Music reviews and criticism Books

Book SynopsisBy 1976, Elton John was the best-selling recording artist and the highest-grossing touring act in the world. With seven #1 albums in a row and a reputation as a riveting piano-pounding performer, the former Reggie Dwight had gone with dazzling speed from the London suburbs to the pinnacles of rock stardom, his songs never leaving the charts, his sold-out shows packed with adoring fans. Then he released Blue Moves, and it all came crashing down.Was the commercially disappointing and poorly reviewed double album to blame? Can one album shoot down a star? No, argues Matthew Restall; Blue Moves is a four-sided masterpiece, as fantastic as Captain Fantastic, as colorful as Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, a showcase for the three elements--piano-playing troubadour, full orchestra, rock band--with which Elton John and his collaborators redirected the evolution of popular music. Instead, both album and career were derailed by a perfect storm of circumstances: Elton's decTrade ReviewRestall makes the case for renewed examination and appreciation of this often misunderstood album in the Elton John catalog. * Under the Radar Magazine *Table of ContentsTrack Listing 1. A Dumb but Gorgeous One-Night Stand 2. Just as Good 3. Best of, Volume 300 4. Our Mount Everest 5. A Few Surprises 6. A Sad, Sad Situation 7. It Could Be Me 8. One of My Favorite Albums 9. The Queen Mum of Pop Acknowledgments Notes Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisU2 planted the seeds for The Joshua Tree during an existential journey through America. As Irishmen in the 1970s, the band grew up with the belief that America was a place of freedom and prosperity, a symbol of hope and a refuge for all people. However, global politics of the 1980s undermined that impression and fostered hypocritical policies that manipulated Americans and devastated people around the world. Originally conceived as The Two Americas, The Joshua Tree was U2''s critique of America. Rather than living up to the ideal that the country was an idea that belongs to people who need it most, the band found that America sacrificed equality and justice for populism and fascism. This book explores the political, social, and cultural themes rooted in The Joshua Tree when it was originally released in 1987 and how those themes resonated as a response to the election of Donald Trump when U2 toured for the album''s 30th anniversary. The author juxtaposes the band''s ex

Read more less

Book Synopsis With this beautifully produced book, relive the extraordinary history of the of the hottest band in the land through 50 milestone events.Formed in New York City in 1973, Kiss became one of the most popular and best-selling bands in rock history with their inventive stage presence and heavy, hook-filled catalog, both ideally suited for packing hockey arenas and football stadiums. This richly illustrated book from prolific rock journalist Martin Popoff pays tribute to the band on the occasion of their 50th anniversary by curating and examining the 50 most significant milestones. This exquisite volume features:  Sturdy hardcover format Stunning concert and candid offstage photography, much of it never before published Images of memorabilia, including gig posters, 7-inch picture sleeves, ticket stubs, and more Gatefold Kiss timeline Popoff covers everything down through the decades:Trade Review"...gets into the nitty gritty detail that a card-carrying member of the KISS Army can appreciate...what makes Popoff’s writing a bit refreshingly different here is that he seems to give voice to many varied and common opinions of fans about both the high and low points of KISStory." * Houston Press *"All the important stand out moments are covered here, making this a welcoming engagement for KISS fans to see how one of their own, found in Martin Popoff, offers explanations, and gets critical in his case studies." * Spill Magazine *"I would be remiss not to discuss how gorgeous this book is....you wanted the best, you got the best. Popoff and Motorbooks combine forces for a fine tribute to the hottest band in the land." * Metal-Rules.com *Table of ContentsContents Introduction Part 1: Kiss Major “Rock and Roll All Nite”: Kiss form, in New York City. “Sweet Pain”: Kiss sign with Casablanca Records. “Kissin’ Time”: Kiss issue their self-titled debut album. “See You in Your Dreams”: Kiss appear on ABC’s In Concert. Recording Kiss “C’mon and Love Me”: Gene Simmons is interviewed on The Mike Douglas Show. “Two Timer”: Kiss issue Hotter Than Hell, their second album. “A Million to One”: Two fans unofficially form the Kiss Army. “Great Expectations”: Kiss issue Dressed to Kill, their third album. “Hotter Than Hell”: Kiss issue Alive!, a double live album. “Baby Driver”: Kiss take over Cadillac, Michigan. “Strutter”: Alive! goes gold, representing the band’s first RIAA certification. “Heaven’s on Fire”: Kiss issue Destroyer. “Creatures of the Night”: Kiss appear on The Paul Lynde Halloween Special. “Rockin’ in the USA”: Kiss issue Rock and Roll Over. “A World Without Heroes”: Kiss and Marvel Comics collaborate on a comic book. “Love’s a Deadly Weapon”: Kiss issue Love Gun. “Deuce”: Kiss issue Alive II. Part 2: Kiss Minor “Got to Choose”: Each member of Kiss issues a solo album. “Is That You?”: NBC airs a feature film called Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park. Ace for the Win “I Was Made for Lovin’ You”: Kiss issue Dynasty. “When Your Walls Come Down”: Kiss’s appearance on the Tomorrow show doesn’t go well. “Two Sides of the Coin”: Kiss issue Unmasked. “Fits Like a Glove”: Eric Carr plays his first show with Kiss. “Dark Light”: Kiss issue a concept album called Music from the Elder. “I Love It Loud”: Kiss issue Creatures of the Night. Part 3: MTV, Hair Metal, and Kiss “Naked City”: Kiss issue Lick It Up, featuring new guitarist Vinnie Vincent. “Turn on the Night”: Kiss issue Animalize, featuring new guitarist Mark St. John. From Kiss to Disco: Larry Harris on Casablanca “Trial by Fire”: Kiss issue Asylum, featuring new guitarist Bruce Kulick. “While the City Sleeps”: Kiss issue Crazy Nights. “Firehouse”: Kiss issue Hot in the Shade. “Comin’ Home”: Longtime Kiss drummer Eric Carr succumbs to cancer. “Bang Bang You”: Kiss issue Revenge, featuring new drummer Eric Singer. “Shout It Out Loud”: Kiss issue Alive III. Part 4: Reunion “Get All You Can Take”: Kiss execute their first Official Worldwide Kiss Convention. “Any Way You Want It”: Kiss perform on MTV Unplugged. “Unholy”: Kiss issue Carnival of Souls: The Final Sessions. “I Still Love You”: The classic-era Kiss lineup issue a reunion album called Psycho Circus. Bill Aucoin: A Kiss Goodbye from Head Office “Outta This World”: Kiss perform at Super Bowl XXXIII. “Cadillac Dreams”: New Line Cinema issue a Kiss-themed feature film called Detroit Rock City. “You Wanted the Best”: Kiss issue The Box Set. “Raise Your Glasses”: Kiss issue Kiss Symphony: Alive IV. “Hooligan”: Peter Criss tours for the last time as part of Kiss. Part 5: Legacy “King of the Night Time World”: Kiss are honored at the first VH1 Rock Honors show, held in Las Vegas. “Black Diamond”: Gene Simmons Family Jewels premiers on A&E. “Rocket Ride”: Kiss issue Sonic Boom, featuring new guitarist Tommy Thayer. “Getaway”: Kiss launch their first Kiss Kruise. Paul Stanley: Reflections on the Kiss Kast “Almost Human”: Kiss issue Monster, their last album to date. “All the Way”: Kiss are inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. “When Lightning Strikes”: Kiss set the record for most gold records by any American band. “100,000 Years”: Kiss embark on their final tour, entitled the End of the Road World Tour. Discography About the Author

Read more less

Book SynopsisHow is musical practice connected with everyday life? Eva-Maria Houben shows that performing music as an activity - indeed, as playing - is a meaningful shift from an approach based on structural analysis. Musical practice, Eva-Maria Houben contends, can be understood as open and never finished. Such an emphasis on repetition offers freedom from perfection, productivity, and purpose, thus allowing meaning to unfold in specific situations, places, and relationships. Musical practice can become a form of life and a reality in its own right. The study includes musical examples from the 17th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries as well as contemporary music.Trade ReviewBesprochen in: The Wire, 430 (2019), Tim Rutherford-Johnson

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe Suburbs is an incredibly sentimental and nostalgic album, which generally moved critics but was jarring to others. But it also made a heavy impact on fans and to the surprise of many won Album of the Year at the 2011 Grammy Awards. This immensely visceral album triggers a sincere celebration of not formative years spent in a cookie-cutter development, but of feeling self-important, immortal, and desperate to escape. It examines youth and amplifies an innate sense of longing and remembrance.Eric Eidelstein's The Suburbs explores this weird, utopic recollection of youth by comparing the album to suburban scenes in film and television, such as Blue Velvet, Mad Men, The Americans, and Spike Jonze's Scenes from the Suburbs. Through the close examination of film and televised depictions of the suburbs, both past and present, Eidelstein delves into the societal factors and artistic depictions that make the suburbs such a fascinating cultural conTrade ReviewMusicians, music lovers and music educators in the post-secondary field are likely to find The Suburbs of interest. It leaves the reader wondering how comparative studies of other creative works in connection to a diversity of sociological factors might be beneficial. * Canadian Association of Music Libraries *Table of ContentsTrack Listing Introduction 1 — Who is Arcade Fire? 2 — What are the suburbs? 3 — Where do you kids live? 4 — What’s up dog? 5 — Why do I have these headaches? 6 — Why are there people like Frank? 7 — Why are you so profoundly sad? 8 — Surely expulsion is not the answer? 9 — Should I move past the feeling?

