theory and to that of Russian music.”—Richard Taruskin, author of The Oxford History of Western Music and On Russian Music
£23.96
University of North Texas Press,U.S. Beneath Missouri Skies: Pat Metheny in Kansas
Book SynopsisSelected as one of the Best Jazz Books of the Year (2021) by The New York City Jazz Record The New Yorker recently referred to Pat Metheny as “possibly the most influential jazz guitarist of the past five decades.” A native of Lee’s Summit, Missouri, just southeast of Kansas City, Metheny started playing in pizza parlors at age fourteen. By the time he graduated from high school he was the first-call guitarist for Kansas City jazz clubs, private clubs, and jazz festivals. Now 66, he attributes his early success to the local musical environment he was brought up in and the players and teachers who nurtured his talent and welcomed him into the jazz community.Metheny's twenty Grammys in ten categories speak to his versatility and popularity. Despite five decades of interviews, none have conveyed in detail his stories about his teenage years. Beneath Missouri Skies also reveals important details about jazz in Kansas City during the sixties and early seventies, often overlooked in histories of Kansas City jazz. Yet this time of cultural change was characterized by an outstanding level of musicianship.Author Carolyn Glenn Brewer shows how his keen sense of ensemble had its genesis in his school band under the guidance of a beloved band director. Drawn from news accounts, archival material, interviews, and remembrances, to which the author had unique access, Beneath Missouri Skies portrays a place and time from which Metheny still draws inspiration and strength.
£16.96
University Press of Mississippi Africa and the Blues
Book SynopsisIn 1969 Gerhard Kubik chanced to encounter a Mozambican labor migrant, a miner in Transvaal, South Africa, tapping a cipendani, a mouth-resonated musical bow. A comparable instrument was seen in the hands of a white Appalachian musician who claimed it as part of his own cultural heritage. Through connections like these Kubik realized that the link between these two far-flung musicians is African-American music, the sound that became the blues. Such discoveries reveal a narrative of music evolution for Kubik, a cultural anthropologist and ethnomusicologist. Traveling in Africa, Brazil, Venezuela, and the United States, he spent forty years in the field gathering the material for Africa and the Blues. In this book, Kubik relentlessly traces the remote genealogies of African cultural music through eighteen African nations, especially in the Western and Central Sudanic Belt. Included is a comprehensive map of this cradle of the blues, along with 31 photographs gathered in his fieldwork. The author also adds clear musical notations and descriptions of both African and African American traditions and practices and calls into question the many assumptions about which elements of the blues were ""European"" in origin and about which came from Africa. Unique to this book is Kubik's insight into the ways present-day African musicians have adopted and enlivened the blues with their own traditions. With scholarly care but with an ease for the general reader, Kubik proposes an entirely new theory on blue notes and their origins. Tracing what musical traits came from Africa and what mutations and mergers occurred in the Americas, he shows that the African American tradition we call the blues is truly a musical phenomenon belonging to the African cultural world. Gerhard Kubik is a professor in the department of ethnology and African studies at the University of Mainz, Germany. Since 1983 he has been affiliated with the Center for Social Research of Malawi, Zomba. He is a permanent member of the Center for Black Music Research in Chicago and an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, London.
£27.96
University Press of Mississippi Trumpet Records: Diamonds on Farish Street
Book SynopsisElmore James, Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Milton, and James Waller-all of these musical powerhouses furthered their recording careers at a little label on once-thriving Farish Street, the historic black district of Jackson, Mississippi. These blues, gospel, and R&B all-stars are featured in Trumpet Records: Diamonds on Farish Street, the detailed story of this thriving recording label of the mid-1950s. What caused it to spring to life in Jackson? It began in 1949, when a white woman named Lillian McMurry and her husband purchased a hardware store on Farish Street, then a location on the boundary between the city's white and black business and entertainment districts. While taking inventory of the original stock and renovating the building, she discovered a stack of unsold records, including Wynonie Harris's recording of ""All She Wants to Do Is Rock."" Curious, Mrs. McMurry played it on the store's record player and became so inspired that she decided to record more music like it. Thus was born Trumpet Records. The life of the studio was brief, and this book, in careful detail, covers its short history (1951-1956) and includes accounts of recording sessions with its roster of gospel groups, blues musicians, and R&B singers, almost all of them African American. The book also documents McMurry's attempts to fuse country and African American popular music into what would become rock 'n' roll. From interviews, archival recordings, company documents, reviews, photographs, and the assistance of the founder, Marc W. Ryan has compiled the fascinating history of this short-lived but influential company. This new edition of a work recognized in 1993 by the Association for Recorded Sound Collections features an updated discography and bibliography, extensive new documentation, and additional insights into the operations of Trumpet Records. Marc W. Ryan is an independent music scholar living in North San Juan, California. His work has been published in Rolling Stone, Discoveries, and Blues and Rhythm.
