Music Books

Book SynopsisOver the past two centuries Western culture has largely valorized a particular kind of good musichighly serious, wondrously deep, stylistically authentic, heroically created, and strikingly originaland, at the same time, has marginalized music that does not live up to those ideals. In Good Music, John J. Sheinbaum explores these traditional models for valuing music. By engaging examples such as Handel oratorios, Beethoven and Mahler symphonies, jazz improvisations, Bruce Springsteen, and prog rock, he argues that metaphors of perfection do justice to neither the perceived strengths nor the assumed weaknesses of the music in question. Instead, he proposes an alternative model of appreciation where abstract notions of virtue need not dictate our understanding. Good music can, with pride, be playful rather than serious, diverse rather than unified, engaging to both body and mind, in dialogue with manifold styles and genres, and collaborative to the core. We can widen the scope of what

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Book SynopsisOver the past two centuries Western culture has largely valorized a particular kind of good musichighly serious, wondrously deep, stylistically authentic, heroically created, and strikingly originaland, at the same time, has marginalized music that does not live up to those ideals. In Good Music, John J. Sheinbaum explores these traditional models for valuing music. By engaging examples such as Handel oratorios, Beethoven and Mahler symphonies, jazz improvisations, Bruce Springsteen, and prog rock, he argues that metaphors of perfection do justice to neither the perceived strengths nor the assumed weaknesses of the music in question. Instead, he proposes an alternative model of appreciation where abstract notions of virtue need not dictate our understanding. Good music can, with pride, be playful rather than serious, diverse rather than unified, engaging to both body and mind, in dialogue with manifold styles and genres, and collaborative to the core. We can widen the scope of what

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Book SynopsisLying up a nation traces the evolution of black music from the time of slavery to the modern era, showing how its history has always been dependent on the interplay of races.

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Book SynopsisRepresenting a broad range of academic disciplines and geographic regions, this work examines how the imagination of race has influenced musical production, reception, and scholarly analysis. It reviews the history of race in European and American, non-Western and global music.

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Book SynopsisThis work explores the popular Catholic musical ensembles of southeastern Brazil known as Folias de Reis (companions of kings).Focusing on urban folias, Suzel Ana Reily shows how participants use the ritual journeys and musical performance to create sacred spheres set apart from the everyday.

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Book SynopsisOne is a science, the other an art; one useful, the other seemingly decorative, but mathematics and music share common origins in cult and mystery. This work explains how mathematics makes sense of space, how music tells a story, how theories are constructed, how melody is shaped. It argues that they are images of the mind at work and play.Trade Review"Expect luminous rewards by the end and exhilaration throughout the journey." - Hugh Kenner, Wall Street Journal "Provocative and exciting.... Rothstein writes this book as a foreign correspondent, sending dispatches from a remote and mysterious locale as a guide for the intellectually adventurous. The remarkable fact about his work is not that it is profound, as much of the writing is, but that it is so accessible." - Christian Science Monitor "Lovely, wistful.... Rothstein is a wonderful guide to the architecture of musical space, its tensions and relations, its resonances and proportions.... His account of what is going on in the music is unfailingly felicitous." - New Yorker"

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Book SynopsisA practical guide to jazz composition, illustrating technical and instrumental variations on themes.

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Book SynopsisHarmony, Heinrich Schenker's first published work, originally appeared in German in 1906 as New Musical Theories and Phantasies, by an Artist. Its unusual title indicates what was to be the rationale of Schenker's lifework, that artistic problems call for artistic solutions. Schenker's dedication to the formulation of a complete musical theory above the commonplace theoretical discussions was, in essence, his quest for a pattern in nature for music as art. Schenker's theory draws upon a profound understanding of the works of the masters and every proposition is illustrated by a living musical example.

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Book SynopsisStudies of concert life in nineteenth-century America have generally been limited to large orchestras and the programs we are familiar with today. But as this book reveals, audiences of that era enjoyed far more diverse musical experiences than this focus would suggest. To hear an orchestra, people were more likely to head to a beer garden, restaurant, or summer resort than to a concert hall. And what they heard weren't just symphonic worksprograms also included opera excerpts and arrangements, instrumental showpieces, comic numbers, and medleys of patriotic tunes. This book brings together musicologists and historians to investigate the many orchestras and programs that developed in nineteenth-century America. In addition to reflecting on the music that orchestras played and the socioeconomic aspects of building and maintaining orchestras, the book considers a wide range of topics, including audiences, entrepreneurs, concert arrangements, tours, and musicians' unions. The authors also show that the period saw a massive influx of immigrant performers, the increasing ability of orchestras to travel across the nation, and the rising influence of women as listeners, patrons, and players. Painting a rich and detailed picture of nineteenth-century concert life, this collection will greatly broaden our understanding of America's musical history.Trade Review“This superb collection of essays breaks new ground. The scholarship by preeminent scholars relies on new archival sources. The volume’s contribution to the history of music in America is unique. Readers in many fields will benefit from Spitzer’s collection: an encounter with the extent of amateur concert life, the history of musicians’ unions and touring ensembles, and the origins of today’s professional orchestras in Chicago, Cincinnati, and New York. The richness and variety of concert repertoire in America, much of it forgotten, come alive. Playing and listening to orchestral music in nineteenth-century America assume a significance long underestimated. This is a long overdue contribution to understanding music within urban and public culture in America before 1900.” -- Leon Botstein, Bard College“To a remarkable degree, the ‘symphony orchestra’ is an American invention, distinct from the pit orchestras of Europe. And yet our knowledge of nineteenth-century American orchestras remains amazingly incomplete. Surely this volume will help build momentum toward an adequate understanding of a vital, even heroic chapter in American cultural history.” -- Joseph Horowitz, author of Classical Music in America: A History“Highly recommended.” * Choice * “The text in toto presents a sweeping view of orchestras from about the second quarter of the nineteenth century to the end of the century; it is a more complex and diverse view than one might gather from standard music histories. . . . [It] describes in compelling detail how the orchestral movement got started and managed to become, in the opinion of some, ‘the cornerstone of America’s musical culture in the twentieth century.’ It is highly recommended, especially for conductors, orchestral musicians, and nineteenth-century specialists.” * Music Reference Services Quarterly * “If this collection of essays is any indication, we can rest assured that scholarship on nineteenth-century American music has sprung to life and will remain relevant well into the future. From cover to cover, it draws a detailed blueprint of the complex world of orchestral music and musicians across the century and constructs a sturdy foundation upon which to build new understandings of orchestras then and now.” * Journal of the Society for American Music * “This collection of diverse essays reflects well the fits and starts of American orchestra development. . . . While American orchestras’ leadership is beyond question, the path by which they reached it is shown to be much less direct and far more compelling.” * Journal of American History *Table of ContentsList of IllustrationsIntroduction: Toward a History of American Orchestras in the Nineteenth CenturyDeane L. RootI. Ubiquity and DiversityThe Ubiquity and Diversity of Nineteenth-Century American OrchestrasJohn SpitzerI.1. Building the American Symphony Orchestra: The Nineteenth-Century Roots of a Twenty-First-Century Musical InstitutionMark ClagueI.2. Modeling Music: Early Organizational Structures of American Women’s OrchestrasAnna-Lise P. SantellaI.3. American Orchestras and Their Unions in the Nineteenth CenturyJohn SpitzerII. The Orchestra and the American CityOrchestras: Local versus NationalJohn SpitzerII.1. Invisible Instruments: Theater Orchestras in New York, 1850–1900John GrazianoII.2. Beethoven and Beer: Orchestral Music in German Beer Gardens in Nineteenth-Century New York CityJohn Koegel and Jonas WestoverII.3. Performances to “Permanence”: Orchestra Building in Late Nineteenth-Century CincinnatiKaren AhlquistII.4. Critic and Conductor in 1860s Chicago: George P. Upton, Hans Balatka, and Cultural CapitalismJames DeavilleII.5. Amateur and Professional, Permanent and Transient: Orchestras in the District of Columbia, 1877–1905 Patrick WarfieldIII. Conductors, Promoters, PatronsMarketing the American OrchestraJohn SpitzerIII.1. Bernard Ullman and the Business of Orchestras in Mid-Nineteenth-Century New YorkBethany S. GoldbergIII.2. John Sullivan Dwight and the Harvard Musical Association Orchestra: A Help or a Hindrance?Mary Wallace DavidsonIII.3. The Leopold Damrosch Orchestra, 1877–78: Background, Instrumentation, Programming, and Critical ReceptionOra Frishberg SalomanIII.4. Gender and the Germanians: “Art-Loving Ladies” in Nineteenth-Century Concert LifeNancy NewmanIV. America and EuropeOrchestras: American and EuropeanJohn SpitzerIV.1. “A Concentration of Talent on Our Musical Horizon”: The 1853–54 American Tour by Jullien’s Extraordinary OrchestraKatherine K. PrestonIV.2. Ureli Corelli Hill: His European Travels and the Creation of the New York PhilharmonicBarbara HawsV. Orchestral RepertoryOrchestral Repertory: Highbrow and LowbrowJohn SpitzerV.1.Orchestral Programs in Boston, 1842–55, in European PerspectiveWilliam WeberV.2. Theodore Thomas and the Cultivation of American MusicBrenda Nelson-StraussV.3. Thinking about Serious Music in New York, 1842–82Adrienne Fried BlockAfterword: Coming of AgeRonald G. WaltersBibliographyContributorsIndex

