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Books > Music > Composers & musicians
George Whitefield Chadwick was one of the most prolific composers that the United States ever produced. During a career that spanned over 50 years, he was considered the Dean of American Composers from the 1880s until after World War I. He composed in nearly every genre, including opera/stage works (seven), orchestral music (17 major works), songs (over 100), and dozens of choral and chamber works. Chadwick benefited from numerous performances of his music-particularly by the Boston Symphony Orchestra-and many of his works were published during his lifetime. He was also considered one of the foremost teachers of his era. He began teaching composition at the New England Conservatory of Music, and became its Dean in 1897, a post he held for more than 30 years. Chadwick and his music are currently enjoying a revival.
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony has held musical audiences captive for close to two centuries. Few other musical works hold such a prominent place in the collective imagination; each generation rediscovers the work for itself and makes it its own. Honing in on the significance of the symphony in contemporary culture, this book establishes a dialog between Beethoven's world and ours, marked by the earthshattering events of 1789 and of 1989. In particular, this book outlines what is special about the Ninth in millennial culture. In the present day, music is encoded not only as score but also as digital technology. We encounter Beethoven 9 flashmobs, digitally reconstructed concert halls, globally synchonized performances, and other time-bending procedures. The digital artwork 9 Beet Stretch even presents the Ninth at glacial speed over twenty-four hours, challenges our understanding of the symphony, and encourages us to confront the temporal dimension of Beethoven's music. In the digital age, the Ninth emerges as a musical work that is recomposed and reshaped-and that is robust enough to live up to such treatment-continually adapting to a changing world with changing media.
In his introduction Mr. Foss gives us a short sketch of Delius; contributions by Rogber Quilter, Charles Kennedy and Percy Scott.
Contributions by Alberto Brodesco, James Cody, Andrea Cossu, Anne Margaret Daniel, Jesper Doolard, Nina Goss, Jonathan Hodgers, Jamie Lorentzen, Fahri OE z, Nick Smart, and Thad Williamson Bob Dylan is many things to many people. Folk prodigy. Rock poet. Quiet gentleman. Dionysian impresario. Cotton Mather. Stage hog. Each of these Dylan creations comes with its own accessories, including a costume, a hairstyle, a voice, a lyrical register, a metaphysics, an audience, and a library of commentary. Each Bob Dylan joins a collective cast that has made up his persona for over fifty years. No version of Dylan turns out uncomplicated, but the postmillennial manifestation seems peculiarly contrary-a tireless and enterprising antiquarian; a creator of singular texts and sounds through promiscuous poaching; an artist of innovation and uncanny renewal. This is a Dylan of persistent surrender from and engagement with a world he perceives as broken and enduring, addressing us from a past that is lost and yet forever present. Tearing the World Apart participates in the creation of the postmillennial Bob Dylan by exploring three central records of the twenty-first century-"Love and Theft" (2001), Modern Times (2006), and Tempest (2012)-along with the 2003 film Masked and Anonymous, which Dylan helped write and in which he appears as an actor and musical performer. The collection of essays does justice to this difficult Bob Dylan by examining his method and effects through a disparate set of viewpoints. Readers will find a variety of critical contexts and cultural perspectives as well as a range of experiences as members of Dylan's audience. The essays in Tearing the World Apart illuminate, as a prism might, its intransigent subject from enticing and intersecting angles.
Bringing together a vast amount of information on Pietro Mascagni and his works, this volume in the Greenwood Press series Bio-Bibliographies in Music includes a catalogue of the composer's works and performances, bibliography, discography, and brief biographical sketch. Mascagni is best known for "Cavalleria Rusticana," but he wrote fifteen other stage works and over 100 other compositions, including sacred music, songs and film scores. Overshadowed by his contemporary Puccini and tainted by association with the fascist regime of Mussolini, Mascagni is both a famous and neglected opera composer. This volume charts the decline in performances of Mascagni's operas other than "Cavalleria Rusticana" and reveals a growing interest in and changing attitude toward the composer. The discography includes more than 2,500 recordings, and the annotated bibliography includes 361 titles. This research tool will appeal to Mascagni and to opera scholars. Each section is cross-referenced throughout. An appendix includes a chronology of Mascagni's conducting career.
This volume in the Greenwood Press series, Bio-Bibliographies in Music, provides new details about the life and works of Polish composer Witold Lutoslawski. It includes a detailed catalogue of the composer's works and performances, including his film music, incidental music for the theatre, music for radio plays, and songs he composed under a pseudonym, as well as a bibliography, discography, and brief biographical sketch. His unique style was distinguished by an individual harmonic system controlled aleatory technique that he developed more fully during the 1960s and 1970s. The discography includes over 300 recordings and the bibliography includes writings the composer and a separate section for the writings about him, including concert and recording reviews, books, articles, dissertations, and interviews. This research tool will appeal to Lutoslawski fans and to musicologists. Each section is cross-referenced throughout. An appendix provides an alphabetical list of all of the composer's works.