£27.96
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Art of Musical Phrasing in the Eighteenth
Book SynopsisPractical suggestions, and documentary evidence, for performers wishing to understand the gestures and nuances embedded in eighteenth-century musical notation. There are, of course, no commas, periods, or question marks in music of the Baroque and Classic eras. Nonetheless, the concept of "punctuating" music into longer and shorter units of expression was richly explored by many of the era's leading composers, theorists, and performers. The Art of Musical Phrasing in the Eighteenth Century gathers and discusses, for the first time, an extensive collection of quotations and musical illustrations relevant tophrase articulation and written and unwritten rests. Among the notable authors cited and discussed are Muffat, Telemann, C. P. E. Bach, Mattheson, Marpurg, Tartini, and Mozart's father Leopold (author of the most important eighteenth-century treatise on string playing). On a larger scale, The Art of Musical Phrasing demonstrates the role of punctuation within the history of rhetoric during the Age of Enlightenment. From this, the performer of todaycan gain a greater appreciation for both the strengths and shortcomings of the analogy that writers of the day drew between punctuation in written language and in music. Modern performers, argues Vial, have the challenge andresponsibility of understanding and conveying the nuances, inflections, and rhythmic gestures deeply embedded in eighteenth-century musical notation. The Art of Musical Phrasing, the fruit of Vial's rich experience as a cellist performing on both period and modern instruments, lays out long-needed practical suggestions for achieving this goal. Stephanie D. Vial performs and records widely as a cellist and has taught at the University ofNorth Carolina at Chapel Hill and Duke University.Trade ReviewAn elegantly collected set of historical texts with the evaluation of their application to real problems in musical performance. But by considering what we used to call 'purely musical' problems in wider philosophical and cultural contexts, the author also raises a number of important and fascinating questions of relevance to more than just performers with an interest in historical approaches. . . . Affords us [the opportunity] to reread -- and rehear -- familiar music in the light of these [eighteenth-century] writings. . . . The delicate web of connections Vial draws . . . [between the details of musical performance and] the female-dominated world of the salon is a real scholarly coup. . . The University of Rochester Press . . . [has] produced a book that is elegant, well indexed and easy to read. -- Thomas Irvine * EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY MUSIC *Student of all music in the Classical style should find useful [Vial's] explanations on how to decipher . . . musical notation. -- Patricia Stroh * BEETHOVEN JOURNAL *The Art of Musical Phrasing in the Eighteenth Century: Punctuating the Classical 'Period' goes right to the heart of one of the thorniest issues of eighteenth-century performance practice: articulated musical language. Vial beautifully disentangles the confusion regarding notions of articulation, pauses, rests, and phrase marks, tying them all together in an all-embracing, brilliant manner. This is inspired scholarship, essential reading. --Malcolm Bilson, Cornell University * . *What exactly is the connection between punctuation, slurring and phrasing? What difference did the Classical period's domination by the two- and four-bar phrase make to performance practices that had once varied more between the genres?. . . Ms Vial touches in a lively manner on such topics, scattering her net wide. . . Certain details important for performers. . . are better discussed in a masterclass than a book, but the rest is amply covered [here]. -- Peter Williams * MUSICAL TIMES *Provides the reader with insights into how eighteenth-century artists may have approached their performances. . . . Vial's imaginative discussions . . . are inspired and will be of interest to any performer of the music of this era . . . [and to] musicologists, theorists, and cultural historians. -- Donald R. Boomgaarden * JOURNAL OF MUSICOLOGICAL RESEARCH *Table of ContentsMusical Punctuation, the Analogy A Surprisingly Complex and Lively Picture of Pointing Theory Musical "Resting points of the Spirit" Written and Unwritten Rests Punctuation vs. Articulation Affective Punctuation Musical Prose-F.W. Marpurg's Essay on the Punctuation of Recitative Musical Verse-Johann Mattheson's "Curious Specimen" of a Punctuated Minuet
£99.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Concert Music, Rock, and Jazz since 1945: Essays
Book SynopsisInterdisciplinary articles bridge the gulf between classical and popular music. Modern musical-analytical techniques are applied to a wide range of Western music, disregarding barriers between different kinds of music. Topics discussed fall into three sections: compositional poietics (poietics being the pre-compositional activities of composer theorists); structuralist approaches, extending musical-theoretical research to new repertoires; and musical-analysis employing techniques from other disciplines. The essays in this volume present current research into a wide range of Western music, disregarding barriers between different kinds of music, and drawing on modern musical-analytical techniques to draw together the varied subjects they explore. Contributors: Jonathan D. Kramer, Robert Cogan, Robert D. Morris, Andrew Mead, Cynthia Folio, Elizabeth West Marvin, Walter Everett, Jane Piper Clendenning, Jonathan W. Bernard, Ellie M. Hisama, Dave Headlam, Richard Hermann, John Covach, Nicholas J. Cook. Elizabeth West Marvin is associate professor of music theory at the Eastman School of Music. Richard Hermann is assistant professor of music, University of New Mexico.Table of ContentsBeyond Unity: Toward an Understanding of Musical Postmodernism The Art-Science of Music after Two Millennia Aspects of Confluence between Western Art Music and Ethnomusicoloy Twelve-Tone Composition and the Music of Elliott Carter An Analysis of Polyrhythm in Selected Improvisd Jazz Solos A Generalization of Contour Theory to Diverse Musical Spaces: Analytical Applications to the Music of Dallapiccola and StockhausenStockhausen A Generalization of Contour Theory to diverse Musical Spaces: Analytical Applications to the Music ofDdallapiccola and StockhausenStockhausen The Beatles as Composers: The Genesis of Abbey Road, Side Two Structural Factors in the Microcanonic Compositions of Gyorgy Ligeti Theory, Analysis, and the "Problem" of Minimal Music The Question of Climax in Ruth Crawford's String Quartet, Mvt. 3 Does the Song Remain the Same? Questions of Authorship and Identification in the Music of Led Zeppelin Theories of Chordal Shape, Aspects of Linguistics, and their Roles in Structuring Berio's Sequenza IV for Piano Stylistic Competencies, Musical Satire, and "This is Spinal Tap" Music Theory and the Postmodern Muse: An Afterword