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Book SynopsisBased on exclusive interviews, Breakout tells the often riveting personal stories of fourteen popular musicians--some well known, others not--from Zaire, Ghana, Nigeria and Sierra Leone. The first book on African pop music to look closely at the lives of the musicians themselves, Breakout deals with four African musical genres: soukous, highlife, afro-beat, and palm wine. Amid Africa's deepening economic and political crises of the last two decades, African musicians who developed these genres faced the need to cross cultural boundaries, or break out, and achieve a hit in the international marketplace. Challenging conventional assumptions, Gary Stewart demonstrates for the first time the true dimensions of this struggle to create music that will qualify as both an authentic cultural expression and an export commodity. From accounts of the outrageous Fela, who snipes at African leaders and recounts his days with Isis in ancient Egypt, to S. E. Rogie, who lurches from the pinnacle of s

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Book SynopsisPresents the voices of three musicians - queer nightclub star Zeki Muren, arabesk originator Orhan Gencebay, and pop diva Sezen Aksu - who collectively have dominated mass media in Turkey since the early 1950s. Using these three singers as a lens, the author examines Turkey's repressive politics and civil violence as well as its public life.

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Book SynopsisThis work analyzes the music of Java and the development of the gamelan, an ensemble dominated by bronze percussion instruments. Drawing on sources ranging from 12th-century poetry to 20th-century nationalistic writing, it examines historical sources and contemporary cultural theory and criticism.

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Book SynopsisMichael Tenzer offers a study of Balinese gamelan music, focusing on the pre-eminent 20th-century genre, gamelan gong kebyar. He applies music theory and analysis to this non-Western orchestral genre to discuss composition and structure, as well as looking at the ethographic background.

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Book SynopsisTrade Review“In this thoroughly researched study, Rice takes his readers through the changing image of an elusive yet inspiring figure with a growing presence in the musical, visual, devotional, and social history of sixteenth-century Europe. Rice skillfully situates Cecilia at the crossroads of earthly and spiritual concerns, gender politics, and pervasive cultural dynamics across the continent. The result is a rich journey into the afterlife of an early Christian martyr turned into a musical icon for the emerging religious and institutional landscape of early modern Europe.” * Stefano Mengozzi, University of Michigan *“Saint Cecilia in the Renaissance is a meticulously researched and convincing picture of the figure of Saint Cecilia and her cultural importance from the Middle Ages to the end of the Renaissance. Rice has provided a fascinating and accessible narrative that reveals a variety of social and musical activities related to the veneration of the saint. Visually instructive and appealing, the book will be of interest to musicologists, art historians, historians, and nonspecialists alike.” * Patrick Macey, Eastman School of Music, University of Rochester *“In this interdisciplinary book filled with historical texts, illustrations, and musical analyses, Rice reveals the transformative power of music as he demonstrates how musicians, first in the Netherlands and Cologne, and then in France, Italy, and London, reinvented St. Cecilia, a nonmusical Roman virgin-martyr, as their favored patroness and as a singer, organist, or performer on the virginal, clavichord, violin, bass viol, or lute. Two words, ‘Cantantibus organis,’ from the fifth-century description of Cecilia’s wedding, guide Rice and his readers to her appearances in the famous Hartker Codex, Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, confraternity chapels, an altar in the Roman Pantheon, extravagant feasting to music on 22 November, plays, an alliterative poem on ‘C,’ competitions of composers, a papal mass for three choirs and three organs, and to more than one-hundred forty choral works celebrating her by Isaac, Clemens non Papa, Gombert, Guerrero, Lassus, Palestrina, Anerio, Marenzio, Purcell, and others. This study many years in the making is cultural history at its best.” * Barbara Haggh-Huglo, University of Maryland, College Park *"John A. Rice’s new book St. Cecilia in the Renaissance: The Emergence of a Musical Icon gives a definitive account of this evolution of a lesser martyr into celebrated muse and patron saint of music and musicians. He traces the development of the cult of St. Cecilia through Christian liturgy, the visual arts and music, starting in northern Europe in the Middle Ages and moving to Italy, when an explosion of polyphonic vocal works were written in her honour by some of the most celebrated composers in Europe... the book is generous with both musical examples and colour plates." * The Lady Organist *"John Rice’s new book is a brilliant accounting of how the exchange between art, music, and liturgy shaped [Saint Cecilia's] identity. Through an extensive survey of visual representations and liturgical celebrations, Rice shows that St. Cecilia’s patronage of music has its roots both in the liturgy and an evolving iconographic tradition." * Early Music America *"The range of Rice's scholarship and his in-depth knowledge are astonishing . . . [Saint Cecilia in the Renaissance] augments our knowledge of the cultural and religious life of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance." * Burlington Magazine *"Rice’s book is a readable and richly researched work that makes an invaluable contribution to the understanding of this saint’s iconographic evolution." -- Julia Faiers * Journal of the British Archaeological Association *Table of ContentsList of Illustrations List of Musical Examples List of Tables Bibliographic Abbreviations and Library Sigla A Note on Spelling, Terminology, Musical Examples, and Translations Introduction 1 Wedding Music: Retelling the Passio in Medieval and Early Renaissance Liturgy, Literature, and Art 2 Beyond the Legend and Liturgy: The Organ as Emblem 3 The Celebration of Cecilia’s Day by Musical Organizations and Singers in the Netherlands and France 4 Franco-Flemish Cecilian Motets: Composers, Publishers, Performers, Venues 5 Franco-Flemish Cecilian Motets: Words and Music 6 Italian Artists Depict Cecilia from the Late Fifteenth Century to the Late Sixteenth Century 7 Cecilia Returns to Rome Epilogue: From Saint to Muse Acknowledgments Appendix: Music for Cecilia Published or Copied before 1620: Chronological List Notes Bibliography Index

