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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Western music, periods & styles > 20th century music
Satie's music and ideas are inextricably linked with the City of Light. This book situates Satie's work within the context and sonic environment of contemporary Paris. Erik Satie's (1866-1925) music appeals to wide audiences and has influenced both experimental artists and pop musicians. Little about Satie was conventional, and he resists classification under easy headings such as "classical music". Instead of pursuing the path of a professional composer, Satie initially earned a living as a cafe pianist and moved in bohemian circles which prized satire, popular culture and experiment. Small wonder that his music is fundamentally new in conception. It is music which is not always designed to be listened to attentively: music which can be machine-like but is to be played by humans. For Satie, music was part of a wider concept of artistic creation,as evidenced by his collaborations with leading avant-garde artists and in works which cross traditional genre boundaries such as his texted piano pieces. His music was created in some of the most exciting and creatively stimulating environments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: Montmartre and Montparnasse. Paris was the artistic centre of Europe, and Satie was a notorious figure whose music and ideas are inextricably linked with the City of Light. This book situates Satie's work within the context and sonic environment of contemporary Paris. It shows that the influence of street music, musicians and poets interested in new technology, contemporary innovations and radical politics are all crucial to an understanding of Satie. Music from the ever-popular Gymnopedies to newly discovered works are discussed, and an online supplement features rare pieces recorded especially for the book. CAROLINE POTTER is Reader in Music at Kingston University London. A graduate in both French and Music, she has published widely on French music since Debussy and was Series Advisor to the Philharmonia Orchestra's Paris2014-15 season.
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the Nor-tec phenomenon emerged from the border city of Tijuana, and through modern Internet technology quickly conquered a global audience. Marketed as a kind of "ethnic" electronic dance music, Nor-tec samples sounds of traditional music from the north of Mexico, transforming these sounds through computer technology used in European and American techno music and electronica. Mostly middle-class artists in their thirties, and with few exceptions all from Tijuana, Nor-tec musicians tend to avoid the mainstream music industry's channels, distributing works instead through the underground, global means of the Internet, enabling a loyal international following to grow rapidly. Perched on the border between Mexico and the United States, Tijuana has media links to both countries, with peoples, currencies, and cultural goods -perhaps especially music- from both sides circulating intensely within the city. Tijuana's older residents and their more mobile, cosmopolitan-minded children thus engage in a constant struggle with identity and nationality, appropriation and authenticity. Nor-tec music in its very composition encapsulates this city's struggle. It resonates with issues felt on the global level, while holding vastly different meanings to the variety of communities that embrace it. In Nor-tec Rifa!, Alejandro L. Madrid crafts a fascinating account of this music and the city that fostered its birth. With an impressive hybrid of musicology, ethnomusicology, cultural and performance studies, urbanism, and border studies, Nor-tec Rifa! offers compelling insights into the cultural production of Nor-tec as it stems from ortena, banda, and grupera traditions. The book is also amongst the first to offer detailed accounts of Nor-tec music's composition process.
Musical Symbolism in the Operas of Debussy and Bartok explores the means by which two early 20th century operas - Debussy's Pelleas et MelisandeR (1902) and Bartok's Duke Bluebeard's Castle (1911) - transformed the harmonic structures of the traditional major/minor scale system into a new musical language. It also looks at how this language reflects the psychodramatic symbolism of the Franco-Belgian poet, Maurice Maeterlinck, and his Hungarian disciple, Bela Balazs. These two operas represent the first significant attempts to establish more profound correspondences between the symbolist dramatic conception and the new musical language. Duke Bluebeard's Castle is based almost exclusively on interactions between pentatonic/diatonic folk modalities and their more abstract symmetrical transformations (including whole-tone, octatonic, and other pitch constructions derived from the system of the interval cycles). The opposition of these two harmonic extremes serve as the basis for dramatic polarity between the characters as real-life beings and as instruments of fate. The book also explores the new musico-dramatic relations within their larger historical, social psychological, philosophical, and aesthetic contexts.