£36.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Music of American Folk Song: and Selected
Book SynopsisThis is the first complete publication of the late composer and scholar Ruth Crawford Seeger's major work on American folksongs. It preserves them as well as demonstrates how they should be played so that they remain a living partof the American musical tradition. This is the first publication of an annotated monograph by the noted composer and folksong scholar Ruth Crawford Seeger. Originally written as a foreword for the 1940 book Our Singing Country, it was considered too longand was replaced by a much shorter version. According to her stepson, Pete Seeger, when the original was not included "Ruth suffered one of the biggest disappointments of the last ten years of her life. It just killed her . . .She was trying to analyze the whole style and problem of performing this music." Along with her children Mike and Peggy Seeger, he has long desired to see this work in print as it was meant to be read. The manuscript hasbeen edited from several varying sources by Larry Polansky, with the assistance of Seeger's biographer Judith Tick. It is divided into two sections: I. "A Note on Transcription" and II. "Notes on the Songs and on Manners of Singing." Seeger examines all aspects of the relationship between singer, song, notation, the eventual performer, and the transcriber. In Section I, Seeger develops a complex and well-organized system of notation for these songs which is meant to be both descritive [transcription as cultural preservation] and prescriptive [she intended that others would be able to perform these songs]. In Section II, she provides an interpretive theory for performance of this music, and suggests how performers might make the songs "their own" through a deep knowledge of the original styles. Ruth Crawford Seeger considered this work to be both a major accomplishment and a central statement of herownideas on the topic. Larry Polansky is Associate Professor of Music at Dartmouth College, and a well-known composer and theorist on American music. Judith Tick is Professor of Music at Northeastern University and author of the first major biography of Ruth Crawford Seeger.Trade ReviewThis volume should find a place in every serious folk music fan's library. It's certainly a fitting legacy from so gifted and encompassing an intelligence as Ruth Crawford Seeger's. * SING OUT, Winter 2004 *Table of ContentsA Note on Transcription Notes on the Songs and on Manners of Singing
£25.19
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Theories of Fugue from the Age of Josquin to the
Book SynopsisFew bodies of Western music are as widely respected, studied, and emulated as the fugues of Johann Sebastian Bach. Despite the esteem which Bach's contributions brought to the genre, however, the origin and early history of the fugue remain poorly understood. Theories of Fugue from the Age of Josquin to the Age of Bach addresses both the history and methodology of the pre-Bach fugue (from roughly 1500 to 1700), and, of greatest significance to the literature, it seeks to present a way out of the methodological dilemma of uncertainty which has plagued previous scholarly attempts by considering what musicians of the time had to say about the fugue: what it was, what it was not, how important it was, and where and how a composer should (or shouldn't) use it. Paul Mark Walker is director of the Early Music Ensemble at the University of Virginia and an expert on the history of the fugue.Trade ReviewWinner of the 2002 William H. Scheide Prize, from the American Bach Society, for a publication of exceptional merit on Bach or figures in his circle. * . *Significant contribution to our better understanding of the history of fugues. * BACH BIBLIOGRAPHY *An important addition to the literature on the history of musical forms. * CHOICE *This is a fine and valuable book, encyclopaedic in its coverage of the subject, and the only treatment (in any language) of the entire field. It is an extraordinary achievement. * MUSIC & LETTERS *Lucidly and engagingly written...this book is an outstanding contribution to scholarship and a definitive work, indispensable for the historical study of fugue. * THE AMERICAN ORGANIST *Anyone interested in the fascinating topic of the emergence of the Baroque will find this book a wlecome addition to the overall picture of that important period of musical history. * AMERICAN RECORDER *Table of ContentsFugue in the High Renaissance Fugue at the End of the Renaissance, Part I: Italy and the Netherlands Fugue at the End of the Renaissance, Part II: Germany German Theory During the Thirty Years War: Fugue in Latin School Music Texts Italian Influence on German Fugal Theory, 1640-1680 Instrumental Fugue and the Emergence of Fugal Structure in the Third Quarter of the Seventeenth Century Invertible Counterpoint and the Hamburg Circle of Theorists Fugal Theory, 1680-1710 Fugal Theory in German Lexicographic Texts Fugal Theory, 1710-1740; Mattheson and Fux
£45.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Wagner's Meistersinger: Performance, History,