Read more less

Book SynopsisSympathy for the Drummer: Why Charlie Watts Matters is both a gonzo rushcapturing the bristling energy of the Rolling Stones and the times in which they livedand a wide-eyed reflection on why the Greatest Rock ''n'' Roll Band in the World needed the world''s greatest rock ''n'' roll drummer. Across five decades, Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts has had the best seat in the house. Charlie Watts, the anti-rock staran urbane jazz fan with a dry wit and little taste for the limelightwas witness to the most savage years in rock history, and emerged a hero, a warrior poet. With his easy swing and often loping, uneven fills, he found nuance in a music that often had little room for it, and along with his greatest ally, Keith Richards, he gave the Stones their swaggering beat. While others battled their drums, Charlie played his modest kit with finesse and humility, and yet his relentless grooves on the nastiest hard-rock numbers of the era (Gimme Shelter, Street Fighting Man, Brown Sugar,Trade ReviewCharlie Watts lays it down, and the others follow. He is the Law. This book explains why. Clem Burke, Blondie. Required reading for any Stones fan. Bun E. Carlos, Cheap Trick. The most colorfully graphic and, arguably, the most accurate description extant of the Rolling Stones at the absolute pinnacle of their career. All About Jazz. [Edison] shoots from the hip from the first line to the last in this extremely entertaining celebration... Edison s frenzied, gunned up prose repeatedly reminds one and all of exactly why Charlie Watts Matters... Stones fans and jazzers, bluesers and rockers alike all owe Mike Edison a massive thank you. ? ? ? ? Shindig Sympathy thankfully is not a ponderous academic treatise, and while Edison occasionally leans into gonzo flights of fancy, he takes the reader on a grand tour of forty years of Watts contributions to the Rolling Stones... As Keith Richards has said, No Charlie, no Stones, and Edison wrote the book to prove it. Modern Drummer. Sympathy for the Drummer is so much more than an incisive appreciation of Charlie Watts, it is an effusively infectious tribute to art in all of its myriad forms. Edison s insights into the Rolling Stones are backed up by a fluent scope of cultural historicity, and peppered with an array of no-nonsense broadsides. Compelling evidence to convince even the most non-partisan reader that Charlie is indeed the WORLD S GREATEST ROCK N ROLL DRUMMER! Jim Sclavunos, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. A great voice of authority and knowledge, dispensed with free-wheeling fluidity. Super entertaining, and right on. Katherine Turman, coauthor, Louder Than Hell: The Complete Oral History of Heavy Metal. A wild ride through six-plus decades of music history... An illuminating and massively entertaining book. Epstein, author Big Hair and Plastic Grass. Mike Edison s libertine prose swings and hits like Charlie Watt s right hand. Meredith Ochs, author Rock-and-Roll Woman. It s not hard to fathom why a former editor of both Screw and High Times magazines would find writing about the Rolling Stones, one of the most dissolute champions of sex and drugs, right in his conceptual wheelhouse. But Edison takes a unique approach by focusing his investigation on Charlie Watts, the woefully underappreciated lynchpin of the Stones sound. This book is a delightful look at the Stones through the eyes and the beats of their most reticent member. Finally someone gave this drummer some. Larry Ratso Sloman, author On the Road with Bob Dylan. Charlie Watts is the backbone of the Rolling Stones. In this affectionate yet unflinching biography, Mike Edison shows how integral his jazz sensibility makes them a true band: keeping time, creating space, and hitting the crash cymbal at just the right moment. Lenny Kaye, guitarist, author of You Call It Madness: the Sensuous Song of the Croon. An imaginative consideration of the Rolling Stones, one which will let you hear utterly familiar tracks with entirely fresh ears. Ira Robbin.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThroughout the 1990s, Dave Thompson was the Seattle-based contributing editor to Alternative Press magazineAmerica''s biggest-selling and most influential alternative rock monthlyand a regular contributor to other publications both nationally and internationally.Throughout this decade, grunge music ruled the world and Seattle was its birthplace and focal point. Thompson was an eyewitness to it all. His writings and interviews chronicled the entire history of grungefrom its roots in the earliest explosion of punk in the mid-1970s to its rise and ultimate fall from grace in the late 1990s.Drawing from Thompson''s extensive experience and researchfrom personal files and journals and hours of interviews with both musicians and fans, other music industry figures, and a wealth of characters from the Seattle sceneThe Grunge Diaries is an exhaustive account of this unique era.Featured are all of the major actsNirvana, Pearl Jam, Mudhoney, Soundgardenand many lesser know

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis volume concentrates on the composer's vocal music, including the late Rueckert Lieder, the 8th Symphony and Das Lied von der Erde.A monument in Mahler studies, this volume concentrates on the composer's vocal music and, in particular, on some of his most famous, most original and best loved compositions: the late Rueckert orchestral songs and Kindertotenlieder; Das Lied von der Erde, one of the composer's supreme masterpieces, and the vast Eighth Symphony. Much new ground is broken but the author bases his conclusions on a meticulous examination of the principal manuscript sources, especially those for Das Lied. He offers an unprecedented exploration of the original Chinese texts for that work and indeed of the whole Oriental dimension of Mahler's last and greatest song-cycle. Time and time again, the composer's sketches back up the author's reading of these massive scores and there will be few among this book's readers who will not find a familiar passage or movement sharply illuminated by fresh insights and information. The scope of the book, despite its concentration, is immensely wide; and so is the readership it addresses: Mahler scholars, performers, and general readers. DONALD MITCHELL was Founder Professor of Music at the University of Sussex. He is currently Visiting Professor at Sussex and York, and formerly at King's College, London.Trade ReviewHe is...an enthusiast, and his enthusiasm, which lights up every page, is reinforced by an unsurpassed knowledge of his subject. However well one thinks one knows Das Lied von der Erde, one's knowledge and understanding of it will be enhanced by reading this book. -- Michael Kennedy * MUSICAL TIMES *Anyone genuinely interested in this composer should acquire this book at the earliest opportunity. It is magnificently produced, as befits the depth of scholarship the author continues to impart to his subject. * MUSIC AND MUSICIANS *No book I have read on any composer brings one closer to the act of composition itself, to imagining the creative decisions that occupied Mahler, especially in Das Lied... If ever a book forced one to reconsider every detail of a masterpiece it is this. * NEW STATESMAN *

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe term Minimalism appeared in the mid-1960s, primarily with reference to the stripped-down sculpture of artists like Robert Morris and Donald Judd. Investigating the origins of Minimalism in postwar American culture, the author redefines it as a movement that developed radically reductive stylistic innovations in numerous media.Trade Review... a landmark work, the first attempt to write a pre-history of minimalism that embraces all the arts. Its importance cannot be overestimated." --K. Robert Schwarz, Institute for Studies in American Music "All told, this book is mandatory reading for anyone who wishes to understand the history and nature of minimalism." --i/e NINETable of ContentsPaintSoundSpaceEndBibliographyIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn engaging overview of dance from the Medieval era through the BaroqueTrade ReviewA big bite of dance history scholarship is undertaken in this study, and it does not seem to be too big for Jennifer Nevile, the editor of the volume, to chew. She manages to weave an introduction into the book, and each of its six subsections make the promise of its lofty title (and the ideas it appears to embrace) within her grasp. Given the book's vast chronological sweep-rather more than the 500 years suggested in the title, since the very useful essay on 'Plato's Philosophy of Dance' by Graham Pont increases the range substantially-it was my guess, when I embarked on my journey through its pages, that I would find some themes on spectacle or the carnivalesque that would override chronology. Or maybe there would be a sociological/anthropological approach to the embodiment of status relationships (politics) through dance that would render chronology secondary to social configurations. With excited anticipation I dove in, expecting to find something along these lines. Although I was not disappointed, I discovered something quite different. The book features a nice selection of generally excellent essays by some leading authorities in historical dance. Each essay offers information situated in its own time frame, and each presents a secure control of primary and secondary sources and includes a very useful list of recommended reading at its conclusion. Some essays provide tantalizing new details (John S. Powell's piece on Beauchamps and public theaters in 17th-century France and David R. Wilson's review of the basse danse are good examples). Some interpret well-known material in new and promising ways. Jennifer Thorp's piece on 'Dance in the London Theatres c.1700-1750' makes me look forward to her important new work. Two essays review material the authors have already addressed, but nevertheless do so here in a compellingly compact way; Ken Pierce's offering on the choreographic structure of Barouque dance and Margaret M. McGowan's essay on court dancing in 16th and 17th-century France. Only a pair of essays (not counting the deceptively erudite and versatile 'Introduction and Overview' by Nevile herself) really fit the themes of bodies, politics, and spectacle announced by the title. Julia Prest's offering on politics and ballet in Louis XIV's France is pretty perfunctory. But Linda J. Tomko's essay on 'Mr. Issac's The Pastorall and Issues of "Party"' really does embrace the kind of inquiry I was expecting. Tomko's is a truly analytical study that responds with vibrancy to the themes called for by the volume's editor. Most of the authors represented here undertake their tasks with precision and skill. Many succeed, and all should be acknowledged for their contribution: those not already mentioned include Alessandro Arcangeli; Katherine Tucker McGinnis, and Karen Silen. Jennifer Nevile's multiple contributions to the volume cannot be praised sufficiently; her essays on Renaissance dance are impressive, her introduction to the volume full of perception. I suppose we must await some future in which an individual truly finds a connection among the various manifestations of social, stage, and court dancing over the ages. But I wonder if this is really important. Dance, after all, is body, is spectacle, is 'politik' (however we configure it). I'm just not sure that Guglielmo Ebreo (15th century), Cesare Negri (c. 1535-after 1604), or Mr. Isaac (late 17th, early 18th century) shared some common agenda (let alone believed they did) when they created their splendid dances. Nevile, nevertheless, would have us believe that something like the same bodies, the same spectacles, the same kinds of politics were enacted (perhaps unintentionally) over and over again across the centuries addressed in this volume. Maybe she is right. The scholars she has brought together, however, do not appear to espouse such a grandiose vision but appear more concerned with a narrower, well-informed view of dancing in a given place at a given time. Congratulations to them all, and to Nevile for bringing this impressive collection to life. I have profited considerably from reading the offerings presented here, and I am certain others will, too. I will recommend readings from this volume to my students for years to come. -- Richard Semmens * Early Music America : Mag Historical Perf *Jennifer Nevile's accessibly written anthology seeks to explore many now obscure aspects of early dance: contributions by twelve scholars elucidate the fascinating, multifarious nature of dance from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century. . . . contributors demonstrate a high scholarly standard and pursue their chosen themes with assurance and passion. The great forte of this collection is its ambitious, multidisciplinary range, and the authors' practical insight, honed by years of performance experience, represents a rare feat indeed. The book should be required reading in dance studies.62 Summer 2009 -- Barbara Ravelhofer * Univeristy of Dunham *A big bite of dance history scholarship is undertaken in this study, and it does not seem to be too big for Jennifer Nevile, the editor of the volume, to chew. . . . Congratulations to . . . Nevile for bringing this impressive collection to life. I have profited considerably from reading the offerings presented here, and I am certain others will, too. I will recommend readings from this volume to my students for years to come. Spring 2009 -- Richard Semmens * University of Western Ontario, Professor of Music History *Nevile . . . has assembled an intriguing book that in many ways serves as an encyclopedia of early dance—a feat not easily accomplished in one volume. . . . [T]his is a fine resource for those who research this specialized period of dance history. An excellent glossary and bibliography and a 'list of dance treatises, manuscripts, modern editions, and translations' complete the book. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students and researchers.March 2009 * Choice *This is a great book for understanding music, dance and the part they played in the period covering 1250-1750, in Europe. It is filled with a whole cosmology of ideas. How the arc of five centuries connect, are enmeshed, develop and flow into our own day. This book is a treasure.Winter 2008 -- Paul-James Dwyer * Toronto Early Music Quarterly *The balanced assortment of general introductions and detailed case studies makes Dance, Spectacle, and the Body Politick, 1250-1750 a useful collection and an engaging 'read' for dance enthusiasts, reconstructors, and scholars alike. -- Emily Winerock * Dance Chronicle *[This] collection more than fulfills its goal of opening up pre-1750 dance studies to a general readership, but will also be of interest to the more informed dance historian. * Historical Dance *Dance, Spectacle, and the Body Politick makes an important contribution to existing dance scholarship ... The essays in Nevile's collection add significantly to this diligent work. Every essay is both informative and interesting, and each author provides a valuable list of further readings on the topic.Volume 16 Issue 2 2011 * European Legacy *This well-researched and original collection of essays on early dance addresses the picture of dance in society from 1250 to 1750. The interdisciplinary and wide-ranging approach of the book makes it very valuable for dance historians, musicologists and historians of ideas alike, as well as anyone interested in dance history. Issue 78, Autumn 2010 * Cahiers Elisabethains *. . . this ambitious anthology . . . manages to fill an academic void . . . .Vol. 35.1 2010 -- Nicole Haitzinger * University of Salzburg *An important book for any musician, theatrical performer, dancer, historian, reconstructor or anyone involved in recreating the work of this time period. Essays with detailed notes, glossary, bibliography and a list of dance treatises, manuscripts, modern editions and published translations are worth the price of the book alone. A great book for understanding music, dance and the part they played in the period covering 1250-1750, in Europe.Summer 2009 -- Paul-James Dwyer * Dance International *Table of ContentsPart 1. Introduction and Overview1. Dance in Europe 1250–1750Part 2. Dance at Court and in the City2. Dance in Late Thirteenth-Century Paris3. Dance and Society in Quattrocento Italy4. Dance in Sixteenth- and Early Seventeenth-Century FrancePart 3. Dance and the Public Theater5. Pierre Beauchamps and the Public Theater6. Dance in the London Theaters c. 1700–1750Part 4. Choreographic Structure and Music7. The Relationship between Dance and Music in Fifteenth-Century Italian Dance Practice 8. The Basse Dance c. 1445–c. 15459. Choreographic Structure in Baroque DancePart 5. Dance and the State10. Your Most Humble Subject, Cesare Negri Milanese11. The Politics of Ballet at the Court of Louis XIV12. Mr. Isaac's The Pastorall and Issues of "Party"Part 6. Dance, Society, and the Cosmos13. Plato's Philosophy of Dance14. Moral Views on Dance15. Order, Proportion, and Geometric Forms: The Cosmic Structure of Dance, Grand Gardens, and Architecture during the RenaissanceList of Dance Treatises, Manuscripts, Modern Editions, and TranslationsGlossaryBibliographyList of ContributorsIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisDiverse perspectives and alternate takes on musical improvisationTrade Review"Valuable not only to researchers but also to performers, who will find their minds opened to how music different from their own can help them improvise better in their chosen genre. . . . Recommended."--Choice"A goldmine of information ... that is relevant to the amateur and scholar alike."--Ethnomusicology"An impressive and often sophisticated collection of essays. . . . it certainly constitutes a welcome addition to the field."--The World of Music"Cutting across traditional subject boundaries in music and cultural studies, this admirably comprehensive work adopts a welcome interdisciplinary ideal and makes a truly significant contribution to our knowledge of musical improvisation."--Robert Witmer, professor emeritus of music, York UniversityTable of ContentsPreface ix Bruno NettlIntroduction 1 Gabriel SolisPART ONE: SOCIETY 1. Jazz as Political and Musical Practice 21 Ingrid Monson 2. John Cage and Improvisation: An Unresolved Relationship 38 Sabine M. Feisst 3. When Traditional Improvisation Is Prohibited: Contemporary Ukrainian Funeral Laments and Burial Practices 52 Natalie Kononenko 4. The Juncture between Creation and Re-creation among Indonesian Reciters of the Qur'an 72 Anne K. Rasmussen 5. Genius, Improvisation, and the Narratives of Jazz History 90 Gabriel Solis 6. Formulas and Improvisation in Participatory Music 103 Thomas TurinoPART TWO: EDUCATION 7. Learning to Improvise Music, Improvising to Learn Music 119 Patricia Shehan Campbell 8. Improvising Mozart 143 Robert Levin 9. Keyboard Improvisation in the Baroque Period 150 Charlotte Mattax Moersch 10. Beyond the Improvisation Class: Learning to Improvise in a University Jazz Studies Program 171 John P. Murphy 11. On Learning the Radif and Improvisation in Iran 185 Bruno Nettl 12. Hindustani Sitar and Jazz Guitar Music: A Foray into Comparative Improvology 200 Stephen Slawek 13. Musical Improvisation in the Modern Dance Class: Techniques and Approaches in Fulfilling a Multi-Layered Role 221 John ToenjesPART THREE: CREATION 14. Representations of Music Making 239 Stephen Blum 15. Improvisation and Related Terms in Middle-Period Jazz 263 Lawrence Gushee 16. Opening the Museum Window: Improvisation and Its Inscribed Values in Canonic Works by Chopin and Schumann 281 Robert S. Hatten 17. Improvisation in Beethoven's Creative Process 296 William Kinderman 18. Why Do They Improvise? Reflections on Meaning and Experience 313 Ali Jihad Racy 19. Preluding at the Piano 323 Nicholas Temperley Contributors 343 Index 349