At the dawn of the twenty-first century, the Nor-tec phenomenon emerged from the border city of Tijuana, and through modern Internet technology quickly conquered a global audience. Marketed as a kind of "ethnic" electronic dance music, Nor-tec samples sounds of traditional music from the north of Mexico, transforming these sounds through computer technology used in European and American techno music and electronica. Mostly middle-class artists in their thirties, and with few exceptions all from Tijuana, Nor-tec musicians tend to avoid the mainstream music industry's channels, distributing works instead through the underground, global means of the Internet, enabling a loyal international following to grow rapidly. Perched on the border between Mexico and the United States, Tijuana has media links to both countries, with peoples, currencies, and cultural goods -perhaps especially music- from both sides circulating intensely within the city. Tijuana's older residents and their more mobile, cosmopolitan-minded children thus engage in a constant struggle with identity and nationality, appropriation and authenticity. Nor-tec music in its very composition encapsulates this city's struggle. It resonates with issues felt on the global level, while holding vastly different meanings to the variety of communities that embrace it. In Nor-tec Rifa!, Alejandro L. Madrid crafts a fascinating account of this music and the city that fostered its birth. With an impressive hybrid of musicology, ethnomusicology, cultural and performance studies, urbanism, and border studies, Nor-tec Rifa! offers compelling insights into the cultural production of Nor-tec as it stems from ortena, banda, and grupera traditions. The book is also amongst the first to offer detailed accounts of Nor-tec music's composition process.
A symbol of Trinidadian culture, the steelband has made an extraordinary transformation since its origins-from junk metal to steel orchestra, and from disparaged underclass pastime to Trinidad and Tobago's national instrument. Now, Shannon Dudley gives the first discerning look at the musical thinking that ignited this transformation, and the way it articulates with Afro-Trinidadian tradition, carnival, colonial authority, and nationalist politics. Music from behind the Bridge tells the story of the steelband from the point of view of musicians who overcame disadvantages of poverty and prejudice with their extraordinary ambition. Literally referring to the poor neighborhoods nestled in the hills bordering Port of Spain to the East, "Behind the Bridge" is also a metaphor for conditions of social disadvantage and cultural resistance that shaped the steelband movement in the various Afro-Trinidadian communities where it first took root. The book further explores the implications of the steelband's "nationalization" in post-independence Trinidad and Tobago, and contemporary steelband musicians' preoccupation with the formally adjudicated annual Panorama competition. In discussing the intersection of musical thinking, festivity, and politics, this book connects important questions about the history of the steelband to general questions about the relation between popular culture and nationalism.
Censorship had an extraordinary impact on Alban Berg's operaLulu, composed by the Austrian during the politically tumultuous years spanning 1929 to 1935. Based on plays by Frank Wedekind that were repeatedly banned from being published and performed from1894 until the end of World War I, the libretto was in turn censored by Berg himself when he characterized it as a morality play after submitting it to authorities in Nazi Germany in 1934. After Berg died the next year, the third act was censored by his widow, Helene, and his former teacher, Arnold Schoenberg. In "Taken by the Devil", author Margaret Notley uncovers the unusual and uniquely generative role of censorship throughout the lifecycle of Berg's great opera. Placing the opera and its source material in wider cultural contexts, Notley provides close readings of the opera's libretto and score to reveal techniques employed by the composer and by Wedekind before him in negotiating censorship. She also explores ways in which Berg chose to augment discrepancies between the plays rather than flatten them as in certain performances of the plays during the 1920s, adding further dimensions of interpretation to the work. Elegantly readable,"Taken by the Devil"is one of the most meticulously researched and nuanced studies of Lulu to date, and illuminates the process of politically-driven censorship of theater, music, and the arts during the tumultuous early twentieth century.
Music and War in the United States introduces students to the long and varied history of music's role in war. Spanning the history of wars involving the United States from the American Revolution to the Iraq war, with contributions from both senior and emerging scholars, this edited volume brings together key themes in this vital area of study. The intersection of music and war has been of growing interest to scholars in recent decades, but to date, no book has brought together this scholarship in a way that is accessible to students. Filling this gap, the chapters here address topics such as military music, commemoration, music as propaganda and protest, and the role of music in treating post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), enabling readers to come to grips with the rich and complex relationship between one of the most essential arts and the conflicts that have shaped American society.