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Book SynopsisRichard Kramer follows the work of Beethoven and Schubert from 1815 through to the final months of their lives, when each were increasingly absorbed in iconic projects that would soon enough inspire notions of late style. Here is Vienna, hosting a congress in 1815 that would redraw national boundaries and reconfigure the European community for a full century. A snapshot captures two of its citizens, each seemingly oblivious to this momentous political environment: Franz Schubert, not yet twenty years old and in the midst of his most prolific yearsome 140 songs, four operas, and much else; and Ludwig van Beethoven, struggling through a midlife crisis that would yield the song cycle An die ferne Geliebte, two strikingly original cello sonatas, and the two formidable sonatas for the Hammerklavier, opp. 101 and 106. In Richard Kramer's compelling reading, each seemed to be composing againstBeethoven, against the Enlightenment; Schubert, against the looming presence of the older composer eTrade Review“Kramer places the works he discusses within revelatory new cultural contexts; as ever, he writes analysis which speaks to the performer.” * Ian Bostridge, author of 'Song and Self: A Singer's Reflections on Music and Performance' *“From the Ruins of Enlightenment is a beautifully written, original analysis of many of the best known, most often discussed and performed works of two central composers, Beethoven and Schubert. As has been the case in Kramer’s work throughout his career, this is an exceedingly musical study, one which promises to change the way we hear the works he discusses. Kramer is a sensitive reader of poetry and an insightful analyst of how composers interpreted the texts they set.” * Christopher Reynolds, University of California, Davis *“Kramer is one of the world’s most important critics on music and aesthetics of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He is a giant figure in Schubert studies. Unafraid to be controversial, he always writes with stringency, shrewd discrimination, and verve. What is distinctive about Kramer’s venture into a topic that has occasioned a wealth of contending interventions is its peerless mastery of Beethoven’s and Schubert’s compositional approaches. From the Ruins of Enlightenment is unique in its range, scholarly ambition, and intellectual vigor.” * Lorraine Byrne Bodley, Maynooth University *“Drawing heavily on the composers’ sketches, drafts, manuscripts, notebooks, contemporary sources, and his own performance experience, Kramer demonstrates an acute ear, an analytical mind, and reasoned opinions. . . . Readers will feel as if they are looking over the shoulders of these musical titans as they create stunning work.” * Library Journal *"This text about music should be carefully read and even more carefully pondered, especially by anyone who dares to feel that the time for new books about Schubert and Beethoven has gone for ever." * The Musical Times *Table of ContentsPreamble: 1815 and Beyond In the Silence of the Poem Chapter 1. Hölty’s Nightingales, and Schubert’s Chapter 2. Herder’s Hexameters, and Beethoven’s Chapter 3. Whose Meeres Stille? Toward a Poetics of Fugue Chapter 4. Gradus ad Parnassum: Beethoven, Schubert, and the Romance of Counterpoint Chapter 5. Con alcune licenze: On the Largo before the Fugue in Op. 106 Sonata and the Claims of NarrativeBeethoven Chapter 6. On a Challenging Moment in the Sonata for Pianoforte and Violoncello, Op. 102, No. 2Schubert Chapter 7. Against the Grain: The Sonata in G (D 894) and a Hermeneutics of Late Style Last Things, New Horizons Chapter 8. Final Beethoven Chapter 9. Posthumous Schubert Postscript: . . . and Beyond Acknowledgments List of Tables, Examples, and Figures Works Cited Index

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Book SynopsisAn engaging argument about what experimental music can tell us about being human. In Experimenting the Human, G Douglas Barrett argues that experimental music speaks to the contemporary posthuman, a condition in which science and technology decenter human agency amid the uneven temporality of postwar global capitalism. Time moves forward for some during this period, while it seems to stand still or even move backward for others. Some say we're already posthuman, while others endure the extended consequences of never having been considered fully human in the first place. Experimental music reflects on this state, Barrett contends, through its interdisciplinary involvements in postwar science, technology, and art movements. Rather than pursuing the human's beyond, experimental music addresses the social and technological conditions that support such a pursuit. Barrett locates this tendency of experimentalism throughout its historical entanglements with cybernetics, and in his intimTrade Review"Setting out from cybernetics’ collusion with neoliberal financialization, and probing the increasingly urgent question of the posthuman, Barrett’s compelling book asks ‘how to recompose posthumanism’. Deepening our understanding of experimental music’s journeying in postformalist artistic territories, and infused by critical race, queer, and feminist thinking, Barrett dialogues with the visionary work of six artists who cut through and reconfigure our troubled relations with technology through inventive practices that insistently bring the social and political back in." -- Georgina Born, professor of anthropology and music, UCL and global scholar, Princeton University"Posing both uncomfortable questions and new possibilities for the understanding of music, Barrett trenchantly turns our attention to how experimental composers have long engaged with the critical issues of our time now being explored in many technological and humanistic fields. These essays ringingly assert the centrality of new musical expression in constituting both the human and the posthuman." -- George E. Lewis, Columbia University"Experimenting the Human considers how experimental artists like Pamela Z, Nam June Paik, and Pauline Oliveros have critically engaged with the figure of the posthuman in their work. In the process, Barrett not only traces the possibilities of the posthuman disclosed through their artistic practice, but also the limits and blindspots they reveal, particularly given the posthuman's lingering, latent indebtedness to the raced, classed, and gendered exclusions that have long defined the human. Ambitious in scope and virtuosic in execution, Barrett’s book will be of interest not just to music scholars but to critical thinkers of all stripes." -- Eric A. Drott, University of Texas“Experimenting the Human examines an interdisciplinary, intergenerational roster of artists working across music, new media, and visual and performance art and contextualizes their experimental practices within histories and theories of technology and the posthuman from the Enlightenment to the present. Through these artists’ technological augmentation of the brain, hands, ear, and voice, Barrett shows how they have advanced unique modes of indeterminacy that register subjective precarity and difference. Their critical, resistant engagements with technology decenter human agency in ways that help us rethink the human for the past, present, and future, while also reaffirming our common humanity. Experimentalism, Barrett remarkably shows, has always been posthuman.” -- Natilee Harren, University of HoustonTable of ContentsIntroduction: Music in a Wired Brain 1. The Brain at Work: Cognitive Labor, the Posthuman Brain, and Alvin Lucier’s Music for Solo Performer 2. “How We Were Never Posthuman”: Techniques of the Posthuman Body in Pamela Z’s Voci 3. “The Catastrophe of Technology”: Posthuman Automata and Nam June Paik’s Robot K-456 4. Deep (Space) Listening: SETI, Moonbounce, and Pauline Oliveros’s Echoes from the Moon 5. Engendering the Digital: Digitality and the Posthuman Hand in Laetitia Sonami’s Lady’s Glove 6. The Last Invention: Recursion, Recordings, and Yasunao Tone’s AI Deviation Conclusion: Music after Extinction Acknowledgments Notes Index