Read more less

Book SynopsisPeter Kivy mounts a philosophical inquiry into the desirability of using or re-creating historical practices in musical performance.Trade ReviewAuthenticities is an important book, and anyone interested in philosophy of music should read it. Anyone can profit from it as a model of careful and informed conceptual analysis. -- James O. Young, University of Victoria * The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism *The consistent theme running through Kivy's book is the need for interpretation as the personal authenticity and authority of the performer against the ideology both of the composer as genius and of the puritanical devotion to the authority of the text of the early music devotees.... This is a most valuable book, one which constantly surprises and delights through its philosophical insights and informed musical understanding. * British Journal of Aesthetics *In his latest book on the aesthetics of music, Peter Kivy presents an argument not for authenticity but for authenticities of performance, including authenticities of intention, sound, practice, and the authenticity of personal interpretation in performance.... As usual, Kivy's work is beautifully written, well argued, and provocative. * Notes *Kivy has provided a sorely needed framework for all future discussion of the authenticity matter. This is his best book, a major contribution to performance studies and to musical aesthetics; likely it will be studied and cited for generations. * Choice *Kivy's book is written in its author's characteristic engaging manner and is full of valuable insights into the hermeneutics and aesthetics of performing music of the past. * Philosophical Review *Written in lively prose, with a keen sense of reality, this volume ought to be of interest not only to philosophers and musicologists, but to all serious lovers of music. -- Roger Scruton * Times Literary Supplement *

Read more less

Book SynopsisJulian Young presents Richard Wagner as an important philosopher of art and life, first as a utopian anarchist-communist and later as a Schopenhauerian pessimist. Understanding Wagnerâs philosophy is crucial to understanding his operas, as it is to understanding Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Heidegger. Trade ReviewKeenly attuned to Wagner’s intimations of impersonal immortality, Julian Young explains Wagner’s evolving views on the redemptive power of musical drama, an artistic salvation that remains possible even after the death of God. By critically examining Wagner’s philosophical transformation from a Feuerbachian anarcho-revolutionary to a Schopenhauerian world-renunciate, Young uncovers the enduring spiritual quest at the heart of Wagner’s work: Our deep and enduring philosophical need to learn how to die well. -- Iain Thomson, University of New MexicoIn deft, elegant prose, Young convincingly reconstructs two distinct Wagnerian philosophical positions, especially as concerns the relationship between art and society: an early revolutionary and a later Schopenhauerian position. In doing so, Young casts considerable light on the meanings of Wagner's musical dramas, and presents an array of fascinating positions on the proper relations between art and society for contemporary reflection. This is an important book for anyone interested in late-nineteenth-century philosophy of music and art. -- Sandra Shapshay, Indiana University, BloomingtonYoung here presents the results of extensive research into Wagner's philosophical writings. Perhaps the most surprising thing one learns is that Wagner had a relatively clear and coherent philosophy. In fact, Wagner’s philosophy evolved over time, and he always saw himself as more than a composer of operas. Early on, Wagner, influenced by Hegel, maintained that art and music could play a key role in changing the world for the better. Later, his philosophical intuitions and artistic aims would be molded by Schopenhauer’s pessimistic but redemptive views of music. Today, Wagner would be saddened, though perhaps not surprised, to find that most of his operas are heard only by the affluent—a situation that is the antithesis of what he was trying to do. Young’s straightforward writing style is more than welcome in explaining 19th-century German philosophical concepts, which can get very complex very fast. This book is beautifully written, clear, and concise. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-level undergraduates and above. * CHOICE *Table of ContentsPart I: Early Wagner Chapter 1: The Way We are Now Chapter 2: The Greek Ideal Chapter 3: The Death of Art Chapter 4: The Artwork of the Future: Exploratory Questions Part II Later Wagner Chapter 5: Schopenhauer Chapter 6: Wagner’s Appropriation of Schopenhauer Chapter 7: Wagner’s Final Thoughts Epilogue: Wagner and Nietzsche