In Oh Joy! Oh Rapture! expert and enthusiast Ian Bradley explores the world of Gilbert and Sullivan over the last four and a half decades, looking at the way this "phenomenon" is passed from generation to generation. Taking as his starting point the expiry of copyright on the opera libretti at the end of 1961 and using fascinating hitherto unpublished archive material, Bradley reveals the extraordinary story of the last years of the old D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, the guardian of Savoy tradition for over a hundred years, and the troubled history of its successor. He explores the rich vein of parodies, spoofs, and spin-offs of the songs, as well as their influence on twentieth century lyricists and composers. He analyzes professional productions across the world, looks at the unique place of G&S in schools, colleges, and universities, and lovingly explores the culture of amateur performance. He also uncovers the largely male world of the obsessive fans, those collecting memorabilia, the myriad magazines, journals, websites, and festivals devoted to G&S, and the arcane interests of some of the faithful "inner brotherhood."
George Gershwin is one of the giants of American music, unique in
that he was both a brilliant writer of popular songs and of more
serious music. Here, music lovers are treated to a spectacular
celebration of this great American composer.
This book, first published in 2000, examines the BBC's campaign to raise cultural awareness of British mass audiences in the early days of radio. As a specific case, it focuses on policies and plans behind transmissions of music by composers associated with Arnold Schoenberg's circle between 1922, when the BBC was founded, and spring 1936, when Edward Clark, a former Schoenberg pupil and central figure in BBC music, resigned from the Corporation. This study traces and analyses the BBC's attempts to manipulate critical and public responses to this repertory. The book investigates three interrelated aspects of early BBC history. Policy decisions relating to contemporary music transmissions are examined to determine why precious broadcast time was devoted to this repertory. Early personnel structures are reconstructed to investigate the responsibilities, attitudes and interests of those who influenced music broadcasting. Finally, broadcasts of Second Viennese School works are examined in detail.
During his lifetime, and in the course of the twentieth century, Edward Elgar and his music became sites for a remarkable variety of nostalgic impulses. These are manifested in his personal life, in the content of his works, in his critical and biographical reception, and in numerous artistic ventures based on his character and music. Today Elgar enjoys renewed popularity in Britain, and nostalgia of various forms continues to shape our responses to his music. From one viewpoint, Elgarian nostalgia might be dismissed as escapist, regressive and reactionary, and the revival in Elgar's fortunes regarded as the symptom of a pernicious 'heritage industry' in post-colonial, post-industrial Britain. While there is undeniably a grain of truth to that view, Matthew Riley's careful treatment of the topic reveals a more complex picture of nostalgia, and sheds new light on Elgar and his cultural significance in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
"Shostakovich: A Life Remembered" is a unique study of the great composer Dmitri Shostakovich, based on reminiscences from his contemporaries. Elizabeth Wilson covers the composer's life from his early successes to his struggles under the Stalinist regime, and his international recognition as one of the leading composers of the twentieth century. She builds up a detailed picture of Shostakovich's creative processes, how he was perceived by contemporaries, and of the increased contrast between his private life and public image as his fame increased. This new edition, produced to coincide with the centenary of Shostakovich's birth, draws on many new writings on the composer. In doing so, it provides both a more detailed and focused image of Shostakovich's life and a wider view of his cultural background. In particular, Shostakovich's sardonic and witty sense of humor reveals itself in many of his letters to close friends. Shostakovich offers fascinating insight into the complex personality and musical life of this great composer, and examines his position as one of the major figures in the cultural life of twentieth-century Russia.
This volume is a comprehensive and detailed survey of music and musical life of the entire Soviet era, from 1917 to 1991, which takes into account the extensive body of scholarly literature in Russian and other major European languages. In this considerably updated and revised edition of his 1998 publication, Hakobian traces the strikingly dramatic development of the music created by outstanding and less well-known, 'modernist' and 'conservative', 'nationalist' and 'cosmopolitan' composers of the Soviet era. The book's three parts explore, respectively, the musical trends of the 1920s, music and musical life under Stalin, and the so-called 'Bronze Age' of Soviet music after Stalin's death. Music of the Soviet Era: 1917-1991 considers the privileged position of music in the USSR in comparison to the written and visual arts. Through his examination of the history of the arts in the Soviet state, Hakobian's work celebrates the human spirit's wonderful capacity to derive advantage even from the most inauspicious conditions.