Book SynopsisA volume of collected essays which engage Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg from the perspective of both active performers and academics in a wide range of disciplines. Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg has been one of the most performed operas ever since its premiere in 1868. It was adopted as Germany's national opera ("Nationaloper"), not least because of its historical coincidence with the unification of Germany under Bismarck in 1871. The first section of this volume, "Performing Meistersinger," contains three commissioned articles from internationally respected artists - a conductor (Peter Schneider), a stage director (Harry Kupfer) and a singer (Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau), all experienced in the performance of this unusually demanding 5-hour work. The second section, "Meistersinger and History," examines both the representation of German history in the opera and the way the opera has functioned in history through political appropriation and staging practice. The third section, "Representations," is the most eclectic, exploring in the first place the problematic question of genre from the perspective of a theatrical historian. The chronic issue of Wagner's chief opponent, Eduard Hanslick, and his musical and dramatic representation in the opera as Beckmesser, is then addressed, as are gender issues, and Wagner's own utterances concerning the opera. Contributors: Nicholas Vazsonyi, Peter Schneider, Harry Kupfer, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Hans Rudolf Vaget, Lutz Koepnick, David B. Dennis, Klaus Van Den Berg, Thomas S. Grey, Lydia Goehr, Eva Rieger, Peter Höyng. Nicholas Vazsonyi is associate professor of German and comparative literature, University of South Carolina.Trade ReviewIntellectually speaking, this is a delicious tome . . . an indispensable book. Vazsonyi, Rochester University Press, and the individual essayists are to be roundly congratulated on an outstanding contribution to Wagnerian scholarship. WAGNER NOTES, Wagner Society of NY * . *This superb volume of essays . . . [is] the best ever published on 'Die Meistersinger' . . . a book that demands to be read by anyone interested in the politics of opera. -- Barry Millington * BBC MUSIC MAGAZINE *A wonderfully wide-reaching introduction to the extensive field of 'Meistersinger' scholarship. * CHOICE *Nicholas Vazsonyi has organized a collection of new writings whose eleven authors keep the reader up to date with this abundant literature. More than that, the diverse contributors he has chosen complement one another . . . what results is a book that fulfills its underlying interdisciplinary aim. For readers seriously interested in Wagner it will be both instructive and absorbing. * THE OPERA *Nicholas Vazsonyi has assembled a collection of essays that deal with aspects of the opera not necessarily addressed elsewhere, affirming the continuing relevance of the work. This book offers a collection of interdisciplinary studies that should supplement some of the more traditional literature on this seminal work by Wagner. * MONATSHEFTE, 2006 *Table of Contents"Climbing Mount Everest": On Conducting Die Meistersinger - Peter Schneider "We Must Finally Stop Apologizing for Die Meistersinger!": A Conversation with Harry Kupfer - Harry Kupfer Richard Wagner's Cobbler Poet - Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau The Dangers of Satisfaction: On Songs, Rehearsals, and Repetition in Die Meistersinger - Stereoscopic Vision: Sight and Community in Die Meistersinger - Lutz Koepnick "The Most German of All German Operas": Die Meistersinger through the Lens of the Third Reich - David B. Dennis http://worldwidewagner.richard.de: An Interview with the Composer concerning History, Nation, and Die Meistersinger - Peter Höyng Die Meistersinger as Comedy: The Performative and Social Signification of Genre - Klaus van den Berg Masters and Their Critics: Wagner, Hanslick, Beckmesser, and Die Meistersinger - Thomas Grey "Du warst mein Feind von je": The Beckmesser Controversy Revisited - Hans Rudolf Vaget "I Married Eva": Gender Construction and Die Meistersinger - Eva Rieger
£34.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd The Rosary Cantoral: Ritual and Social Design in
Book SynopsisUnlocks the secrets behind the images and music of an important Spanish musical manuscript compiled for a brotherhood of suspected heretics ca. 1500. The Rosary Cantoral is a rare and beautifully decorated manuscript of Latin plainchant for the Catholic Mass compiled in Toledo, Spain, around the year 1500. In an engaging and richly interdisciplinary essay, Lorenzo Candelaria approaches the Rosary Cantoral as a cultural artifact, unlocking the secrets behind its images and music to reveal the social history and rituals of an elite brotherhood dedicated to the rosary and aspects of the religious communityit served: the Dominicans of San Pedro Mártir de Toledo. The Rosary Cantoral: Ritual and Social Design in a Chantbook from Early Renaissance Toledo presents a model for realizing the fuller significance of illuminatedmusic manuscripts as cultural artifacts and offers unprecedented insights into the social and devotional life of Toledo, Spain, around the turn of the sixteenth century. After solving the mystery of the Rosary Cantoral's origins,subsequent essays probe the meaning and cultural significance of the manuscript's iconography (including a border decoration after Albrecht Dürer), its rare Spanish chants for the Mass, and two striking musical works for multiplevoices (one by Josquin Desprez and another on "L'homme armé"). Ultimately, this book focuses on the extraordinary circumstances that engendered the compilation of the Rosary Cantoral around 1500: a system of patronage between a brotherhood of suspected heretics and a religious house that was a key supporter of the Inquisition in Toledo. Lorenzo Candelaria (University of Texas at Austin) is co-author of American Music: A Panorama.Trade ReviewWinner of the American Musicological Society's Robert M. Stevenson Award for Outstanding Scholarship in Iberian Music, 2009 * . *A real page-turner. . . Illustrates how an interdisciplinary approach is essential if we are to take our understanding of the randomly preserved remnants of cultural history to a new and higher level. -- Tess Knighton * MUSIC & LETTERS *Scholars such as [Candelaria], informed, analytical and well-balanced, deserve to reach as large a number of the interested academic world as possible. -- Leonard R. N. Ashley * BIBLIOTHEQUE D'HUMANISME ET RENAISSANCE *[An] impressive piece of historical detection...which successfully straddles the concerns of liturgy, polyphony, and manuscript illumination. [It] will stand as an intriguing contribution to a much-overlooked field. -- Iain Fenlon * AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW *The scope of the book. . . . makes this valuable reading for scholars in a wide variety of disciplines, while its lucid and clear