Richart's bio-bibliography is a most welcome addition to the literature. For the first time, Richart has made available a comprehensive bibliography, discography, and up-to-date worklist. Ligeti's writings, writings about Ligeti, and reviews and analyses of his works, mainly after his 1956 flight from Hungary to the West, are listed and annotated. . . . Richart's short, concise biography is informative and well written. . . . Highly recommended for public, college, and university libraries with music collections. Choice Gyorgy Ligeti is one of the most significant of contemporary composers. Most often described as innovative, he has been able to combine beauty and emotional meaning with that innovation. This bio-bibliography describes rather than evaluates the considerable body of writings by and about Ligeti. The book is divided into four sections: biography, worklist, discography, and bibliography. The biography is a brief survey designed to acquaint the reader, if necessary, with the basic and widely available facts of Ligeti's life. The bibliography is divided into two parts: writings by Ligeti and writings about him. The largest section in the latter part consists of concert and record reviews. Cross references link all items dealing with each individual music work. An appendix lists, in chronological order, all of the concerts devoted entirely to works by Ligeti. Writings listed in the bibliography are dated from the 1940s onward. The bulk of the material was written after Ligeti's flight to the west in 1956. This first book-length work on Gyorgy Ligeti will be welcomed by music scholars.
One of the greats of blues music, Willie Dixon was a recording artist whose abilities extended beyond that of bass player. A singer, songwriter, arranger, and producer, Dixon's work influenced countless artists across the music spectrum. In Willie Dixon: Preacher of the Blues, Mitsutoshi Inaba examines Dixon's career, from his earliest recordings with the Five Breezes through his major work with Chess Records and Cobra Records. Focusing on Dixon's work on the Chicago blues from the 1940s to the early 1970s, this book details the development of Dixon's songwriting techniques from his early professional career to his mature period and compares the compositions he provided for different artists. This volume also explores Dixon's philosophy of songwriting and its social, historical, and cultural background. This is the first study to discuss his compositions in an African American cultural context, drawing upon interviews with his family and former band members. This volume also includes a detailed list of Dixon's session work, in which his compositions are chronologically organized.
The Black Horn: The Story of Classical French Hornist Robert Lee Watt tells the story of the first African American French Hornist hired by a major symphony in these United States. Today, the number of African Americans who hold chairs in major American symphony orchestras are few and far between, and Watt is the first in many years to write about this uniquely exhilarating and at times painful experience. The Black Horn chronicles the upbringing of a young boy first fascinated by the sound of the French horn. Watt walks readers through the many obstacles presented by the racial climate in the United States both on and off stage in his efforts learn and eventually master an instrument little considered in the African American community, with even the author s own father, who played trumpet, seeking to dissuade the young classical musician in the making. Opposition from within the community--a middle instrument suited only for thin-lipped white boys, Watt s father once chided and from without, Watt document his struggles as a student at an all-white major music conservatory as well as his first job in a major symphony orchestra after his conservatory canceled his scholarship. Watt subsequently chronicles his triumphs and travails as a musician, sometimes alone when confronting the realities of race in America and the world of classical music. This work will surely interest any working classical musician and student, particularly those of color, seeking to grasp firsthand the sometimes troubled history of being the only black horn. "
The enchanting story of the real life Hannah Montana and her stunning success as a film, television, and music superstar. This biography tells the story of the real-life Hannah Montana, the daughter of country music superstar Billy Ray Cyrus, who has become an international phenomenon in her own right. Miley Cyrus details the star's life from her Franklin, Tennessee, childhood to snagging the role of Hannah Montana from over 1,000 other hopefuls. The book also follows Cyrus' transition from a wholesome Disney icon to a more mature actress and musician, covering both her efforts to be a positive teen influence, and controversies such as Cyrus' photo shoot for Vanity Fair with her father. As an added bonus, the book offers a complete Hannah Montana episode guide as well as a complete discography of Cyrus' recordings as both Hannah and Miley.