Written more than a century ago and initially regarded even by
their creators as nothing more than light entertainment, the
fourteen operas of Gilbert & Sullivan emerged over the course
of the twentieth century as the world's most popular body of
musical-theater works, ranking second only to Shakespeare in the
history of English-language theater.
A jazz writer for three decades, W. Royal Stokes has a special
talent for capturing the initial spark that launches a musician's
career. In Growing Up With Jazz, he has interviewed twenty-four
instrumentalists and singers who talk candidly about the early
influences that started them on the road to jazz and where that
road has taken them.
Brothers, Sing On My Half-Century Around the World with the Penn Glee Club Bruce Montgomery "While you're reading this book, you will find yourself enjoying a wonderful man."--Bill Cosby "As a Penn alum (class of '48), and someone who has known Bruce Montgomery for many years, I was happy to read of his adventures, training and shepherding the Penn Glee Club. It is often funny, earnest, and always interesting."--Hal Prince "Monty is a treasure--and so is his book."--Marciarose Shestack In 1862, a group of undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania put the University's colors of red and blue in their buttonholes and gave the first performance of the University of Pennsylvania Glee Club. Ninety-four years later, in 1956, Bruce Montgomery became the Glee Club's director and brought the Club to new heights of musicianship and international acclaim. In his forty-four-year tenure, "Monty" made the Glee Club the premier musical voice of the University and brought Penn and the spirit of Philadelphia to audiences around the world. The Glee Club has performed on five continents in thirty countries and countless times in Philadelphia. In "Brothers, Sing On " Monty shares his stories and experiences. From an impromptu photo op on a Wisconsin highway during a blizzard in 1977 to singing for U.S. presidents, this exhilarating memoir is filled with the Glee Club's farflung adventures. Backstage anecdotes let the reader step behind the scenes of such performances at home, abroad, and on worldwide television. A reflection of Monty's boundless energy and flair for showmanship, this volume also includes stories of the students with whom the Glee Club director worked in other clubs--the Penn Singers, the Marching Band, the Penn Players, and the Mask & Wig Club, to name a few. Throughout his memoir, Montgomery reflects fondly on the development of the Glee Club. It is a testament to his immeasurable contribution to its success and renown. Bruce Montgomery is former director of musical activities at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as former director of the Penn Glee Club and the University Band. He is recognized internationally as one of America's foremost authorities on the works of Gilbert & Sullivan and, indeed, has directed and performed all fourteen of the operas both in the U.S. and abroad. His compositions have been performed by such notable ensembles as the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia. His 1964 Off-Broadway hit, "The Amorous Flea," is still performed throughout the world and his paintings and sculptures adorn private collections and galleries across the land. He is both former director and musical director of the Mask & Wig Club and the Penn Players. Currently he is acting director of the Penn Singers. 2005 296 pages 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 75 illus. ISBN 978-0-8122-3856-3 Cloth $45.00s 29.50 World Rights Biography, Music Short copy: A memoir from the former longtime director of the University of Pennsylvania's Glee Club.
This Companion presents a new understanding of the relationship between music and culture in and around the nineteenth century, and encourages readers to explore what Romanticism in music might mean today. Challenging the view that musical 'romanticism' is confined to a particular style or period, it reveals instead the multiple intersections between the phenomenon of Romanticism and music. Drawing on a variety of disciplinary approaches, and reflecting current scholarly debates across the humanities, it places music at the heart of a nexus of Romantic themes and concerns. Written by a dynamic team of leading younger scholars and established authorities, it gives a state-of-the-art yet accessible overview of current thinking on this popular topic.
Musical notation is a powerful system of communication between musicians, using sophisticated symbolic, primarily non-verbal means to express musical events in visual symbols. Many musicians take the system for granted, having internalized it and their strategies for reading it and translating it into sound over long years of study and practice. This book traces the development of that system by combining chronological and thematic approaches to show the historical and musical context in which these developments took place. Simultaneously, the book considers the way in which this symbolic language communicates to those literate in it, discussing how its features facilitate or hinder fluent comprehension in the real-time environment of performance. Moreover, the topic of musical as opposed to notational innovation forms another thread of the treatment, as the author investigates instances where musical developments stimulated notational attributes, or notational innovations made practicable advances in musical style.