Read more less

Book SynopsisExactly what does a conductor do in front of an orchestra? Internationally renowned conductor Christopher Seaman offers lively and informative answers in this wise yet humorous book. What does a conductor actually do? How much effect does he or she have? Can the orchestra manage without one? Why don't the players look at the conductor more? Is it necessary for the conductor to play every instrument? What about interpretation? What happens at rehearsals? Why do some conductors "thrash around" more than others? Who's the boss in a concerto: the soloist or the conductor? These are some of the questions that receive lively andinformative answers in this book by renowned conductor Christopher Seaman. Composed of short articles on individual topics, it is accessible and easy to consult. Each article begins with an anecdote or saying and ends with quotations from musicians, often expressing opposing views. There are many books on the art of conducting, but none like this. Music lovers wondering what the figure on the podium actually does, and aspiring conductors eager to learn more about the art and craft of leading an orchestra, will all treasure this wise yet humorous book. Christopher Seaman has been successful at both ends of the baton. After four years as principal timpanist of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, he was appointed principal conductor of the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and has enjoyed a busy international conducting career for over forty years. He is now Conductor Laureate for Life of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, New York, and he continues to bring great music and wise words to audiences, students, and readers around the world.Trade Review[Seaman's] experience is wonderfully crystallized in the pithy observations here. TLS [Michael Downes] -- Michael Downes * TLS *Engaging, uncomplicated overview of the conductor's role ... Very readable, with some good jokes, hoary anecdotes and nice analogies. * CLASSICAL MUSIC's Books of the Year, December 2013 *Chosen by Financial Times as a Classical Music Book of the Year * . *One of Classical Music's Best Books of the Year * . *With humor, clarity, and wisdom, Christopher Seaman gives insight into the mind of a conductor. A feast of inside scoops for music lovers. -- -- Yo-Yo Ma, cellist and Artistic Director of the Silk Road Project * Yo-Yo Ma, cellist and Artistic Director of the Silk Road Project *This book is simply typical Christopher, something I would consider one of the highest compliments. Typical of Christopher to combine so much wisdom with so much wit. Required reading, I think, and one of the friendliest books about music ever penned. -- -- Sir Simon Rattle, Chief Conductor and Artistic Director, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra * Sir Simon Rattle, Chief Conductor and Artistic Director, Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra *To hear the human truths from an experienced music director, enriched by examples from his life, is marvelously illuminating. I learned many little things and some big ones. -- -- Norman Lebrecht, author and criticChristopher Seaman, who is renowned for his teaching work at the Guildhall School of Music, and has conducted at the highest level, provides a barrage of straight answers. Most are directed towards real would-be conductors, rather than bedroom-mirror amateurs, but there's plenty for the outsider looking in. . . . The conductor's work is not often discussed in such plain detail. Conducting is 'like riding a horse not driving a car'. A tighter grip on the baton produces a harder tone. Keeping the arms moving upward very slowly can restrain an audience's desire to rush to clap after a quiet ending. . . . Demystifies the art and the figure of the conductor. -- James McConnachie http://www.spectator.co.uk/books/8966601/inside-conducting-by-christopher-seaman-a-review/'>Full Review * THE SPECTATOR *The art of conducting is hard to nail but Christopher Seaman does just that in exemplary fashion. . . . Interesting reading for all lovers of music, students of conducting as well as fellow professionals. . . . Serious practical application and in-depth musicological insight laced with the author's engaging humour. Highly recommended. -- Christopher Fifield * MUSICWEB-INTERNATIONAL *Table of ContentsBackground Harmony Memory Perfect Pitch Training Conductors Youth Orchestras Balance Choral Works Concerto Accompaniment Ear Eye Contact Opera Rehearsing Baton Beat Behind-the-Beat Playing Directing from the Harpsichord Economy of Gesture, Cueing, Use of the Left Hand Auditions Chamber Orchestras Chief Conductor Friend or Boss? Orchestral Playing Role of Concertmaster Solos in an Orchestral Piece Stage Settings Strings Winds Timpani and Percussion Composers Learning Scores, Interpretation Marking Parts Performance Practice Shape and Structure Tempo and Metronome Addressing the Audience Applause, Platform Demeanor, Coughing Program Planning Career and Agents Critics Gender Guest Conducting Orchestra Managements Recording Travel and Packing Concentration Control and Power Ego Languages Nervousness Our Heritage: Some Ancestors and My Links with Them Suggested Reading Musical Example Credits A Note on the Illustrations Index of Conductors

Read more less

Book SynopsisBased on unprecedented access to private correspondence, unpublished manuscripts and attuned to a musically inclined poet’s skill in close listening, Who Can Afford to Improvise? retraces the full arc of James Baldwin’s passage across the pages and stages of his career amplifying our sense of his contemporary relevance.Trade Review"While Pavlic is to be commended for choosing such an important subject in the first place, what is more important is the fact that he has addressed it with a great deal of stylistic finesse and analytical clarity." -- -Kevin Le Gendre Jazzwize Magazine "In Who Can Afford to Improvise?, Ed Pavlic unearths James Baldwin's epic song-one shaped and honed by sacred and popular music. This rumination of intricate details celebrates Baldwin's vision of democratic conscience. Pavlic gives us a flesh-and-blood subject formed through a lyrical determinism of deep feeling. Through turn of thought and juxtaposition of historical and personal evidence, he embraces Baldwin's need for justice and truth." -- -Yusef Komunyakaa "Ed Pavlic's words have always heard the music and with Who Can Afford to Improvise?, he shows the exquisite ways that James Baldwin's words both heard the music and was the music itself." -- -Mark Anthony Neal Looking for Leroy: Illegible Black Masculinities "... Who Can Afford to Improvise plays in the pocket between actual musical performances, interpretations of the lyrical mode in Baldwin's poetics, and intricate historical detail." -Tsitsi Jaji, Los Angeles Review of Books "Who Can Afford to Improvise is a tour de force from one of our premier Baldwin scholars. Ed Pavlic's brilliantly insightful meditation on black music and culture and Baldwin's centrality to that tradition is a must-read." -- -Peniel E. Joseph author of Dark Days, Bright Nights "If you read books, sometimes or all the time, for the quality of their sentences (and what writer doesn't? why else would anyone want to be a writer?), Who Can Afford to Improvise is even more essential. Ed Pavlic is f*cking fearless about how he goes about it, as fearless as any contemporary musician I can think of, as fearless as some of the greats. It's definitely a book, but music is where its soul is, if you ask me." -Dave Marsh, Counterpunch "Ed Pavlic's strikingly original meditations reveal a James Baldwin swaddled in Black music whose masterful ear heard the overtones, the changes, echoes of memory, cries of agony and joy. By excavating experience from song and turning social critique into lyric, Baldwin produced a deeper, more dangerous truth." -- -Robin D. G. Kelley author of Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original "Ed Pavlic's Who Can Afford to Improvise? is remarkably present in how it sings-in all that it does for Baldwin, for his mediums, and for the book's listeners." -The Georgia ReviewTable of ContentsIntroduction BOOK I The Uses of the Blues: James Baldwin's Lyrical Quest 1. "Not the country we're sitting in now": Amputation/Gangrene Past and Present 2. Blues Constants, Jazz Changes: Toward a Writing Immune to Bullshit 3. "Making words do something": Retracing James Baldwin's Career BOOK II The Uses of the Lyric: Billie's Quest, Dinah's Blues, Jimmy's Amen, and Brother Ray's Hallelujah 4. Billie Holiday: Radical Lyricist 5. Dinah Washington's Blues and the Trans- Digressive Ocean 6. "But Amen is the price": James Baldwin and Ray Charles in "The Hallelujah Chorus" BOOK III "For you I was a flame": Baldwin's Lyrical Lens on Contemporary Culture 7. On Camden Row: Amy Winehouse's Lyric Lines in a Living Inheritance 8. Speechless in San Francisco. "A somewhat better place to lie about": An Inter-View 9. "In a way they must ...": Turf Feinz and Black Style in an Age of Sights for the Speechless 10. "Shades cannot be fixed": On Privilege, Blindness, and Second Sight Conclusion: The Brilliance of Children, the Duty of Citizens Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisLiszt in Context explores the political, social, philosophical and professional currents that surrounded Franz Liszt and illuminates the competing forces that influenced his music. Liszt was immersed in the religious, political and cultural debates of his day, and moved between institutions, places, and social circles with ease. All of this makes for a rich contextual tapestry against which Liszt composed some of the most iconic, popular, and also contentious music of the nineteenth century. His significance and astonishing reach cannot be over-stated, and his presence in nineteenth-century European culture, and his continuing influence into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, are overwhelming. The focus on context, reception, and legacy that this volume provides reveals the multifaceted nature of Liszt''s impact during his lifetime and beyond.Trade Review'one of the more valuable compendia of Liszt studies to appear in some time.' Patrick Rucker, GramophoneTable of ContentsPreface; Part I. People and Places: 1. Family background Adrienne Kaczmarczyk; 2. Teachers Paul Bertagnolli; 3. Paris Bryan Whitelaw; 4. Italy Anna Harwell Celenza; 5. Liszt and Wagner David Trippett; 6. The new German school James Deaville; 7. Weimar Joanne Cormac; 8. Liszt and his contemporaries Anne MacGregor; 9. Liszt in Hungary Lynn Hooker; Part II. Society thought and culture: 10. The 'War of the Romantics' David Larkin; 11. Visual art and artists Andrew Haringer; 12. Literature and literary heroes Jonathan Kregor; 13. Liszt, the women and the European salon culture of the nineteenth century Ulrike Müller; 14. Liszt as writer Dorothea Redepenning; 15. Patronage: the court Anna Harwell Celenza; 16. Liszt and the network of revolution Malou Haine and Bruno Moysan; 17. Liszt's national identity: What else is new? Shay Loya; 18. Liszt and religion Eftychia Papanikolaou; Part III. Performance and composition: 19. Pianos and piano builders Andrew Haringer; 20. Liszt on the road: The rise of the modern virtuoso pianist Christopher Gibbs; 21. Virtuosity Jonathan Kregor; 22. Improvisation Adrienne Kaczmarczyk; 23. Transcription Jonathan Kregor; 24. Liszt as conductor Donna M. Di Grazia; 25. Publishers Adrienne Kaczmarczyk; 26. Genre Joanne Cormac; Part IV. Reception and Legacy: 27. Pupils: Liszt as teacher Jonathan Kregor; 28. Critics James Deaville; 29. Lateness in context Shay Loya; 30. Liszt and the 20th and 21st centuries Dorothea Redepenning; 31. Life-writing Joanne Cormac; 32. Iconography Alan Davison; 33. Liszt in film Joanne Cormac; Index.