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Setting out from cybernetics’ collusion with neoliberal financialization, and probing the increasingly urgent question of the posthuman, Barrett’s compelling book asks ‘how to recompose posthumanism’. Deepening our understanding of experimental music’s journeying in postformalist artistic territories, and infused by critical race, queer, and feminist thinking, Barrett dialogues with the visionary work of six artists who cut through and reconfigure our troubled relations with technology through inventive practices that insistently bring the social and political back in." -- Georgina Born, professor of anthropology and music, UCL and global scholar, Princeton University"Posing both uncomfortable questions and new possibilities for the understanding of music, Barrett trenchantly turns our attention to how experimental composers have long engaged with the critical issues of our time now being explored in many technological and humanistic fields. These essays ringingly assert the centrality of new musical expression in constituting both the human and the posthuman." -- George E. Lewis, Columbia University"Experimenting the Human considers how experimental artists like Pamela Z, Nam June Paik, and Pauline Oliveros have critically engaged with the figure of the posthuman in their work. In the process, Barrett not only traces the possibilities of the posthuman disclosed through their artistic practice, but also the limits and blindspots they reveal, particularly given the posthuman's lingering, latent indebtedness to the raced, classed, and gendered exclusions that have long defined the human. Ambitious in scope and virtuosic in execution, Barrett’s book will be of interest not just to music scholars but to critical thinkers of all stripes." -- Eric A. Drott, University of Texas“Experimenting the Human examines an interdisciplinary, intergenerational roster of artists working across music, new media, and visual and performance art and contextualizes their experimental practices within histories and theories of technology and the posthuman from the Enlightenment to the present. Through these artists’ technological augmentation of the brain, hands, ear, and voice, Barrett shows how they have advanced unique modes of indeterminacy that register subjective precarity and difference. Their critical, resistant engagements with technology decenter human agency in ways that help us rethink the human for the past, present, and future, while also reaffirming our common humanity. Experimentalism, Barrett remarkably shows, has always been posthuman.” -- Natilee Harren, University of HoustonTable of ContentsIntroduction: Music in a Wired Brain 1. The Brain at Work: Cognitive Labor, the Posthuman Brain, and Alvin Lucier’s Music for Solo Performer 2. “How We Were Never Posthuman”: Techniques of the Posthuman Body in Pamela Z’s Voci 3. “The Catastrophe of Technology”: Posthuman Automata and Nam June Paik’s Robot K-456 4. Deep (Space) Listening: SETI, Moonbounce, and Pauline Oliveros’s Echoes from the Moon 5. Engendering the Digital: Digitality and the Posthuman Hand in Laetitia Sonami’s Lady’s Glove 6. The Last Invention: Recursion, Recordings, and Yasunao Tone’s AI Deviation Conclusion: Music after Extinction Acknowledgments Notes Index

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Book SynopsisThe first book-length ethnographic study on music and Ifá divination in Cuba and Nigeria. Hailing from Cuba, Nigeria, and various sites across Latin America and the Caribbean, Ifá missionary-practitioners are transforming the landscape of Ifá divination and deity (òri`s?a`/oricha) worship through transatlantic travel and reconnection. In Cuba, where Ifá and Santería emerged as an interrelated, Yorùbá-inspired ritual complex, worshippers are driven to African traditionalism by its promise of efficacy: they find Yorùbá approaches more powerful, potent, and efficacious. In the first book-length study on music and Ifá, Ruthie Meadows draws on extensive, multisited fieldwork in Cuba and Yorùbáland, Nigeria, to examine the controversial Nigerian-style ritual movement in Cuban Ifá divination. Meadows uses feminist and queer of color theory along with critical studies of Africanity to excavate the relation between utility and affect within translocal ritual music circulations. Meadows tTrade Review“With this innovative book, Meadows significantly expands our understanding of Afro-Cuban religious music and its ever-changing manifestations. Her exploration of ritual music associated with divination across the island, her focus on transatlantic religious dialogues between Nigeria and Cuba, her emphasis on the contested nature of religious orthodoxy, and her close attention to the struggles of women all represent major contributions to existing scholarship.” * Robin Moore, The University of Texas at Austin *“Meadows’s years of research and solid scholarship shed new light on the fast-moving nigeriano religious movement in Cuba. Her accessible and engaging writing allows diverse kinds of readers to understand a complex phenomenon. This important book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of Cuban and Yorùbá music and religion, as well as a vast international readership of òrìṣà devotees and musicians.” * Amanda Villepastour, Cardiff University *Table of ContentsList of Examples and Transcriptions List of Abbreviations Preface Introduction Chapter One: The Global Ifá Missionary: Revisionism and Nigerian-Style Ifá-Òrìṣà in Cuba Chapter Two: Yorùbá Geographies and the Efficacy of the Far: The Dùndún “Talking Drums” and Transatlantic Institutions in Havana Chapter Three: Revolutionary Feminism and Gendered Translocality: Women and Consecrated Batá Chapter Four: Ìyánífá: Gendered Polarity and “Speaking Ifá” Chapter Five: The Efficacy of Pleasure and the Utility of the Close: Regionalism and All-Male Egúngún Masquerade Epilogue: The “Leopards” of Nigerian-Style Ifá-Òrìṣà: Visions from Cuba to Yorùbáland Acknowledgments Glossary Notes References Index

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Book SynopsisA surprising study reveals a plethora of attempts to communicate with non-humans in the modern era. In Interspecies Communication, music scholar Gavin Steingo examines significant cases of attempted communication beyond the humancases in which the dualistic relationship of human to non-human is dramatically challenged. From singing whales to Sun Ra to searching for alien life, Steingo charts the many ways we have attempted to think about, and indeed to reach, beings that are very unlike ourselves. Steingo focuses on the second half of the twentieth century, when scientists developed new ways of listening to oceans and cosmic spacetwo realms previously inaccessible to the senses and to empirical investigation. As quintessential frontiers of the postwar period, the outer space of the cosmos and the inner space of oceans were conceptualized as parallel realities, laid bare by newly technologized ears. Deeply engaging, Interspecies Communication explores our attempts to cross the bord

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Book SynopsisAn insightful look at how avant-garde musicians of the postwar period in New York explored the philosophical dimensions of music's ineffability. The Musician as Philosopherexplores the philosophical thought of avant-garde musicians in postwar New York: David Tudor, Ornette Coleman, the Velvet Underground, Alice Coltrane, Patti Smith, and Richard Hell. It contends that these musiciansall of whom are understudied and none of whom are traditionally taken to be composersnot only challenged the rules by which music is written and practiced but also confounded and reconfigured gendered and racialized expectations for what critics took to be legitimate forms of musical sound. From a broad historical perspective, their arresting music electrified a widely recognized social tendency of the 1960s: a simultaneous affirmation and crisis of the modern self.

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Book SynopsisComprises Giuseppe Verdi's two surviving secular choral works: "Inno popolare", or "Hymn of the People", for unaccompanied male chorus, and "Inno delle nazioni", or "Hymn of the Nations", for tenor solo, chorus, and orchestra.