writing style makes it accessible to anyone interested in Spanish cultural history, liturgy, or medieval and early-modern studies. -- James Boyce O.Carm. * SPECULUM *The author is to be applauded for shining a much-needed spotlight on the vast corpus of similar Spanish and New World cantorales that until very recently have been regarded as 'of very little interest'. -- Michael Noone * MUSIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION NOTES *Few [interdisciplinary] studies have been more compelling. . . . [Candelaria] is equally at home when dealing with the finer points of art history or the sometimes murky nature of the antiquities market. . . . [He] crafts a story that rivals good detective fiction. It even has a surprise at the end that involves the dark halls of the Spanish Inqusition. -- Michael B. O'Connor * RENAISSANCE QUARTERLY *The book is in many ways a detective story which identifies the MS's provenance and function by fascinating and devious approaches: I won't try to summarise it and spoil the story. . . . This study throws light not only on this particular MS but on the usage of the Rosary in Spanish politics and history. And there is a moral for art historians studying MSS with music and vice-versa: see beyond your own discipline. -- Clifford Bartlett * EARLY MUSIC REVIEW *. . . one of the most attractive and intriguing books on Spanish music history to reach the market. . . It is thoroughly to be recommended. -- Bernadette Nelson * EARLY MUSIC *Table of ContentsThe Mystery of the Rosary Cantoral San Pedro Mártir de Toledo "El Cavaller de Colunya": A Legend of the Rosary The Emblem of the Five Wounds Hercules and Albrecht Dürer's Das Meerwunder Roses for the Blessed Virgin: The Music The Confraternity of Toledo and Its Patronage
£81.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds: Innovation and
Book SynopsisInterdisciplinary perspectives on the life and work of the esteemed "ultra-modern" American composer and pioneering folk music activist, Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953). Ruth Crawford Seeger's Worlds offers new perspectives on the life and pioneering musical activities of American composer and folk music activist Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953). Ruth Crawford developed a unique modernist style with such now-esteemed works as her String Quartet 1931. In 1933, after marrying Charles Seeger, she turned to the work of teaching music to children and of transcribing, arranging, and publishing folk songs. Thiscollection of studies by musicologists, music theorists, folklorists, historians, music educators, and women's studies scholars reveals how innovation and tradition have intertwined in surprising ways to shape the cultural landscape of twentieth-century America. Contributors: Lyn Ellen Burkett, Melissa J. De Graaf, Taylor A. Greer, Lydia Hamessley, Bess Lomax Hawes, Jerrold Hirsch, Roberta Lamb, Carol J. Oja, Nancy Yunhwa Rao, Joseph N. Straus,Judith Tick. Ray Allen (Brooklyn College) is author of Singing in the Spirit: African-American Sacred Quartets in New York City. Ellie M. Hisama (Columbia University) is author of Gendering Musical Modernism: The Music of Ruth Crawford Seeger, Marion Bauer, and Miriam Gideon.Trade ReviewBroad intellectual sweep. . . . Raises questions of great importance to folklorists. . . . Fine scholarship and often elegant writing -- a model of verbal clarity and intellectual complexity. I would recommend this book to anyone interested in twentieth-century American music. -- Jean R. Freedman * JOURNAL OF AMERICAN FOLKLORE *Fresh and perceptive. . . . These important chapters [i.e., the whole book] advance feminist musicology by venturing into the lion's den of binary thinking that seems to have shaped Ruth Crawford Seeger's life and work so fundamentally. -- Beverley Diamond * WOMEN & MUSIC *Hisama, Tick, Straus, and Rao. . . address reception and performance history and offer detailed analysis that points toward a clearer assessment of compositional innovations and Seeger's independent and creative brilliance. . . . Chapters about Mike Seeger and Peggy Seeger are especially welcome. -- J. Michele Edwards * CHOICE *The level of scholarship is impeccable with solid writing throughout. . . . Those interested in American musical culture, feminism, modernist composition, or folk music will greatly appreciate its multiple perspectives and sophistication. -- Sharon Mirchandani * NOTES, March 2008 *This collection does full justice to the breadth of Crawford Seeger's accomplishments. Writers with backgrounds in music theory, education, folklore, history, and women's studies take various viewpoints. . . . There are thorough notes, score samples, a discography and a detailed index. The beautiful jacket, binding and endpapers seem fitting. -- Pamela Margles * WHOLENOTE *Well-written and insightful. * SING OUT *Pursues in depth the documentary context relevant to Crawford Seeger. . . . Salutary and poignant reading. -- Arnold Whittall * MUSIC & LETTERS *What a joy to finally be able to read a set of intelligent essays about Ruth Crawford Seeger's pieces, theoretical ideas, and folk music scholarship. It might be said that all scholarship on Ruth Crawford is, by definition, too late. But with this collection we are a bit closer to catching up. --Larry Polansky, Jacob H. Strauss Professor of Music, Dartmouth College, and editor of Ruth Crawford Seeger's 'The Music of American Folk Song' and Selected Other Writings on American Folk Music * . *Table of ContentsWriting the Music of Ruth Crawford into Mainstream Music History - Judith Tick Ruth Crawford's Precompositional Strategies - Joseph N. Straus Linear Aggregates and Proportional Design in Ruth Crawford's Piano Study in Mixed Accents - Lyn Burkett In Pursuit of a Proletarian Music: Ruth Crawford's "Sacco, Vanzetti" - Ellie M. Hisama The Receptioin of an Ultramodernist: Ruth Crawford in the Composers' Forum - Melissa J. de Graaf Ruth Crawford's Imprint on Contemporary Composition - Nancy Yunhwa Rao Reminiscences on Our Singing Country: The Crawford Seeger/ Lomax Alliance - Bess Lomax Hawes Philosophical Counterpoint: A Comparison of Charles Seeger's Compositioin Treatise and Ruth Crawford Seeger's Folk Song AppendixAppendix - Taylor A. Greer Composing and Teaching as Dissonant Counterpoint - Roberta Lamb "Cultural Strategy": The Seegers and B.A. Botkin as Friends and Allies - Jerrold Hirsch Performing Dio's Legacy: Mike Seeger and the Urban Folk Music Revival - Ray Allen, Book Reviews Peggy Seeger: From Traditional Folksinger to Contemporary Songwriter - Lydia Hamessley