This Companion explores women's work in music since 1900 across a broad range of musical genres and professions, including the classical tradition, popular music, and music technology. The crucial contribution of women to music education and the music industries features alongside their activity as composers and performers. The book considers the gendered nature of the musical profession, in areas including access to training, gendered criticism, sexualization, and notions of 'gender appropriate' roles or instruments. It covers a wide range of women musicians, such as Marin Alsop, Grace Williams, Billie Holiday, Joni Mitchell and Adele. Each thematic section concludes with a contribution from a practitioner in her own words, reflecting upon the impact of gender on her own career. Chapters include suggestions for further reading on each of the topics covered, providing an invaluable resource for students of Feminist Musicology, Women in Music, and Music and Gender.
Places the Swiss composer Schoeck, master of a late-Romantic style both sensuous and stringent, in context and gives insight into his increasingly popular musical works. The work of the late-Romantic Swiss composer Othmar Schoeck (1886-1957) has in recent years enjoyed a surge of interest. His 300 songs with piano accompaniment are now all on CD, as are his orchestral song cycles and five of his eight stage works. Yet despite an impressive discography featuring names such as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Lucia Popp and Ian Bostridge, no biographical study of Schoeck has ever been available in English. Chris Walton, authorof Richard Wagner in Zurich: The Muse of Place, charts the turbulent course of Schoeck's life and career with care and candor, from a rampant youth to midlife monogamy and an old age ravaged by fears of neglect. He tracesSchoeck's relationships to musicians such as Max Reger, Ferruccio Busoni, Wilhelm Furtwangler, Paul Hindemith, and Igor Stravinsky, and to writers Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, and James Joyce. New light is also shed on Schoeck's uneasy relationship with Nazi Germany and its culmination, for him, in public humiliation and private catastrophe. As an accompanist, Schoeck was an arch-Romantic master of rubato; as a conductor, he was a fervent champion of the new; and in his compositions, he moved from late-Romanticism through a modernist vortex to emerge in full mastery of an individual musical language both sensuous and stringent. In this thorough new biography, Waltonplaces Schoeck the man and the artist squarely in the context of his time. Chris Walton is Extraordinary Professor at the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa and Managing Director of the Orchestre Symphonique Bienne in Switzerland. He is the recipient of the 2010 Max Geilinger Prize honoring exemplary contributions to the literary and cultural relationship between Switzerland and the English-speaking world.
Identity and Diversity in New Music: The New Complexities aims to enrich the discussion of how musicians and educators can best engage with audiences, by addressing issues of diversity and identity that have played a vital role in the reception of new music, but have been little-considered to date. Marilyn Nonken offers an innovative theoretical approach that considers how the environments surrounding new music performances influence listeners' experiences, drawing on work in ecological psychology. Using four case studies of influential new music ensembles from across the twentieth century, she considers how diversity arises in the musical environment, its impact on artists and creativity, and the events and engagement it makes possible. Ultimately, she connects theory to practice with suggestions for how musicians and educators can make innovative music environments inclusive.
This book recreates an exciting and productive period in which creative artists felt they were witnessing the birth of a new age. Aaron Copland, Henry Cowell, George Gershwin, Roy Harris, and Virgil Thomson all began their careers then, as did many of their less widely recognized compatriots. While the literature and painting of the 1920's have been amply chronicled, music has not received such treatment. Carol Oja's book sets the growth of American musical composition against parallel developments in American culture, provides a guide for the understanding of the music, and explores how the notion of the concert tradition, as inherited from Western Europe, was challenged and revitalized through contact with American popular song, jazz, and non-Western musics.
This lively and readable study explores popular music between the wars, the era of Noel Coward and Ivor Novello, Gracie Fields and George Formby. James J. Nott tells the story from the days of the jazz mania of the 1920s to the outbreak of the Second World War. He examines the huge popularity of dance halls such as the fabled Hammersmith Palais, and concludes with a fascinating checklist of the most popular songs.
Philosophy of music has flourished in the last thirty years, with great advances made in the understanding of the nature of music and its aesthetics. Peter Kivy has been at the centre of this flourishing, and now offers his personal introduction to philosophy of music, a clear and lively explanation of how he sees the most important and interesting philosophical issues relating to music. Anyone interested in music will find this a stimulating introduction to some fascinating questions and ideas. |
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