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Book SynopsisThis volume explores the history of "musica tropical", analyzing its rise in the context of the development of the broadcast media, rapid urbanization, and regional struggles for power.

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Book SynopsisNow known internationally through the recordings of King Sunny Ade and others, juju music originated more than fifty years ago among the Yoruba of Nigeria. This history and ethnography of juju is the first detailed account of the evolution and social significance of a West African popular music. Enhanced with maps, color photographs of musicians and dance parties, musical transcriptions, interviews with musicians, and a glossary of Yoruba terms, Juju is an invaluable contribution to scholarship and a boon to fans who want to discover the roots of this vibrant music. What's most impressive about Juju is how much Waterman makes of his purism. By concentrating on one long- lived, well-defined genre, he helps the Western reader experience 'rock' the way any proud Yoruba would--as a tributary of African music rather than vice versa.--Robert Christgau, The Village Voice

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Book SynopsisFocusing on popular huayno music and the ways it has been promoted to Peru's emerging middle class, the author tells a complex story of identity making and the marketing forces entangled with it, providing crucial insights into the dynamics among art, class, and ethnicity that reach far beyond the Andes.

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Book SynopsisExamines the intersection of the public and private meaning of music. This book incorporates the music criticism of Adorno, musical ideas from literary works by Proust, and criticism by Benjamin and de Man, and discusses performers such as Glenn Gould, Arturo Toscanini, and Alfred Brendel and such composers as Beethoven, Wagner, and Strauss.

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Book SynopsisThis collection of original essays develops new, intertextual approaches to thinking about rock music.Table of Contents1. Modeling Authenticity, Authenticating Commercial Models, by Michael Coyle and Jon Dolan 2. Too Much Mead? Under the Influence (of Participant-Observation), by R. J. Warren Zanes 3. Fixing Madonna and Courtney: Sex Drugs Rock 'n' Roll Reflux, by Marilyn Manners 4. "Ask Any Girl": Compulsory Heterosexuality and Girl Group Culture, by Patricia Juliana Smith 5. "Do Doc Martens Have a Special Smell?" Homocore, Skinhead Eroticism, and Queer Agency, by Ashley Dawson 6. Dr. Funkenstein's Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication: George Clinton Signifies, by Mark Willhardt and Joel Stein 7. "I Have Come Out to Play": Jonathan Richman and the Politics of the Faux Naf, by John Alberti 8. This Is Fascism? (Raves and the Politics of Dancing), by Sean Portnoy 9. The Riot Grrrls and "Carnival", by Neil Nehring 10. Time to Heal, "Desire" Time: The Cyberprophesy of U2's "Zoo World Order", by Robyn Brothers 11. "Even Better than the Real Thing": U2's (Love) Songs of the Self, by Atara Stein 12. Elvis Costello as Cultural Icon and Cultural Critic, by Pamela Thurschwell 13. Musical Cheese: The Appropriation of Seventies' Music in Nineties' Movies, by Kevin J. H. Dettmar and William Richey

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Book SynopsisWhat is it about the marriage of music and the stage that fills us with such bewilderment and passion? What is opera's seductive promise and how does it draw us into its embrace? This study considers the allure of several seducers and seductresses from nineteenth-century opera - Monteverdi's "Poppea", Handel's "Alcina", and Massenet's "Manon".Trade Review[A] thought-provoking philosophical study... Recommended. Library JournalTable of ContentsAcknowledgments Foreward by Victor Brombert Introduction 1. Singing and Seducing 2. The Da Ponte Operas 3. The Marriage of Figaro 4. Registers of Excess: Don Giovanni 5. Cosi fan tutte 6. The Promise of Idomeneo 7. Lights and Powers: The Magic Flute 8. Poppea Victorious 9. The Magic of Alcina 10. Love unto Death: Another Romeo 11. Manon 12. Arian and Bluebeard; or, The Useless Rescue 13. Elektra; or, The Accomplishment of Hatred 14. Ombra adorata Notes Contributors Index

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewElective Affinities is a great book. Lydia Goehr demonstrates that critical theory is not as dead or philosophically doctrinaire and petrified as many would like to believe. Instead, her study is a brilliant and persuasive intervention arguing for the significance of critical theory today, supplying the evidence that critical theory still plays a crucial role in the project of philosophy--Continental or not. -- Willi Goetschel, professor of German and philosophy, University of Toronto Elective Affinities brings the often very different (and oppositional) philosophy of the aesthetics of Danto and Adorno into a richly informative exchange, making good the case that whatever their considerable differences, there are important points of convergence, such that what emerges is greater than the sum of the parts. -- Richard Leppert, Regents Professor, University of Minnesota This book on the elective affinities of music to philosophy and drama, to birdsong and violence, to film and nationhood is imaginatively textured around two resonating themes: the persistent battle of philosophical aesthetics with history and the arts and the unusual confrontation of a European and an American aesthetic of the modern. Thinking with and through the work of Theodor Adorno and Arthur Danto, Lydia Goehr gives us a series of brilliant musical essays linked by the sustained focus on the movement of concepts such as musicality, art's relation to nature and the commonplace, the experimental, the monumental, film as visual music, and music in film. A common thread, drawn into a pattern in the final chapter, is the elective affinity between European (especially German) and American aesthetic theory and practice. -- Andreas Huyssen, Villard Professor of German and Comparative Literature, Columbia University [Goehr's] analysis is erudite, lucid, and always suggestive... [Elective Affinities is] genuinely magnificent and lastingly influential. History and Theory

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Book SynopsisBob Dylan’s iconic 1962 song “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” stands at the crossroads of musical and literary traditions. Alessandro Portelli explores the power and resonance of the song, considering the meanings of history and memory in folk cultures and in Dylan’s work.Trade ReviewHard Rain is a rich and genre-busting meditation on oral history, on culture, on folklore, on poetry, on music, on Bob Dylan, and on many other things besides. Portelli, like Bob Dylan, brings to life many voices that are often not heard, and his book radiates critical acumen, encyclopedic knowledge and a bracing freshness of vision. -- Mitchell Duneier, author of Ghetto: The Invention of a Place, the History of an IdeaWhile it is common knowledge that Dylan modeled 'Hard Rain' after 'Lord Randal,' Portelli treats the two songs equally. Neither is a footnote in the history of the other. Offering a wonderful analysis of orality and memory, Hard Rain represents a great contribution to our understanding of oral cultures by analyzing a 1960s classic song along with a seventeenth-century ballad. Captivating. -- Yolanda Chávez Leyva, University of Texas at El PasoHard Rain is a tapestry of autobiographical essay, music criticism, and pop culture reflection. The style is lovely, and Portelli addresses everything from innocence and apocalypse to lyric structure and oral tradition mnemonic devices through his comparison of Bob Dylan’s 'Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall' to the traditional folk song 'Lord Randal.' -- Mary Larson, Oklahoma State UniversityDylan fans, and they are legion, will appreciate the backstory and long history that influenced the style, structure, and content of one of his most powerful songs. * Library Journal *Table of ContentsIntroduction: Memory, Voice, and the Global Bob Dylan1. Songs of Innocence and Experience2. The Text and the Voice3. Talking Atomic Blues4. Which Way History?Appendix: History’s Lessons UnlearnedNotesIndex of NamesIndex of AlbumsIndex of Songs