£89.25
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Music in German Immigrant Theater: New York City,
Book SynopsisA history -- the first ever -- of the abundant traditions of German-American musical theater in New York, and a treasure trove of songs and information. Nineteenth-century New York was, after Berlin and Vienna, the third largest German-populated city in the world. German-language musical plays and light operas held an important niche in the lives of German immigrants and their families. John Koegel's Music in German Immigrant Theater: New York City, 1840-1940, tells, for the first time, the engrossing story of these theater works, and the many musical numbers from them that became popular as separate songs. Koegel documents performances, in German, of plays by Shakespeare and Goethe and operas by Offenbach, Verdi, and Johann Strauss. And he draws long-needed attention to German-American musical comedies written, beginning in the 1890s, by ethnic parodist Adolf Philipp. As their titles suggest -- Der Corner Grocer aus der Avenue A and Der Pawnbroker von der Eastside -- these musicals related directly to the daily experiences of theimmigrant population. Music in German Immigrant Theater is enriched by copious photographs, sheet-music title pages, and musical examples, as well as numerous sets of song lyrics -- some uproarious, others touching --in German and in English translation. The accompanying CD includes recordings of many of the songs discussed in the book. John Koegel is Professor of Musicology at California State University, Fullerton. WINNER - 2009 ForeWord Reviews' Book of the Year Award, music category. This book is also included in the AAUP's 2010 University Press Books Selected for Public and Secondary School Libraries along with a number of other URP books.Trade Review[M]agnificent and substantial . . . reveals long-forgotten legacies of shows, theaters, impresarios, composers, conductors, and performers. . . . The prose is lively, and many well-produced illustrations [including portraits, production photos, images of theaters, and sheet-music covers] add to the book's charm. . . . A twenty-track CD made expressly for the book allows the reader to hear gems from the repertory described in the prose. . . . Will be of interest to musicologists, theater, cultural, and immigrant historians, . . . German-studies scholars [and] a broader readership. -- William K. Kearns * AMERICAN MUSIC *A stunning model of empirical research. . . . Its wealth of detail will offer scholars an invaluable resource for many years to come. -- Nancy Newman * MUSIC LIBRARY ASSOCIATION NOTES *Broadly conceived, superbly researched, and elegantly written. . . . Beautifully produced, with over ninety illustrations. . . . The fundamental explication of a particularly long-lasting and influential tradition in our theatrical history. -- Stephen Ledbetter * JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR AMERICAN MUSIC *Thanks to John Koegel's magnificent and substantial tome, long-overdue light is shed on . . . long-forgotten legacies of shows, theaters, impresarios, composers, conductors, and performers. . . . The prose is lively, and many well-produced illustrations . . . add to the book's charm. . . . [The CD] allows the reader to hear gems from the repertory described in the prose. . . -- William A. Everett * AMERICAN MUSIC *Deep-delving. . . . Readable and entertaining. . . . A tour guide down a forgotten byway of the American immigrant experience, where life, at least sometimes, really was a cabaret. -- John W. Freeman * OPERA NEWS *From the foreword: Koegel's palette is rich, his canvas, huge: the reader will see both the forest and its trees. -- Peter Conolly-Smith, Queens College, City University of New YorkKoegel's book, with its numerous illustrations, takes its place in the pantheon of basic literature about the wondrous history of New York theatre. -- Miles Kreuger, president, The Institute of the American MusicalPacked with information. . . . The research that has gone into this volume is formidable. . . . Lively and elegant excerpts from these musical plays that are featured on a CD accompanying this volume [make one] wish that such works . . . still had a stage life. -- Simon Williams * JOURNAL OF MUSICOLOGICAL RESEARCH *Table of ContentsGerman American Theater and Society Early Struggles, Operatic Beginnings, and the Development of the German Theater in New York City, 1840-1872 Musical Farce and Folk Play at the Germania Theater, 1872-1883 Ethnic Spaces: Theatrical Entertainments in German Beer Gardens and Concert Halls An Orgy of Operetta: The Thalia and Amberg Theaters, 1879-1893 Drama on a Higher Plane: The Irving Place Theater, 1893-1918 German American Performers The "Dutch" Act: German American Theatrical and Literary Representations Philipp's Germania Theater Musical Comedies, 1893-1902 The German American Musical Abroad: Philipp in Berlin, 1903-1907 From Klein Deutschland to Broadway: Philipp's Works, 1907-1914 Divided Loyalties: World War I and Its Aftermath The Decline of the German American Stage in the 1920s and 1930s Appendixes Archives and Collections Consulted Key to Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Index
£90.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Opera and Ideology in Prague: Polemics and