Read more less

Book SynopsisMinimalism stands as the key representative of 1960s radicalism in art music histories - but always as a failed project. In The Names of Minimalism, Patrick Nickleson holds in buzzing tension collaborative composers in the period of their collaboration, as well as the musicological policing of authorship in the wake of their eventual disputes.Trade Review“The Names of Minimalism contributes to the effort of producing the historiography of minimal music while introducing and exploring the specific (and crucial) topic of authorship in the field. Nickleson addresses these important questions methodically and with care.” —Christophe Levaux, author of We Have Always Been Minimalist: The Construction and Triumph of a Musical Style“This book presents a total reimagining of minimalism’s early history. Rather than narrating this history through musical style or composer biography, Nickleson examines minimalism's history through its politics of authorship, pedagogy, propriety, and egalitarianism. This book makes a significant contribution to scholarship on minimalism and, more broadly, has the potential to reorient any scholarly mind doing historical work.” —Kerry O’Brien, co-editor of On Minimalism: Documenting a Musical Movement“Patrick Nickleson’s The Names of Minimalism offers a potent critique of the means and methods by which minimalism has been canonized in conventional music histories. Drawing on the writings of Jacques RanciÈre and Kristin Ross, Nickleson deftly and trenchantly interrogates the lineage that runs—whether via collaboration or contention—from La Monte Young and Tony Conrad to Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca in order to recover the aesthetic and political challenges that early minimalism proffered at its most radical junctures.” —Branden W. Joseph, Columbia UniversityTable of Contents Acknowledgments Introduction. “La Monte Young Does Not Understand ‘His’ Work.” Chapter 1. Policing Process Chapter 2. Writing Minimalism: The Theatre of Eternal Music and the Historiography of Drones Chapter 3. The Lessons of Minimalism: The Big Four and the Pedagogic Myth Chapter 4. Indistinct Minimalisms: Punk, No Wave, and the Death of Minimalism Conclusion. The Names of Minimalism Works Cited

Read more less

Book SynopsisÊHearts of DarknessÊ is the story of a generation's coming of age through the experiences of its three most atypical pop stars. James Taylor Jackson Browne and Cat Stevens could never have been considered your typical late-sixties songwriters ä self-absorbed and self-composed all three eschewed the traditional means of delivering their songs instead turning its process inward. The result was a body of work that stands among the most profoundly personal art ever to translate into an international language and a sequence of songs ä from Sweet Baby James and Carolina in My Mind to Jamaica Say You Will and These Days to Peace Train and Wild World ä that remain archetypes not only of what the critics called the singer-songwriter movement but of the human condition itself.ÞAuthor Dave Thompson himself a legend among rock biographers takes on his subjects with his usual brio and candor leaving no stone unturned in his quest to shine a light on the dark side of this profoundly earnest era in popular music. Penetrating pointed and laced with vivid insight and detail ÊHearts of DarknessÊ is the story of rock when it no longer felt the need to roll.

Read more less

Book SynopsisA fully updated edition of the leading reference work on musical key characteristics during the Baroque, Classical and Romantic periods. This is a revised second edition of Dr. Steblin's important work on key characteristics, first published in 1983 by UMI Research Press and re-issued by the University of Rochester Press in 1996. The revision has been limited to athorough correction and update of the material in the first edition, so as to not disrupt the content and organization, for which the book has been praised as a significant and noteworthy reference for both scholars and research students alike. The book discusses the extra-musical meanings associated with various musical keys by ancient Greek and medieval-renaissance theorists and in particular composers and writers on music in the Baroque, Classical,and early Romantic periods. Chapters focus on Mattheson's extensive key descriptions from 1713, the Rameau-Rousseau and Marpurg-Kirnberger controversies regarding unequal versus equal temperaments, and C.F.D. Schubart's influential list based on the sharp-flat [bright-dark] principle of key-distinctions. Rita Katherine Steblin is a world-renowned music scholar, living and working in Vienna.Table of ContentsThe Ancient Greeks and the Doctrine of Ethos The Medieval-Renaissance Modes and Their Affects The Transition from Modality to Tonality: Early French Key Characteristics Johann Mattheson and the Early Eighteenth-Century German Approach to Key Characteristics Rameau and Rousseau: Equal Temperament versus Unequal Temperament Marpurg versus Kimberger: The Tuning Controversy in Germany Psychological Factors: The Sharp-Flat Principle Physical Factors: The Properties of Instruments Tradition and Key Characteristics in the Early Nineteenth Century

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn authoritative survey of music and its context in the Renaissance. The sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries - the so-called Golden Age of Polyphony - represent a time of great change and development in European music, with the flourishing of Orlando di Lasso, Palestrina, Byrd, Victoria, Monteverdi and Schütz among others. The chapters of this book, contributed by established scholars on subjects within their fields of expertise, deal with polyphonic music - sacred and secular, vocal and instrumental - during this period. The volume offers chronological surveys of national musical cultures (in Italy, France, the Netherlands, Germany, England, and Spain); genre studies (Mass, motet, madrigal, chanson, instrumental music, opera); and is completed with essays on intellectual and cultural developments and concepts relevant to music (music theory, printing, the Protestant Reformation and the corresponding Catholic movement, humanism, concepts of "Renaissance" and "Baroque"). It thus provides a complete overview of the music and its context. Contributors: GARY TOMLINSON, JAMES HAAR, TIM CARTER, GIULIO ONGARO, NOEL O'REGAN, ALLAN ATLAS, ANTHONY CUMMINGS, RICHARD FREEDMAN, JEANICE BROOKS,DAVID TUNLEY, KATE VAN ORDEN, KRISTINE FORNEY, IAIN FENLON, KAROL BERGER, PETER BERGQUIST, DAVID CROOK, ROBIN LEAVER, CRAIG MONSON, TODD BORGERDING, LOUISE K. STEIN, GIUSEPPE GERBINO, ROGER BRAY, JONATHAN WAINWRIGHT, VICTOR COELHO, KEITH POLKTrade ReviewA fine achievement. * THE CONSORT *Offers a selection of essays by many of the leading figures in the field of Renaissance music history, creating a mosaic in a carefully thought-out pattern of viewpoints and topics. The single contributions are excellent. * EARLY MUSIC *A fine book. [...] This civilised volume is highly recommended [and] excellent in content. * EARLY MUSIC REVIEW *This is an extremely useful addition to music historiography that will both aid students and provide many insights to the more general reader who feels in need of an over-arching survey of the period. -- Brian Robins * GOLDBERG *A lively and scholarly account of the multiple complexities and paradoxes that characterise this period...compelling reading with hitherto neglected areas at last gaining accessible recognition. * EARLY MUSIC TODAY *Table of ContentsRenaissance Humanism and Music - Gary Tomlinson The Concept of the Renaissance - James Haar The Concept of the Baroque - Tim Carter Italy [i], 1520-1560 - Giulio Ongaro Music in Italy [ii], 1560-1600 - T Noel O'Regan Ital [iii], 1600-1640 - Tim Carter Music for the Mass - Allan Atlas The Motet, 1520-1640 - Anthony Cummings Music in France [i], 1520-1560 - Richard Freedman France [ii], 1560-1600 - Jeanice Brooks French Music in the Early Seventeenth Century - David Tunley Chanson, 1520-1640 - Kate Van Orden Madrigal - James Haar The Netherlands [i], 1520-1560 - Kristine Forney The Netherlands [ii], 1560-1600 - Kristine Forney The Netherlands [iii], 1600-1640 - Kristine Forney Music, Print and Society in Sixteenth-Century Europe - Iain Fenlon Concepts and Developments in Music Theory - Karol Berger German Music [i], 1520-1560 - Peter Bergquist German Music [ii], 1560-1600 - Peter Bergquist Germany and Central Europe, 1600-1640 - David Crook The Reformation and Music - Robin Leaver Renewal, Reform, and Reaction in Catholic Music - Craig Monson Spain [i-ii], 1530-1600 - Todd Borgerding and Louise K Stein Spain [iii], 1600-1640 - Louise K Stein Early Opera: the Initial Stage - Iain Fenlon Music in England before 1560 - Roger Bray Music in England [ii], 1560-1600 - Roger Bray English Music, 1603-1642 - Jonathan Wainwright Instrumental Music in Europe, 1520-1640 - Victor Coelho and Keith Polk

Read more less

Book SynopsisWithout an understanding of the conflicts of Mahler's youth one cannot truly appreciate the impulses behind the major symphonies and song cycles of his later years. Available again for a new generation of Mahlerians, Donald Mitchell's famous study of the composer's early life and music was greeted as a major advance on its first appearance in 1958. Revised and updated in the early 1980s, thispaperback edition includes a new introduction by the author to bring this classic work once again to the forefront of Mahler studies. From his birth in Bohemia, then part of the mighty Austro-Hungarian empire, to a surveyof his early works, many now lost, Gustav Mahler: The Early Years forms an indispensable prelude to the period of the great compositions. The conflicts which came to mark Mahler's music and personality had their beginningsin his childhood and youth. Without understanding the territorial, social and familial conflicts of this time one cannot truly appreciate the impulses behind the major symphonies and song cycles of his later years. DONALD MITCHELL was born in 1925. Two composers have been central to his writings on music, Gustav Mahler and Benjamin Britten. His three studies of Mahler, The Early Years (1958), The Wunderhorn Years (1975), and Songs and Symphonies of Life and Death (1985), are among the enduring monuments of postwar Mahler literature. He was founder Professor of Music at the University of Sussex (1971-76), was visiting Professor atKing's College, London, and is currently a visiting Professor at the Universities of Sussex and York.

Read more less

Book SynopsisNew research throws light on the history of the viol after Purcell, including its revival in the late eighteenth century through Charles Frederick Abel. It is normally thought that the bass viol or viola da gamba dropped out of British musical life in the 1690s, and that Henry Purcell was the last composer to write for it. Peter Holman shows how the gamba changed its role and function in the Restoration period under the influence of foreign music and musicians; how it was played and composed for by the circle of immigrant musicians around Handel; how it was part of the fashion for exotic instruments in themiddle of the century; and how the presence in London of its greatest eighteenth-century exponent, Charles Frederick Abel, sparked off a revival in the 1760s and 70s. Later chapters investigate the gamba's role as an emblem of sensibility among aristocrats, artists and intellectuals, including the Countess of Pembroke, Sir Edward Walpole, Ann Ford, Laurence Sterne, Thomas Gainsborough and Benjamin Franklin, and trace Abel's influence and legacy farinto the nineteenth century. A concluding chapter is concerned with its role in the developing early music movement, culminating with Arnold Dolmetsch's first London concerts with old instruments in 1890. PETER HOLMAN is Professor Emeritus of Historical Musicology at Leeds University, and director of The Parley of Instruments, the choir Psalmody, and the Suffolk Villages Festival.Trade Review[O]utstanding research [...] a valuable reference book that I will no doubt consult again and again. * EIGHTEENTH CENTURY MUSIC *[A] fascinating study that has significantly enlightened the dark ages of a much loved instrument. * MUSIC & LETTERS *[Eine] spannenede und extreme informative Abhandlung. * VIOLA DA GAMBA *This is a book not only for those interested in the viola da gamba but also in musical social history in Britain from the 17th to the end of the 19th century. It is rich in scholarly detail and is entertaining to read. * STRINGENDO *[B]eautifully presented and Holman's lucid and elegant prose is a joy to read. [...] This is a book suitable for players and scholars alike, which makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the viol; I recommend it wholeheartedly. * EARLY MUSIC *[This] volume draws on a truly vast range of documentation [...] and is written in an unpretentious, descriptive prose [...] the coverage is impressive and its result will be of use in many connections: indeed a reference work. * MUSICAL TIMES *There are so many new insights into the life of the viol in this book [...] that the reader is put on a steep learning curve and sent on a truly fascinating journey through the centuries. [...] it can easily be used as a reference book by delving into the sub-chapters or consulting the very comprehensive index, or be read like an exciting novel. * THE CONSORT *No one better could have written this book, which is superb. [...] Applying to the task his extensive research, close acquaintance with the instruments and their music, stellar command of the literature, and lively narrative, Holman demonstrates the extent to which viol playing in Britain survived. * CHOICE *Holman has the knack of finding interesting information and writing interestingly about it. [...] It is a book to dip into. * EARLY MUSIC REVIEW *