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Book SynopsisWriting in collaboration, three psychoanalytic clinicians develop a fresh vision of the essential role of music in psychical life. Through an interdisciplinary exploration, Here I’m Alive shows how music is fundamental to becoming human, establishing our embodied sense of membership and participation in a shared world through the fabric of culture.Trade ReviewShowing us that music is at the heart of human development, of sociability, of love and desire—at the heart of most of what matters to us—this book shows us what many of us have always somehow thought but have never been able to know with such clarity and vision. Not simply one of the most fascinating books written about psychoanalysis, Here I’m Alive is, more importantly, about just how musical our lives are and can be. It is a unique and remarkable book. -- Adam Phillips, author of The Cure for PsychoanalysisThe phrase 'music lover' always rankled me, and this wild, beautiful, polyphonic book shows why: music is not just loved; music is love, is everywhere, is everything. Far from being a book just about music and psychoanalysis, Here I’m Alive is an experiment in eros. Its venerable concepts—the unconscious, the drives, rhythm, harmony—become a loom that weaves a world-sized tapestry. -- Seth Brodsky, University of Chicago, author of From 1989, or European Music & the Modernist UnconsciousHere I’m Alive is quietly revolutionary in the way it proposes that we as psychoanalysts are in the business of reuniting our patients with the musical dimension of life through which they become more fully human, more fully themselves. These essays illustrate the role of music in the very fabric of life. -- Thomas Ogden, author of Coming to Life in the Consulting Room: Toward a New Analytic SensibilityTable of ContentsPreface: Liner NotesSide A1. The Body’s Way of Dreaming2. The Rhythm of the Heat3. Mind Waves4. Learning to Live Together5. The Living FrameSide B6. Re-membering, Re-beating, and Worlding-Through7. Strange Loop8. This Is How We Do It9. The Art Teacher10. Old Foundations in PsychoanalysisAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisWriting in collaboration, three psychoanalytic clinicians develop a fresh vision of the essential role of music in psychical life. Through an interdisciplinary exploration, Here I’m Alive shows how music is fundamental to becoming human, establishing our embodied sense of membership and participation in a shared world through the fabric of culture.Trade ReviewShowing us that music is at the heart of human development, of sociability, of love and desire—at the heart of most of what matters to us—this book shows us what many of us have always somehow thought but have never been able to know with such clarity and vision. Not simply one of the most fascinating books written about psychoanalysis, Here I’m Alive is, more importantly, about just how musical our lives are and can be. It is a unique and remarkable book. -- Adam Phillips, author of The Cure for PsychoanalysisThe phrase 'music lover' always rankled me, and this wild, beautiful, polyphonic book shows why: music is not just loved; music is love, is everywhere, is everything. Far from being a book just about music and psychoanalysis, Here I’m Alive is an experiment in eros. Its venerable concepts—the unconscious, the drives, rhythm, harmony—become a loom that weaves a world-sized tapestry. -- Seth Brodsky, University of Chicago, author of From 1989, or European Music & the Modernist UnconsciousHere I’m Alive is quietly revolutionary in the way it proposes that we as psychoanalysts are in the business of reuniting our patients with the musical dimension of life through which they become more fully human, more fully themselves. These essays illustrate the role of music in the very fabric of life. -- Thomas Ogden, author of Coming to Life in the Consulting Room: Toward a New Analytic SensibilityTable of ContentsPreface: Liner NotesSide A1. The Body’s Way of Dreaming2. The Rhythm of the Heat3. Mind Waves4. Learning to Live Together5. The Living FrameSide B6. Re-membering, Re-beating, and Worlding-Through7. Strange Loop8. This Is How We Do It9. The Art Teacher10. Old Foundations in PsychoanalysisAcknowledgmentsNotesIndex

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Book SynopsisThis impressive compilation offers a nearly complete listing of sound recordings made by American minority artists prior to mid-1942. Organized by national group or language, the seven-volume set cites primary and secondary titles, composers, participating artists, instrumentation, date and place of recording, master and release numbers, and reissues in all formats. Because of its clear arrangements and indexes, it will be a unique and valuable tool for music and ethnic historians, folklorists, and others.

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Book SynopsisThis impressive compilation offers a nearly complete listing of sound recordings made by American minority artists prior to mid-1942. Organized by national group or language, the seven-volume set cites primary and secondary titles, composers, participating artists, instrumentation, date and place of recording, master and release numbers, and reissues in all formats. Because of its clear arrangements and indexes, it will be a unique and valuable tool for music and ethnic historians, folklorists, and others.

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Book SynopsisThe collected writings of composer Ben JohnstonTrade ReviewAwarded the ASCAP Deems Taylor Award (2007).— ASCAP Deems Taylor AwardTable of ContentsEditor's Acknowledgments xi Introduction xi Bob Gilmore Ben Johnston: A Chronology xxv Bob Gilmore 1. ON MUSIC THEORY Aesthetic Theory; Philosophical Background for Mathematical Theory; Musical Background for Application of Mathematical Theory 3 Scalar Order as a Compositional Resource 10 Proportionality and Expanded Musical Pitch Relations 32 Microtonal Resources 41 Tonality Regained 46 Music Theory 53 Rational Structure in Music 62 A Notation System for Extended Just Intonation 77 2. ON MUSICAL AESTHETICS AND CULTURE Musical Intelligibility: Where Are We? 91 A Talk on Contemporary Music 103 Festivals and New Music 107 Three Attacks on a Problem 109 On Context 118 Contribution to IMC Panel 122 How to Cook an Albatross 126 Art and Survival 134 On Bridge-Building 143 Seventeen Items 149 Art and Religion 151 Extended Just Intonation: A Position Paper 153 A.S.U.C. Keynote Address 156 Just Intonation and Mere Intonation 163 Without Improvement 166 Maximum Clarity 171 3. SOME COMPOSITIONS On String Quartet No. 2 183 On Sonata for Microtonal Piano 185 The Genesis of Knocking Piece 187 Quintet for Groups: A Reminiscence 192 On Carmilla 196 On Crossings (String Quartet No. 3 and String Quartet No. 4) 199 On The Age of Surveillance 201 On String Quartet No. 5 203 On String Quartet No. 6 204 On Journeys 205 On Sleep and Waking 207 4. ON OTHER COMPOSERS Letter from Urbana 211 To Perspectives of New Music re. John Cage 216 The Corporealism of Harry Partch 219 Harry Partch/John Cage 232 Harry Partch's Cloud-Chamber Music 235 Beyond Harry Partch 243 Regarding La Monte Young 251 Notes on Sources 259 Bibliography 263 Discography 267 Index 271