Book SynopsisAn overview of the history of the Prague musical community from 1900 until the end of democracy in 1938, with attention to polemics about "Czechness" and "modernism." This study presents a history and analysis of the Prague musical community from 1900 until the end of democracy in 1938. Opera and Ideology in Prague not only narrates the fascinating history of a local musical community but also reveals much about music and culture in Europe. The fin-de-siècle period was dominated by the musicologist Zdenek Nejedly's polemics regarding the competing "legacies" of Smetana and Dvorák and the merits of modernism.After Czech independence in 1918, a new generation of musicians accepted modernist foreign influences only with extreme hesitation. The 1926 Prague premiere of Berg's opera Wozzeck and the ascendancy of a young groupof avant-garde composers changed the cultural climate entirely, providing new ground for the exploration of jazz, neo-classicism, quarter tones, and socialist music. As the Czechoslovak Republic drew to a close, a resurgence of nationalism appeared in the musical expressions of both Czechs and German-Bohemians. The analyses of operas and tone poems by Novák, Ostrcil, Zich, Jeremiás, Hába, Kricka, and Suk provide a cross-section of musical life in early twentieth-century Prague, as well as a series of interpretations of Czech cultural identity. Populist endeavors such as jazz and neo-classicism represented some of the ways in which composers of the 1930s attempted to regain anaudience alienated by modernism: in this respect, the trends in Prague mirrored those of the rest of Europe. Brian Locke is Assistant Professor of Music History at Western Illinois University, Macomb. He has written extensively on twentieth-century music, including Czech operatic and symphonic works and Alban Berg's Wozzeck.Trade ReviewA most impressive achievement and a major work of scholarship of the period. There is nothing in any language that quite matches its range and depth. -- John Tyrrell * TWENTIETH-CENTURY MUSIC *Meticulously detailed. . . . [Locke shows] where Czech Modernism fits into the European landscape. . . . Besides treating in great detail . . . the main aesthetic and ideological debates of the Prague musical community, Locke provides extensive description and analysis of nine works that played an important role in the formation of Czech Modernism [by Novak, Suk, and others]. -- Harlow Robinson * SLAVIC AND EAST EUROPEAN JOURNAL *This excellent study connects historical opinion with the music and brings us closer to understanding the impact of critical reviews on the development of musical style in east central Europe. , Spring 2008 -- William Smialek * SLAVIC REVIEW *At last we have a book that situates Prague properly at the forefront of the modernist music movement. Through a probing analysis of the heated press debates that occasioned the premieres of greater and lesser Czech operas, Brian Locke demonstrates that Prague, the amorphous capital of an amorphous nation, served as fertile ground for the cultivation of universal -- not provincial -- concepts of musical nationalism. The book greatly refines our understanding of the careers of Smetana, Dvorák, Janácek, and Martinu, while also documenting the astonishing impact of the music critic and politician Zdenek Nejedly on Czech culture. -- -- Simon Morrison, Associate Professor of Music, Princeton UniversityThis is truly a landmark book, filling a gap in our knowledge and understanding of early twentieth-century Czech music and culture, and, in the process, illuminating events in the rest of Europe and in America. The author relates this fascinating account with an engaging style that makes one eager to read on. The music (including a good number of in-depth analyses), the political intrigues, the main characters and events -- all are presented with clarity and style based on solid research. -- -- Timothy Cheek University of Michigan, author of Singing in Czech: A Guide to Czech Lyric Diction and Vocal RepertoireTable of ContentsIntroduction: Nationalism, Modernism, and the Social Responsibility of Art in Prague Smetana, Hostinsky, and the Aesthetic Debates of the Nineteenth Century Legacies, Ideologies, and Responsibilities: The Polemics of the Pre-Independence Years (1900-1918) "Archetypes Who Live, Rejoice, and Suffer": Czech Opera in the Fin de Siecle The Pathology of the New Society: Debates in the Early Years of the First Republic (1918-24) Infinite Melody, Ruthless Polyphone: Czech Modernism in the Early Republic "A Crisis of Modern Music or Audience?" Changing Attitudes to Cultural and Stylistic Pluralism (1925-30) "I Have Rent My Soul in Two": Divergent Directions for Czech Opera in the Late 1920s Heaven on Earth: Socialism, Jazz, and a New Aesthetic Focus (1930-38) "A Sad Optimism, the Happiness of the Resigned": Extremes of Operatic Expression in the 1930s The Ideological Debates of Prague Within a European Context
£114.00
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Intimate Voices: The Twentieth-Century String
Book SynopsisLeading authorities explore, in direct and accessible language, chamber-music masterpieces by twenty-one prominent composers since 1900. Modern composers as diverse as Béla Bartók, Maurice Ravel, Benjamin Britten, and John Cage have confided some of their most personal and intense thoughts to the medium of the string quartet. The resulting repertoire has won the allegiance of string players-and of listeners in the concert hall and at home. Yet, until now, no book has addressed the language of these remarkable works, their interactions with the masterpieces of Beethoven and others, and theirnew approaches to musical expression. Intimate Voices, organized in rough chronological order, offers the observations and intuitions of leading authorities on quartets by twenty-one composers from eleven countries. Its two volumes-available separately or together-comprise an indispensable guide to amateur and professional chamber musicians, scholars, students, and anyone seeking a deeper acquaintance with the great achievements of twentieth-century music. Edited by Evan Jones, Associate Professor of Music Theory, Florida State University College of Music.Trade ReviewIn November 2010 Intimate Voices won the Society for Music Theory's Citation of Special Merit. This citation is awarded to 'editions, translations, reference works, or edited volumes of extraordinary value to the discipline.' The citation states: '[Intimate Voices] examines the string quartets of composers from Claude Debussy through Shulamit Ran, and including those of Berg, Bartok, Schoenberg, Prokofiev, Ligeti, Cage, Britten, Carter, Berio, and others. The twenty different contributing authors provide multiple analytical voices, resulting in a contrapuntal conversation much like the string quartet medium under review. * . *Superb. . . . A unified and eminently readable narrative. . . . The most thorough, authoritative and comprehensive study of modern chamber music. . . . Standards of production are up to the publisher's usual high standards. . . . Each contributor skilfully, sensitively and intelligently . . . sets the music s/he is considering in the widest historical and musical context. . . . Useful reading for players as well as listeners, composers and