Read more less

Book SynopsisMusic at German Courts serves to illustrate the extraordinary diversity of eighteenth-century German court music establishments without losing sight of what these Kapellen had in common. What was musical life at German courts really like during the eighteenth century? Were musical ensembles as diverse as the Holy Roman Empire's kaleidoscopic political landscape? Through a series of individual case studies contributed by leading scholars from Germany, Poland, the United States, Canada, and Australia, this book investigates the realities of musical life at fifteen German courts of varied size (ranging from kingdoms to principalities), religious denomination, and geographical location. Significant shifts that occurred in the artistic priorities of each court are presented through a series of "snapshots"- in effect "core sample" years - which highlight both individualand shared patterns of development and decline. What emerges from the wealth of primary source material examined in this volume is an in-depth picture of music-making within the daily life of individual courts, featuring a cast ofmusic directors, instrumentalists, and vocalists, together with numerous support staff drawn from across Europe. Music at German Courts serves to illustrate the extraordinary diversity of eighteenth-century German court music establishments without losing sight of what these Kapellen had in common. SAMANTHA OWENS is Associate Professor in Musicology at the University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. BARBARA M. REUL is Associate Professor of Musicology at Luther College, University of Regina, Canada. JANICE B. STOCKIGT is a Principal Fellow of the University of Melbourne, Australia. Contributors: DIETER KIRSCH, URSULA KRAMER, MICHAEL MAUL, MARYOLESKIEWICZ, SAMANTHA OWENS, RASHID-S. PEGAH, BÄRBEL PELKER, BARBARA M. REUL, WOLFGANG RUF, BERT SIEGMUND, JANICE B. STOCKIGT, MICHAEL TALBOT, RÜDIGER THOMSEN-FÜRST, ALINA ZORAWSKA-WITKOWSKA, STEVEN ZOHNTrade ReviewUltimately, this book is to be highly recommended: it will make a valuable and indispensable addition to the libraries of both scholars of eighteenth-century music and those from other disciplines who want to expand their knowledge of the role of music [...] in the self-fashioning and sustenance of European monarchic structures. * NOTES *This book is one of the most important contributions to our understanding of the context of the music most familiar to musicians and concert-goers today. [...] The editors have gathered an expert team; their own contributions are paradigms of accessibility. I commend this important book to every serious musician's book shelf. * STRINGENDO *The editors of this volume are [...] to be congratulated on assembling a systematically organized collection of essays by an impressive international panel of scholars, each of whom is an expert on a particular court and its archival sources. [...] It includes much new and occasionally surprising information, and a substantial amount of material made available in English for the first time. * MUSICOLOGY AUSTRALIA *The detail presented in this book is remarkable [...] a useful book which extends our knowledge of courtly music-making in Germany during this time, and it will undoubtedly be of value to scholars of the period. * THE CONSORT *[A] valuable resource for any historical musicologist investigating this extraordinarily productive and fascinating period of German music history, and I hope it encourages and enables more research in this area, and ultimately more performances of its many forgotten treasures. * CONTEXT *[T]he treasures in [the book's] 500 pages will satisfy a whole range of other music historical interests for years to come. The personnel lists, mini biographies and sheer number of name references to rulers and the musicians in their employ are invaluable. * MUSICAL TIMES *[A] fascinating picture emerges of the birth and nurture of a rich musical tradition which continues today in democratic form with the unequalled wealth of German musical performance in virtually every German town. * CLASSICAL MUSIC *[T]his valuable book provides a reliable source of information for anyone interested in 18th-century music in Germany. [...] there is an abundance of knowledge here from which everyone can draw. * EARLY MUSIC REVIEW *

Read more less

Book SynopsisTrade ReviewThis magnificent book has been many years in gestation, but it has been worth the wait. . . . No prior knowledge is required to enjoy it. And enjoy is the word. The chapters are short, vivid, and packed with human interest. * BBC Music Magazine *The Music of Central Asia is an incredible accomplishment. It provides a wealth of perspectives and is remarkably comprehensive in its coverage of the region. * Asian Music *"I foresee a next generation of enthusiastic young scholars encouraged to pursue research in part due to an initial encounter with Central Asian music through this volume." * Notes *Table of ContentsPrefaceAcknowledgmentsAccessing Music Examples OnlineA Note on Music TerminologyGuide to TransliterationTimeline of Central Asian HistoryPart I: Music and Culture in Central Asia1. Music in Central Asia: An Overview / Theodore Levin2. Musical Instruments in Central Asia / Theodore LevinPart II: The Nomadic WorldPrologue: Who Are the Nomads of Central Asia? / Theodore Levin3. Introduction to Oral Epic / Elmira Köchümkulova4. The Epic Manas / Elmira Köchümkulova5. Oral Epic in Kazakhstan: Körughly and a Dynasty of Great Jyraus / Uljan Baibosynova6. Music of the Karakalpaks Part I: The Epic World of the Karakalpaks: Jyrau and Baqsy / Frédéric Léotar Part II: Qyssakhan: Performer of Written and Oral Literature / Kalmurza Kurbanov and Saida Daukeyeva7. The Art of the Turkmen Bagshy / Jamilya Gurbanova8. The Turkmen Dutar / David Fossum9. Kyrgyz Wisdom Songs: Terme Yrlary / Elmira Köchümkulova10. Aqyns and Improvised-Poetry Competitions among the Kazakhs and Kyrgyz / Elmira Köchümkulova and Jangül Qojakhmetova11. Singing Traditions of the Kazakhs / Alma Kunanbeava12. Kyrgyz Funeral Laments / Elmira Köchümkulova13. Kyrgyz Wedding Songs / Elmira Köchümkulova14. Narrative Instrumental Music: Kazakh Küi and Kyrgyz Küü / Sayra Raymbergenova and Nurlanbek Nyshanov Profile: Abdulhait Raiymbergenov / Theodore Levin Profile: Nurak Abdyrakhmanov / Elmira Köchümkulova15. Kyrgyz Jaw Harps / Nurlanbek Nyshanov16. The Kazakh Qobyz: Between Tradition and Modernity / Saida Daukeyeva17. Dombyra Performance, Migration, and Memory among Mongolian Kazakhs / Saida DaukeyevaPart III: The World of Sedentary-DwellersPrologue: Patterns of Culture: Sedentary-Dwellers / Theodore Levin18. Maqom Traditions of the Tajiks and Uzbeks / William Sumits and Theodore Levin Profile: The Academy of Maqom / Abduvali Abdurashidov Profile: Turgun Alimatov / Theodore Levin19. The Uyghur MuqaZ / Rachel Harris20. New Images of Azerbaijani Mugham in the Twentieth Century / Aida Huseynova Profile: Alim and Fargana Qasimov / Theodore Levin21. Popular Classics: Traditional Singer-Songwriters in Uzbekistan and Tajikistan / Theodore Levin22. Religious Music and Chant in the Culture of Sedentary-Dwellers / Aleksandr Djumaev23. Sufism and the Ceremony of Zikr in Ghulja / Mukaddas Mijit24. Dastan Performance among the Uyghurs / Rahile Dawut and Elise Anderson25. Female Musicians in Uzbekistan: Otin-oy, Dutarchi, and Maqomchi / Razia Sultanova26. Music in the City of Bukhara / Theodore Levin and Aleksandr Djumaev Profile: Ari Babakhanov / Aleksandr Djumaev27. Music and Culture in Badakhshan / Theodore Levin28. The Maddoh Tradition of Badakhshan / Benjamin Koen Music Example: Maddoh / Theodore Levin29. Qasoid-khonī in the Wakhan Valley of Badakhshan / Chorshanbe Goibnazarov30. Falak: Spiritual Songs of the Mountains Tajiks / Faroghat AziziPart IV: Central Asian Music in the Age of Globalization31. Revitalizing Musical Traditions: The Aga Khan Music Initiative / Theodore Levin Nurturing Local Talent, Creating Global Connections / Fairouz Nishanova The Genesis of Rainbow / Theodore Levin32. Cultural Renewal in Kyrgyzstan: Neotraditionalism and the New Era in Kyrgyz Music / Raziya SyrdybaevaMusical Instrument GlossaryGlossary of TermsInventory of Audio and Video ExamplesList of ContributorsIndex33. Popular Music in Uzbekistan / Kerstin Klenke34. Innovation in Tradition: Some Examples from Music and Theater in Uzbekistan / Aleksandr Djumaev35. Tradition-Based Popular Music in Contemporary Tajikistan / Federico SpinettiMusical Instrument GlossaryGlossary of TermsAudio and Video ExamplesIndex

Read more less

Book SynopsisAn updated reissue of what, along with England's Dreaming, has become the acknowledged seminal work on punk. Cain was at every major gig and interviewed all of the acts at the time. He was viewed as an 'insider' and his access was unrivalled. This book is a vibrant and fast-paced trip through an extraordinary year. Includes major new interviews with Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten, Strangler Hugh Cornwell and Rat Scabies of The Damned.

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisThis work collects, analyzes, and systematically presents in over 160 examples a magnificent tradition to future generations of cantors, scholars of Jewish music, and music enthusiasts worldwide. It reacquaints acculturated Jews with a largely unknown part of their heritage.