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Book SynopsisNegotiating identity in hip-hop cultureTrade Review "Miles White's From Jim Crow to Jay-Z drops squarely into the Bermuda Triangle of critical race studies, gender and sexuality studies, and performance studies with useful new approaches to studying rappers as ambivalent cultural exemplars of black masculine performance."--H-Net Review "Invaluable. . . . Provides a clear example of how interdisciplinary approaches to African American music and culture can provide future scholars with the tools to examine the ever changing and diverse identities within the community."--Black Grooves"White's generative approach and application are ground-breaking, innovative, and ultimately laudable."--Popular Music and Society"Unique in both approach and scope, this work adds a scholarly perspective to the popular literature that examines issues of black masculinity and hardcore hip-hop as performed by black and white rappers. An example of excellent scholarship that sets new standards for writing on this topic."--Portia K. Maultsby, coeditor of African American Music: An Introduction"A thought-provoking work offering a hard look at hardcore hip-hop's masculinities."--Notes"A captivating study of hardcore styles of hip-hop, masculinity and the performance of the body."--Ethnic and Radical Studies"By interrogating the cultural logic through which blackness and masculinity are constructed in our society, [White] opens up possibilities for more empowering forms of representation and identification both within popular culture and in the lived experiences of race, class and gender."--PopMatters.com"White offers a vivid view of contemporary black male hip-hop culture. . . . A courageous work."--ForeWord "[From Jim Crow to Jay-Z] takes a critical look at the portrayal of racialized machismo in modern America, and how hip-hop helps perpetuate stereotypical tropes about the African-American male. . . . Perfect for anyone who enjoys an intellectually stimulating and provocative read."--The RootTable of ContentsAcknowledgements; Introduction ONE: Shadow and Act: Minstrelsy and the Absent Black Presence; TWO: The Fire This Time: Black Masculinity in Contemporary Performance; THREE: Affective Gestures: Hip-Hop Aesthetics and the Body in Performance; FOUR: Real Niggas: Black Men, Hard Men and the Rise of Gangsta Culture; FIVE: Race Rebels: Whiteness and the New Masculine Desire Epilogue; References; Notes; Appendix

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Book Synopsis Inspired by the Hank Williams and Leadbelly recordings he heard as a teenager growing up outside of Boston, Jim Rooney began a musical journey that intersected with some of the biggest names in American music including Bob Dylan, James Taylor, Bill Monroe, Muddy Waters, and Alison Krauss. In It for the Long Run: A Musical Odyssey is Rooney''s kaleidoscopic first-hand account of more than five decades of success as a performer, concert promoter, songwriter, music publisher, engineer, and record producer.As witness to and participant in over a half century of music history, Rooney provides a sophisticated window into American vernacular music. Following his stint as a 'Hayloft Jamboree' hillbilly singer in the mid-1950s, Rooney managed Cambridge''s Club 47, a catalyst of the ‘60’s folk music boom. He soon moved to the Newport Folk Festival as talent coordinator and director where he had a front row seat to Dylan 'going electric.'In the 1970s RooTrade Review "I know how lucky I am to have connected with Jim all those years back when I was just starting out. He always had a way of lifting us all up out of the everyday. We never forgot that we were trying to make music that'd help people get THROUGH the everyday, but, ironically, you have to get on up out of it for awhile in order to do that. Jim always made that possible for me." --Iris DeMent "Without Jim Rooney's early encouragement, I would not have a career." --Nanci Griffith "Rooney is best known for producing records by people like John Prine, Townes Van Zandt and Nanci Griffith. . . . Fortunately for readers, he's also a gifted storyteller, with a humorous sense of perspective and wry self-awareness. Could you really ask for anything more from a musician's memoir?"--Nashville Scene"A love letter to friendship and music."--The Tennessean"Wonderful fellow with an interesting life equals great story."--John Prine"As a singer and entertainer, record producer and song publisher, Jim Rooney has been right smack in the middle of so much authentic American music for over 50 years. His guiding hand has helped launch and expand the careers of a host of great artists and I can't imagine the arc of my own success without the benefit of Jim's natural musical integrity and generous support."--Pat Alger, member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Georgia Music Hall of Fame“If it were not for Jim Rooney, I could have never negotiated my way through the jungle that is Nashville. We made two wonderful records together and had a blast doing them.”--Robert Earl Keen

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Book SynopsisBritish blues fan Mike Leadbitter launched the magazine Blues Unlimited in 1963. The groundbreaking publication fueled the then-nascent, now-legendary blues revival that reclaimed seminal figures like Son House and Skip James from obscurity. Throughout its history, Blues Unlimited heightened the literacy of blues fans, documented the latest news and career histories of countless musicians, and set the standard for revealing long-form interviews. Conducted by Bill Greensmith, Mike Leadbitter, Mike Rowe, John Broven, and others, and covering a who''s who of blues masters, these essential interviews from Blues Unlimited shed light on their subjects while gleaning colorful detail from the rough and tumble of blues history. Here is Freddie King playing a string of one-nighters so grueling it destroys his car; five-year-old Fontella Bass gigging at St. Louis funeral homes; and Arthur Big Boy Crudup rising from life in a packing crate to music stardom. Here, above all, is an eyewitness hTrade Review"The musicians run the gamut from the well known (Albert Collins, Freddie King, Arthur Crudup) to the obscure… The University of Illinois Press is to be commended for making this material available once more, this time in permanent form."--Journal of Folklore Research "Groundbreaking artist interviews and a covey of the most enlightening are collected here (along with a gang of photos) over the volume's generous 496 pages. A necessary purchase."--Gary von Tersch, Big City Rhythm & Blues Blues"Blues Unlimited set the standard for all of the other blues publications that followed in its wake. . . . Throughout the book, the editors and writers of Blues Unlimited show a deep knowledge of the history of the musicians under consideration."--Blues Blast Magazine "The pioneering work of Blues Unlimited produced a mine of - often very detailed - information about forgotten and new blues heros. This compilation worthy of reading interviews shows that in a varied and colourful way.”--De Blueskrant"Blues Unlimited was not only an amazing source of information but also an inspiration to the founders of Living Blues magazine. We wanted to do our part in America to join in and complement BU's groundbreaking work. The late Mike Leadbitter, co-editor of BU, and his successors left a marvelous legacy of blues literature and generously shared their research with us."--Jim O'Neal, co-founder, Living Blues magazine"There is a remarkable variety of work here. The obvious commitment to tradition, to getting the story right, reporting it accurately, and providing an unstinting platform for the voices of the human beings that created this musical tradition, shows through time and again, with candor and clarity."--Steven C. Tracy, author of Hot Music, Ragmentation, and the Bluing of American Literature"Without Blues Unlimited, our knowledge and understanding of the history of the blues would be neither as rich nor as detailed as it is. We owe every contributor a debt of gratitude that we can only repay by appreciating their efforts."--Paul Vernon, author of Last Swill and Testament: The Hilarious, Unexpurgated Memoirs of Paul 'Sailor' Vernon, Blues Fanatic, Rare Record Dealer, Ligger, Erstwhile Bon Viveur, and Friend to the Stars"The Blues Unlimited crew provided a wonderful service to blues enthusiasts worldwide and did themselves proud--real trailblazers. A sure, can't miss winner."--Steve Cushing, host of Blues Before Sunrise and author of Pioneers of the Blues Revival

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Book SynopsisTrade ReviewBruno Nettl Prize, Society for Ethnomusicology, 2017 "Bravo! This critical gloss of Latin American music scholarship and compendium of works by Latin American scholars is much needed, long overdue, well-conceived, and well-informed."--Daniel Sheehy, Director and Curator, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings"I love this book. A major contribution to Latin American research--in both ethnomusicology and musicology--as well as related fields such as anthropology, sociology, political science, and gender studies."--Craig Russell, author of From Serra to Sancho: Music and Pageantry in the California Missions"This book fulfils the aims of the editors and it is an essential reading for those interested in the study of Latin American popular music."--Journal of the International Association for the Study of Popular Music