others. CLASSICALNET [Mark Sealey] Read the complete review at . * . *A magnificent sweep through many key works in twentieth-century musical history. -- Michael Russ, See full review at http://www.music.ucc.ie/jsmi/index.php/jsmi/article/view/84/93 * JOURNAL OF THE SOCIETY FOR MUSIC IN IRELAND *Intimate Voices takes us on a kaleidoscopic ride through a century of string quartets. Players, historians, and theorists alike will appreciate the deeply musical commitment of twenty major writers exploring this medium, from Debussy to modern American, with composers such as Bartók and Scelsi in the same optic, through evidence-based music analysis in a social context. It is a Herculean project, superbly executed by editor Evan Jones. -, professor of music theory, Eastman School of Music -- Jonathan DunsbyA broad collection of serious essays about music in a medium that is very much alive. . . . There is something here for everyone, not just specialists in musical analysis. . . . It is also good that the work of several composers whose quartets are not often heard-Carter's, Scelsi's, Powell's, and Ran's-are brought to our attention. . . . Each [essay] has something interesting to say about the medium and the music and how we can talk about it. * FANFARE *Table of ContentsThe String Quartets of Debussy and Ravel - Marianne Wheeldon Sibelius's "Internal Voices": Structure and Process in the Quartet in D Minor (Voces Intimae), Op. 56 - Joseph C. Kraus The Pitch Language of the Bartók Quartets - Joseph N. Straus The String Quartet in the Music of Paul Hindemith - David Neumeyer Comprehensibility, Variation, and the String Quartet Tradition: The Second Movement of Arnold Schoenberg's Third Quartet, Op. 30 - Matthew R. Shaftel Process in the String Quartets of Alban Berg - David Headlam Webern's Music for String Quartet - David Clampitt Villa-Lobos's String Quartets - Eero Tarasti Appropriate Tradition: The String Quartets of Sergei Prokofiev, Opp. 50 and 92 - Neil Minturn
£89.25
Boydell & Brewer Ltd Schubert in the European Imagination, Volume 1:
Book SynopsisHow Franz Schubert and his compositions were viewed in nineteenth-century European criticism, literature, and the visual arts, from Schumann to George Eliot to Whistler. In Schubert in the European Imagination, Volume 1: The Romantic and Victorian Eras, Scott Messing examines the historical reception of Franz Schubert as conveyed through the gendered imagery and language of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century European culture. The concept of Schubert as a feminine type vaulted into prominence in 1838 when Robert Schumann described the composer's Mädchencharakter ("girlish" character), by contrast to the purportedly more masculine, more heroic Beethoven. What attracted Schumann to Schubert's music and marked it as feminine is evident in some of Schumann's own works that echo those of Schubert's in intriguing ways. Schubert's supposedly feminine quality acted upon the popular consciousness also through the writers and artists -- in German-speaking Europe but also in France and England -- whose fictional characters perform and hear Schubert'smusic. The figures discussed include Musset, Sand, Nerval, Maupassant, George Eliot, Henry James, Beardsley, Whistler, Storm, Fontane, and Heinrich and Thomas Mann. Over time, Schubert's stature became inextricably entwinedwith concepts of the distinct social roles of men and women, especially in domestic settings. For a composer whose reputation was principally founded upon musical genres that both the public and professionals construed as most suitable for private performance, the lure to locate Schubert within domestic spaces and to attach to him the attributes of its female occupants must have been irresistible. The story told is not without its complications, as this book reveals in an analysis of the response to Schubert in England, where the composer's eminence was questioned by critics whose arguments sometimes hinged on the more problematic aspects of gender in Victorian culture. Scott Messing is Charles A. Dana Professor of Music at Alma College, and author of Neoclassicism in Music (University of Rochester Press, 1996).Trade ReviewThis [two-volume] book is not only a model of work in its field, but a stimulating and timely reminder of what we [scholars] should all aspire towards. . . . A monumental monograph that transforms our view of its subject. . . . . A formidable achievement. . . . The publication of this monograph offers yet more evidence that the University of Rochester Press has become a highly significant player in the field. -- -- James Garratt * MUSIC AND LETTERS *This book impresses both by the prodigiousness of its scholarship -- Scott Messing seems to have tracked down every nineteenth-century word, daub, and note inspired by Schubert -- and by the fascination of the materials it collects. Better yet, it puts these materials to excellent use, demonstrating beyond question the extraordinary depth to which Schubert penetrated nineteenth-century consciousness and culture and the extraordinary degree to which Schubert was perceived as feminine. -- -- Lawrence Kramer, Professor of English and Music, Fordham University, and author of Franz Schubert: Sexuality, Subjectivity, SongOriginal, engaging, and compellingly written, Scott Messing's Schubert in the European Imagination makes an enormous contribution to our understanding of the evolving image of Franz Schubert, one of the most elusive of all composers. The interdisciplinary breadth of Messing's project, drawing on political and cultural history, art, and literature, is a model for musical scholarship. -- -- Christopher H. Gibbs, James H. Ottaway, Jr. Professor of Music at Bard College, and author of The Life of SchubertAn unparalleled depth of available material about an indisputably great composer. -- -- Benjamin Ivry * NEW YORK SUN *Important and distinctive. . . . Impressive musical scholarship, rich in insights and covering ground that has not been adequately researched hitherto. -- -- C. Crawford Howie * THE SCHUBERTIAN *Table of ContentsRobert Schumann's Schubert: Inventing a Mädchencharakter Disseminating a Mädchencharakter: Gendered Concepts of Schubert in German-Speaking Europe Performing Schubert's Music in Nineteenth-Century Literature Performing Schubert's Music in Nineteenth-Century Art A "Slipper-and-Dressing-Gown style": Schubert in Victorian England
£89.25