Read more less

Book SynopsisIn August 1965, during a sweltering heatwave, 56,000 people traveled by plane, car, bus, ferry, and subway train to pack New York''s Shea Stadium on a Sunday eveningnot for a baseball game, but for a rock and roll concert. This idea was the crazy dream of concert promoter Sid Bernstein. No rock band had ever played a baseball stadium, and no one believed he could pull it off. But on that glorious night, The Beatles sold out Shea Stadium, shattering all existing box office and attendance records in show business history. Oh, and they also changed the world. Against the backdrop of a remarkably volatile year in our nation''s history, Top of the Mountain: The Beatles at Shea Stadium, 1965 delivers all the detail and excitement of Shea and the spirited, curious new generation who would soon claim the decade for its own. Told through first-person interviews and quotes, a unique cast of characters tells the story: celebrities then and celebrities now, writers, agents, producers, ph

Read more less

Book SynopsisTrade Review"A fascinating, detailed history of Americana music. " --Choice"Milward has channeled the fascinating Americana story into 320 flowing and informative pages. Not content to simply recapitulate names, dates and deeds, he frequently provides valuable context and perspectives to the saga." --Bluegrass Unlimited"John Milward has crafted a masterpiece." --Americana Rhythm Music Magazine"Endlessly fascinating." --Americana Highways"With fresh insight and a great sprinkling of anecdotal details, this is a fabulous addition to the canon, enhanced by portraits of the musicians from illustrator Greve. It would be impossible for Milward to pack any more information into this well-researched and comprehensive book. Recommended to anyone and everyone interested in the history of American music. " --Library Journal"Concise, lively, and informative, with many colorful anecdotes adding intriguing detail. Milward's deep knowledge of music history and expertise on roots-music genres make Americanaland an essential addition to the music book canon."--Holly George-Warren, author of Janis: Her Life and Music"There’s a common thread that runs through the great patchwork quilt that's come to be known as Americana Music. John Milward has artfully followed every stitch of that thread and revealed the story behind every patch. In doing so he’s made huge strides in giving this rich genre the legitimacy it deserves."--Larry Campbell​​"John Milward’s Americanaland is a book with a sense of place and rhythm. Both are impeccable. The joy of this veteran music writer’s survey of the music that’s come to be called Americana is that he ranges far, digs deep, and dismisses no sound." --Chapter 16 "Americanaland provides a history, clearly showing a dedicated path through musical eras as it points a path to the future." --Alternate Root ​​"Encyclopedic. Kaleidoscopic. John Millward [offers an] account of a century of American music culminating in what we now call Americana. Countless stories of those who have brought this music that bubbles up from a bottomless well sunk deep in American soil."--Jim Rooney "You won’t read a better book on the origins of Americana music this year and I’d be willing to bet it will be quite some time before there’s anything comparable to it. Americanaland is the book that many of us have been waiting for and Milward has timed his publishing perfectly to tap into the zeitgeist as this great music continues to make inroads around the world." --Americana UK

Read more less

Book SynopsisTrade Review"Summing Up: Recommended." * CHOICE *An Alex Ross "Bookshelf" recommendation * The Rest is Noise *"The Hum of the World is a more-than-intriguing read and definitely one that will get you thinking about the role of sound within a cosmic context. . . . Recommended." * Journal of the Association of Anglican Musicians *Table of ContentsPrelude Sound and Knowledge The Audiable: An Introduction Some Leitmotifs The Standard of Vision A Philosophy of Listening? Constructive Description Sight, Sound, and Language The Sound of Words Seeing, Saying, and Hearing The Audiable: Variations on a Theme Music in the Air “No Sound without Music” Language and the Human Lord Bacon’s Echoes Ripple Effects: Distant Voices The Infinite Broadcast Immanence Reading Transfigured: St. Augustine To the Life: The Image Moving Pictures Modern Times: The Cartoon The Sound of Meaning Music and the Audiable: A Suite in Three Movements Plato’s Singing School Musical Synesthesia The Music of Language The Soundscape Song Noise and Silence Fish, Flesh, or Fowl Sensory Hybrids “Waiting to Be the Music” Circle Songs Forty-Part Motets The Ether Elemental Media Elemental Fluids Writing the Soundscape Haunting Melodies The Lifelike: The Undead Beyond Words? 1 The Audiable and the Audible Into Silence Enchantments of the Name The Inaudible On Saying “I am” The Shriek Metal Here Comes That Song Again The Mirror of Silence Rhythmic Hearing Media All the Way Down The Auditory Window Cacophony: Dispossession (Beckett) Euphony: Repossession (Beckett) Worldly Dissonance Sounds of Battle: The Civil War Sounds of Battle: World War I Ulysses in Auschwitz Intermezzo Sounding Bodies Pandemonium? Songs of Entropy By Hand Past and Present Consciousness Acknowledgments Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisFailures to listen or mishearings can be a matter of life and death. Shattering Biopolitics elaborates the intimate and complex relation between life and sound in philosophy, political theory, and sound-art.Table of ContentsList of Abbreviations | ix Prologue | 1 1 Shatter | 7 Excursus 1: Calculation and Stricture in Mendi + Keith Obadike’s Numbers Station | 38 2 The Rhythm of Life | 49 Excursus 2: Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s Phonetic Border-Crossings | 91 3 Mouth(piece) | 100 Excursus 3: Sharon Hayes’s Addresses | 145 4 A Use of Ears | 158 Excursus 4: The Drive to Listen in Ultra-red’s Militant Sound Investigations | 191 Acknowledgments | 207 Notes | 209 Selected Bibliography | 233 Index | 243

Read more less

Book SynopsisThere have been many books written about Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, but only by people who weren't there. Walter Lure wasfrom the band''s chaotic beginnings on New York''s Lower East Side, through a now-legendary UK tour with the Sex Pistols and the Clash, and on to a yearlong stay in Londoneyewitness and midwife to the birth of UK punk.Now, he tells his story in To Hell and Back, a thrilling ride through the clubs and dives of two continents, in the company of one of the most notorious junkies in rock ''n'' roll history. Drawing from his own contemporary journals, Lure paints a vivid portrait of life in both cities, during perhaps the most crucial musical uprising of the past forty yearsthe music, the characters, the clothes, the fights, the drugs, the orgies, the lot.Lure lays bare his own battle with drugs, and reflects upon his life after the band''s splitrising to become a Wall Street fixture yet still finding time to mak

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe newest addition to the best-selling All the Songs series details the unique recording history of Pink Floyd, one of the world''s most commercially successful and influential rock bands.Since 1965, Pink Floyd been recording sonically experimental and philosophical music, selling more than 250 million records worldwide, including two of the best-selling albums of all time Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall. While much is known about this iconic group, few books provide a comprehensive history of their time in the studio. In Pink Floyd All the Songs, authors Margotin and Guesdon describe the origin of their nearly 200 released songs, details from the recording studio, what instruments were used, and behind-the-scenes stories of the tensions that helped drive the band.Organized chronologically by album, this massive, 544-page hardcover begins with their 1967 debut album The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the only one recorded under founding member Syd Barrett''s leadership; through the loss of Barrett and the addition of David Gilmour; to Richard Wright leaving the band in 1979 but returning; to Roger Waters leaving in 1985 and the albums recorded since his departure, including their 2014 farewell album, The Endless River, which was downloaded 12 million times on Spotify the week it was released. Packed with more than 500 photos, All the Songs is also filled with stories fans treasure, such as Waters working with engineer Alan Parsons to employ revolutionary recording techniques for The Dark Side of the Moon at Abbey Road Studios in 1972 or producer Bob''s Ezrin''s contribution in refining Water''s original sprawling vision for The Wall.

Read more less

Book SynopsisPiano Makers in Russia in the Nineteenth Century is a richly detailed thematic study of the history of the piano in Russian society from its beginnings with the European artisans who settled in St. Petersburg in the early decades of the century through the transition to Russian-owned family firms. The piano played a defining role in the shaping of Russia’s musical culture in the nineteenth century, as artisans and entrepreneurs provided the foundation for the great tradition of the Russian virtuoso in the performance and the composition of piano music. It also helped bring about a transformative change in the material culture as the piano expanded its reach from the court and the nobility to include music enthusiasts from all social classes and Russian families in their homes. This historical study brings to light the impact of neglected piano artisans in nineteenth-century Russia, and presents a fresh view of the social and economic ties between the state and the piano-manufacturing artisans in an era largely defined by handcrafting and entrepreneurship. It contributes significantly to current issues surrounding the role of the piano and the entrepreneur-artisans in the urban centers of imperial Russia and represents an expansion of what is currently known about the piano builders who established workshops in Russia beginning in the late 1830s and 1840s, well before the heyday of the virtuoso in that country. Rare documents, including letters, memoirs, gazettes, exhibition catalogs, music journals, and administrative reports, form the nucleus of this book and provide fascinating insights about state and private patronage and the class/economic issues related to the affordability and prestige of the piano in Russia. Issues surrounding the transformation of the music industry in Russia, the role of women as patrons and performers, the exportation of instruments to the Russian Far East, and the complex system of tariffs and trade protection that benefited domestic piano manufacturers provide this book’s thematic links. Conclusions indicate that while favorable tariff laws and state-imposed economic policies benefited the family-owned firms in the nineteenth century, they remained in effect in the decades after the nationalization of the piano industry in 1917.Trade ReviewAnne Swartz's Piano Makers in Russia in the Nineteenth Century comprehensively fills a massive gap in the history of the piano. Her extensive research has opened a hitherto closed door and revealed the makers, the performers, the critical relationship of the piano industry and music education with the Russian throne, and its role across the socio-economic levels of the population, as well as its relationship to the rest of Europe. This book is a necessary component in the library of any serious scholar of the piano. -- Anne Beetem Acker, independent historic keyboard specialist; area and contributing editor to the Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments"As with so many features of nineteenth-century cultural life, Russia first borrowed, then assimilated, and finally re-exported the piano to Western Europe, and in Piano Makers in Russia in the Nineteenth Century, Anne Swartz deftly traces the story of how domestic uprights and concert grands became the chosen instruments of the Russian state. Whether in girls’ schools and later conservatories in Moscow and St. Petersburg, in provincial drawing rooms as far away as Siberia and Central Asia, or in concert halls throughout the empire, the piano did much to foster modern Russia’s sense of itself as an artistic nation. At the same time, Swartz never underestimates the role played by a vast serf and worker community in supporting cultural production in Imperial Russia. Swartz’s study will be obligatory reading for anybody interested not just in Russian music and society but also in how innovative methods of economic analysis can shed new light on the arts in the nineteenth century." -- Philip Ross Bullock, university lecturer, and fellow and tutor in Russian, Wadham College, University of OxfordThe history of the piano has long centered on the familiar network of Vienna, Paris, London, and the plethora of German makers. Russia has been a footnote. In this remarkably comprehensive and riveting narrative, Swartz uses the lens of the piano to illuminate countless fresh facets of Russian culture, going far beyond the author’s overly modest title. Among scores of delectable revelations, who knew the favored piano of both Anton Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky was a Becker? -- Robert Winter, Distinguished Professor of Music, Presidential Chair in Music and Interactive Arts, UCLAAnne Swartz's Piano Makers in Russia in the Nineteenth Century comprehensively fills a massive gap in the history of the piano. Her extensive research has opened a hitherto closed door and revealed the makers, the performers, the critical relationship of the piano industry and music education with the Russian throne, and its role across the socio-economic levels of the population, as well as its relationship to the rest of Europe. This book is a necessary component in the library of any serious scholar of the piano. -- Anne Beetem Acker, independent historic keyboard specialist; area and contributing editor to the Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments"As with so many features of nineteenth-century cultural life, Russia first borrowed, then assimilated, and finally re-exported the piano to Western Europe, and in Piano Makers in Russia in the Nineteenth Century, Anne Swartz deftly traces the story of how domestic uprights and concert grands became the chosen instruments of the Russian state. Whether in girls’ schools and later conservatories in Moscow and St. Petersburg, in provincial drawing rooms as far away as Siberia and Central Asia, or in concert halls throughout the empire, the piano did much to foster modern Russia’s sense of itself as an artistic nation. At the same time, Swartz never underestimates the role played by a vast serf and worker community in supporting cultural production in Imperial Russia. Swartz’s study will be obligatory reading for anybody interested not just in Russian music and society but also in how innovative methods of economic analysis can shed new light on the arts in the nineteenth century." -- Philip Ross Bullock, university lecturer, and fellow and tutor in Russian, Wadham College, University of OxfordThe history of the piano has long centered on the familiar network of Vienna, Paris, London, and the plethora of German makers. Russia has been a footnote. In this remarkably comprehensive and riveting narrative, Swartz uses the lens of the piano to illuminate countless fresh facets of Russian culture, going far beyond the author’s overly modest title. Among scores of delectable revelations, who knew the favored piano of both Anton Rubinstein and Tchaikovsky was a Becker? -- Robert Winter, Distinguished Professor of Music, Presidential Chair in Music and Interactive Arts, UCLA"With monumental performers such as Shostakovich, Yudina, Rachmaninoff, Horowitz, Prokofiev, Scriabin, and Richter it is clear that Russia has served as a cradle for extraordinary pianists. Anne Swartz’s brilliant book sheds new light on how it got that way. Focusing on issues of technology, gender, material culture, and industry, and ranging from Moscow to the Far East, Swartz's important work illustrates the process through which the piano came to occupy center stage in the Russian imagination." -- Michael Beckerman, Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Music, New York UniversityTable of ContentsACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODUCTION 1. THE PIANO AS AN INSTRUMENT OF THE STATE 2. MARIA FEODOROVNA, THE PIANO AND THE ROLE OF WOMEN 3. ENTREPRENEURS AND ARTISANS: DIEDERICHS AND HIS COMPETITORS PLATE NO. 1 PLATE NO. 2 PLATE NO. 3 4. AN INDUSTRY MATURES AND EXPANDS 5. PIANOS, PATRONS, PERFORMERS AND COMPOSERS 6. THE PIANO AND SOCIETY BY MID-CENTURY 7. THE PIANO AND THE RUSSIAN FAR EAST 8. RUSSIAN PIANO ARTISANS IN THE CLOSING DECADES OF THE CENTURY PLATE NO. 4 PLATE NO. 5 9. THE PIANO IN RUSSIA AFTER 1917 10. A LEGACY APPENDIX BIBLIOGRAPHY ENDNOTES INDEX