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Book SynopsisIn 1921, insurance executive Charles Ives sent out copies of a piano sonata to two hundred strangers. Laden with dissonant chords, complex rhythm, and a seemingly chaotic structure, the so-called Concord Sonata confounded the recipients, as did the accompanying book, Essays before a Sonata. Kyle Gann merges exhaustive research with his own experience as a composer to reveal the Concord Sonata and the essays in full. Diffracting the twinned works into their essential aspects, Gann lays out the historical context that produced Ives''s masterpiece and illuminates the arguments Ives himself explored in the Essays. Gann also provides a movement-by-movement analysis of the work''s harmonic structure and compositional technique; connects the sonata to Ives works that share parts of its material; and compares the 1921 version of the Concord with its 1947 revision to reveal important aspects of Ives''s creative process.A tour de force of critical, thTrade Review"Goes far beyond any existing literature in this domain. It's possibly the best analytical writing about a major Ives composition that I've seen."--William Brooks, University of York"It is refreshing to read such a passionate description of a major work of art which is so profoundly meaningful to the author. Practically every page is informative, or contains new insight into the work. By far the best work ever done on the subject."--Neely Bruce, Wesleyan University"Not only an important addition to the thinking about Ives, but a moving companion to the artist and the Concord." * Wire *"This is a book which no Ives scholar or enthusiast can be without. It is quite indispensable, a glowing and lasting monument to the forty years which Gann has spent loving and working on his subject." * Journal of Experimental Music Studies *"This is an interesting and important book. . . . Highly recommended." * Choice *"In Charles Ives's Concord: Essays After a Sonata Gann's analysis takes the form of a kind of biblical exegesis, where canonical texts are pored over by ever-new generations. He achieves a balance between writing for Ives specialists and delivering a text that is compulsively readable. . . . This is a book to savor with headphones." * Times Literary Supplement *"A major work gets a major analysis: a masterpiece gets a masterpiece." * Do the M@th *"A treatise on past and future performance practice for the 'Concord' Sonata. This is an absolutely essential reading for performers interested in this work." * Notes *"Gann's passionate survey of the Concord Sonata and its various offshoots and progeny is and should remain an indispensable contribution to Ives studies and twentieth-century keyboard literature." * American Music *

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Book SynopsisTrade Review"Lee Bidgood is the first person to do a serious accounting of the forces, political and artistic, that have contributed to the popularity of this outlier music in this unlikely locale. By putting himself in the narrative, one gets an up close and personal sense of the various aspects of the bluegrass and old-time music wave that has swept across the Czech and Slovakian musical landscapes for years--and still counting." --Tony Trischka, from the foreword "Many readers will appreciate both the high level of insight, and that the text makes its points using only 124 pages. Ethnographic works about contemporary music traditions are needed, and Czech Bluegrass: Notes from the Heart of Europe is a valuable tool, helping those interested in bluegrass music understand the rooting of the style in multiple cultures."--Journal of Folklore Research "Bidgood's personalized analysis adds a significant, scholarly piece to the bigger picture of bluegrass as an international phenomenon."--Bookreporter"This book will be of interest to those curious about the assimilation and adaptation of music forms. . . Readers eager for stories of bluegrass and country music that diverge from the common narrative of these genres being made by and for American Southerners will also appreciate the global approach to these genres." --Journal of American Folklore

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Book SynopsisIn Rethinking American Music, Tara Browner and Thomas L. Riis curate essays that offer an eclectic survey of current music scholarship. Ranging from Tin Pan Alley to Thelonious Monk to hip hop, the contributors go beyond repertory and biography to explore four critical yet overlooked areas: the impact of performance; patronage''s role in creating music and finding a place to play it; personal identity; and the ways cultural and ethnographic circumstances determine the music that emerges from the creative process. Many of the articles also look at how a piece of music becomes initially popular and then exerts a lasting influence in the larger global culture. The result is an insightful state-of-the-field examination that doubles as an engaging short course on our complex, multifaceted musical heritage. Contributors: Karen Ahlquist, Amy C. Beal, Mark Clagu,. Esther R. Crookshank, Todd Decker, Jennifer DeLapp-Birkett, Joshua S. Duchan, Mark Katz, Jeffrey Magee, Sterling E. Murray, GuTrade Review"The editors identify four overarching issues in the book: performance, patronage, identity, and ethnography. Each theme encompasses three or four essays. Such an ambitious endeavor is laudable." --American Music"Rethinking American Music succeeds by honoring forebears, emphasizing areas of strength, reconfiguring some foundational narratives, and proffering some new scholarly directions." --Journal of Folklore Research"A marvelous compendium of scholarship in American music, this book illustrates the wondrous diversity of American musical culture from the eighteenth century to today. Essays on classical, sacred, popular, jazz, hip hop, and theatrical styles deal with performance, patronage, identity, and ethnography and illustrate wonderfully the breadth of Crawford's enormous legacy in the field of Americanist music studies."--Katherine K. Preston, author of Opera for the People: English-Language Opera and Women Managers in Late Nineteenth-Century America"Stimulating and enjoyable to read. . . . A considerable contribution to studies of American music, not only for the presentation of original research but potentially more significantly for its reflections on research methodology and hermeneutics."--Deane L. Root, Editor in Chief, Grove Music Online"Rethinking American Music demonstrates the diversity of current scholarship on American music culture. . . . Recommended." --Choice"Rethinking American Music is engaging and the articles are thorough." --Western Folklore

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Book SynopsisSinging master Durham Hills created The Cashaway Psalmody to give as a wedding present in 1770. A collection of tenor melody parts for 152 tunes and sixty-three texts, the Psalmody is the only surviving tunebook from the colonial-era South and one of the oldest sacred music manuscripts from the Carolinas. It is all the more remarkable for its sophistication: no similar document of the period matches Hills''s level of musical expertise, reportorial reach, and calligraphic skill. Stephen A. Marini, discoverer of The Cashaway Psalmody, offers the fascinating story of the tunebook and its many meanings. From its musical, literary, and religious origins in England, he moves on to the life of Durham Hills; how Carolina communities used the book; and the Psalmody''s significance in understanding how ritual song—transmitted via transatlantic music, lyrics, and sacred singing—shaped the era''s development. Marini also uses close musical and textual anaTrade Review"Offering a microhistory of meticulous precision, Marini forges through it a study of broad interdisciplinary scope, a rare synthesizing perspective on the musical, religious, commercial, and educational cultures of the eighteenth-century colonies. I know of no one else in the field who could have pulled off this feat the way Marini has—an exceptional combination of indefatigable archival research with practiced musical expertise."--Leigh Eric Schmidt, author of Restless Souls: The Making of American Spirituality"Stephen Marini's careful research into an extraordinary eighteenth-century tunemaster and the extraordinary collection of texts and music he gathered into the Cashaway psalter has resulted in an extraordinary book. Tight focus on this one manuscript-musical object yields a rich harvest of insight on transatlantic cultural exchange, unexpected cooperation among churches, the economics of artistic production, and (most of all) the absolutely central place of singing in early American history. It is a rich and rewarding study."--Mark Noll, author of A History of Christianity in the United States and Canada, second edition

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