Read more less

Book SynopsisRegarded as one of the greatest film composers of all time, Bernard Herrmann was responsible for some of the most memorable music in film. His work with Alfred Hitchcock produced a slew of classics including Vertigo (1958), North by Northwest (1959), and Psycho (1960). Several years before collaborating with Hitchcock, however, Herrmann composed the brilliant score for The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), which remained a personal favorite of the composer''s. Herrmann''s score reinforces the film''s romantic theme, and much of the music has an appropriately elegiac quality. In mood, orchestration, and even to some extent thematic identity, it seems to prefigure his music for Vertigo. In this latest addition to the Scarecrow Film Score Guide series, author David Cooper examines Herrmann''s career in general, as well as the specific elements that went into the creation of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir''s score. Cooper traces the development of Herrmann''s craft as a film composer, especially throuTrade Review...David Cooper's approach—tightly organized like an intro film theory class—will instill, certainly in some, new methods of appreciating film music....Like prior volumes in the series, the book's first section gives us an excellent portrait of the events that led the cast, crew, and composer towards the film project...Cooper's technical and theoretical breakdowns will be of particular interest to composers...There's no doubt this book is the result of a long and detailed effort to craft an important educational reference... * Music From The Movies, January 2007 *In this guide, Cooper (music and technology, U. of Leeds, UK) examines Bernard Herrmann's craft as a film composer, particularly in the score of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir. He also explores nonmusical elements of the film, including the screenplay's relationship to the popular novel from which it was adapted, the contribution of director Joseph Mankiewicz, and the performances of Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison. A rundown of all the cues in Herrmann's manuscript is followed by an examination of the score as a musical artifact. * Reference and Research Book News *Table of ContentsPart 1 List of Illustrations Part 2 Abbreviations Part 3 Editor's Foreword Part 4 Acknowledgments Part 5 Introduction Chapter 6 1. Herrmann's Career up to the Composition of The Ghost and Mrs. Muir Chapter 7 2. Musical Style and Musical Meaning: Herrmann's Film Scoring Technique Chapter 8 3. Literary, Filmic and Critical Context of the Score Chapter 9 4. Overview of the Score as a Musical Text Chapter 10 5. Analysis and Readings of the Score Part 11 Notes Part 12 Bibliography Part 13 Index Part 14 About the Author

Read more less

Book Synopsis

Read more less

Book SynopsisHold On World revisits Lennon and Ono''s love affair and startling collaborations. John Lennon''s Plastic Ono Band was arguably the most emotionally honest album ever made. It wasn''t merely another record but more like a sonic exorcism, a spiritual, public bloodletting. Lennon''s album drove a stake through the heart of the Beatles'' myth while confronting everything else in John''s life, from Dylan to God to his glorified status as a Working Class Hero. Determined to rid himself of childhood traumasabandoned by his father, John, at age nine, watched helplessly as his mother was killed by a carLennon wrote the most powerful song cycle of his career, confronting fear, disappointment, and illusion, all the while espousing his love for Yoko Ono. Released simultaneously, Ono''s album Yoko Ono/Plastic Ono Band is emotionally raw and challenging. It inspired bands like the B-52s and Yo La Tengo to employ pure sound, whether shrieking vocals or guitar feedback, to exp

Read more less

Book SynopsisElvis Presley remains the single most important figure in twentieth century popular music. To many commentators, however, he has simply embodied the benefits and problems of uncritically embracing capitalism. By 2005 the 'Memphis Flash' sold over a billion records worldwide, yet his cultural significance cannot be measured by these extraordinary sales figures alone. He cannot quite be reduced to a placeholder for the contradictions of commerce. As the most prominent performer of the rock'n'roll era, then as a charismatic global superstar, Elvis fundamentally challenged the established relationship between White and Black culture, drew attention to the social needs of women and young people, and promoted the value of Southern creativity. He functioned as a bridge figure between folk roots and high modernity, and in the process became a controversial symbol of American unity. Elvis interprets the image and music of Elvis Presley to reveal how they have evolved to construct a particularly appealing and powerful myth. Following broad contours of Presley's rollercoaster career, the book uses a range of analytical frames to challenge established perspectives on an icon. Its shows that the controversy around Elvis has effectively tested how far a concern for social equality could be articulated through the marketplace, and ultimately challenged how popular music itself should be assessed.

Read more less

Book SynopsisThe first book to use subversive sexuality as a lensthrough which to provocatively view opera in the 21st century. Imagine Armida, Handel's Saracen sorceress, performing her breakneck coloraturas in a black figure-hugging rubber dress, beating her insubordinate furies into submission with a cane, suspending a captive Rinaldo in chains from the ceiling of her dungeon. Mozart's peasant girl Zerlina, meanwhile, is tying up and blindfolding her fiancé to seduce him out of his jealousy of Don Giovanni. And how about Wagner's wizard, Klingsor, ensnaring his choir of flower maidens in elaborate Japanese rope bondage? Opera, it would appear, has developed a taste for sadomasochism. For decades now, radical stage directors have repeatedly dressed canonical operasfrom Handel and Mozart to Wagner and Puccini, and beyondin whips, chains, leather, and other regalia of SM and fetishism. Deviant Opera seeks to understand this phenomenon, approaching the contemporary visual code of perversion as a lens through which opera focuses and scrutinizes its own configurations of sex, gender, power, and violence. The emerging image is that of an art form that habitually plays with an eroticization of cruelty and humiliation, inviting its devotees to take sensual pleasure in the suffering of others. Ultimately, Deviant Opera argues that this species of opera fantasizes about breaking the boundaries of its own role-playing, and pushing its erotic power exchanges from the enacted to the actual.Trade Review"An erudite analysis of sadomasochism (SM) in opera." * Opera Now *“Englund’s academically disciplined discussions of opera direction and sex become meaningful far beyond the portrayed sadomasochistic situation. They also concern the conditions of opera’s fundamental aesthetic laws and expressions.” * OPERA (Sweden) *"[Axel] Englund’s study of deviant opera is penetrating and extremely thoroughly researched, persuasively argued, abundantly documented, and well written." * Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments Preface Introduction. Staging Deviance 1. Opera and Sadomasochism 2. Sex in Excess: Rinaldo, Alcina, and the Contemporary Baroque 3. Schools of Libertinage: Don Giovanni with Sade 4. In-House Allegories: Enactment and Actuality in Parsifal and Tosca 5. More or Less Human: Wozzeck, Lulu, and the Soprano Conductor Epilogue. The Actuality Effect and Opera’s Quest for Authenticity Notes Works Cited Index

Read more less

Book SynopsisTrade Review“Susan Rankin has for decades reflected on the relations between the visible signs on the page and musical sound. This book boldly steps in a new direction in several fields of study: palaeography, history of the book, history of liturgy, music history, art history, and the broad history of the eighth and ninth centuries.” —Calvin M. Bower, translator of Fundamentals of MusicTable of ContentsList of Illustrations List of Music Examples List of Tables Note on Musical Examples Note on Manuscript Citations Preface Abbreviations Introduction Making Chant Books Part I. Reforming and Regulating 1. Musical Persuasion 2. Musical Eloquence 3. The Provision and Ownership of Chant Books Part II. Displaying Pronuntiatio 4. Making Instructions Visible 5. The Delivery of Festal Readings and Prayers 6. Singing the Psalms Part III. Making Chant Books 7. Books for Priests and Books for Singers 8. Purple, Gold, Silver and Ivory 9. New Directions 10. Fulfillment and Transformation Appendix. Feasts with chants included in the second sacramentary in Paris BnF lat. 9430 and Tours 184 Bibliography Index of Manuscripts General Index

Read more less