Falco and Beyond is devoted to the most popular Austrian song-writer, singer and rapper of the twentieth century and one of the most successful European singers of all time. Falco was born in 1957, reached the peak of his popularity in the 1980s with songs such as "Der Kommissar," "Rock Me Amadeus" and "Jeanny," with mixed luck attempted to revive his career in the 1990s and died in a car crash in 1998. He sold over 30 million records worldwide and remains a successful posthumous artist. The book attempts to identify the most salient and contradictory features of Falco's art, such as linguistic inventiveness and dexterity, rapping and adopting a posture of a romantic artist. It argues that Falco's songs betray an apocalyptic imagination, picturing the image of an exhausted and unhappy world. It looks at Falco's career and his phenomenon in the context of international and Austrian music business and politics, and investigates how his popularity has been maintained after his death, by means such as records released posthumously, cover versions of his songs, mashup songs and videos, biographies and Falco fandom.
This is both a guide and history on the impact of London on Dylan, and the lasting legacy of Bob Dylan on the London music scene. Bob Dylan In London celebrates this journey, and allows readers to experience Dylan's London and follow in his footsteps to places such as the King and Queen pub (the first venue that Dylan performed at in London), the Savoy hotel and Camden Town. This book explores the key London places and times that helped to create one of the greatest of all popular musicians, Bob Dylan.
This volume presents the life and works of Robert Russell Bennett, whose prolific career as composer and arranger spanned much of the twentieth century. George J. Ferencz chronicles how Bennett's concert works, orchestrations, and commercial scores both reflected and enhanced the musical vitality of New York City, where he spent most of his professional life. Although Bennett enjoyed commercial success, his stylistic preferences embraced the classics, and Ferencz appropriately focuses his study on Bennett's original concert works rather than his popular scores. Ferencz introduces the artist with a lengthy biographical profile, followed by a complete list of works and selected performances which features compositions rather than arrangements in an effort to document those works most representative of Bennett's singular talent. All of Bennett's known commercial recordings are cataloged in the discography, and an annotated bibliography highlights writings about the composer and his works. Subsequent appendixes list commercial orchestrations and original scores for shows, film, and television, and a full index completes the work.
Musical performance on brass instruments has blossomed in the 20th century because of technical improvements in horn making, a vastly increased literature, and an astonishing number of outstanding players. Louis Armstrong, Tommy Dorsey, and Doc Severinsen have become household names, and classical musicians such as Maurice Andre, Christian Lindberg, and Barry Tuckwell have pursued distinguished careers as soloists. Twentieth-Century Brass Soloists analyzes and celebrates nearly one hundred brass soloists who have performed and been recorded widely, and whose genius, technique, and style have combined to produce unforgettable moments in music.
The guitarist and composer Pat Metheny ranks among the most popular and innovative jazz musicians of all time. In Pat Metheny: The ECM Years, 1975-1984, Mervyn Cooke offers the first in-depth account of Metheny's early creative period, during which he recorded eleven stunningly varied albums for the pioneering European record label ECM (Edition of Contemporary Music). This impressive body of recordings encompasses both straight-ahead jazz playing with virtuosic small ensembles and the increasingly complex textures and structures of the Pat Metheny Group, a hugely successful band also notable for its creative exploration of advanced music technologies which were state-of-the-art at the time. Metheny's music in all its shapes and forms broke major new ground in its refusal to subscribe to either of the stylistic poles of bebop and jazz-rock fusion which prevailed in the late 1970s. Through a series of detailed analyses based on a substantial body of new transcriptions from the recordings, this study reveals the close interrelationship of improvisation and pre-composition which lies at the very heart of the music. Furthermore, these analyses vividly demonstrate how Metheny's music is often conditioned by a strongly linear narrative model: both its story-telling characteristics and atmospheric suggestiveness have sometimes been compared to those of film music, a genre in which the guitarist also became active during this early period. The melodic memorability for which Metheny's compositions and improvisations have long been world-renowned is shown to be just one important element in an unusually rich and flexible musical language that embraces influences as diverse as bebop, free jazz, rock, pop, country & western, Brazilian music, classical music, minimalism, and the avant-garde. These elements are melded into a uniquely distinctive soundworld which, above all, directly reflects Metheny's passionate belief in the need to refashion jazz in ways which can allow it to speak powerfully to each new generation of youthful listeners.
It is 1965, and Swinging London is coming into its prime years. The streets are alive with mods and rockers, playboys and good-time girls, all revelling in the blossoming artistic, creative and cultural energies of the decade. Amid the colour and chaos is a boy sporting drainpipe jeans, an immaculately tailored sports coat and a half-inch wide tie. A devoted fan of The Who, he looks the part in his pristine mod gear. As the lead singer of the Lower Third, his talent is shaping itself into something truly special. His name is Davie Jones. In ten years, he will be unrecognisable as fresh-faced boy of 1965, and in just over fifty years, his death will be mourned by millions, his legacy the story of the greatest rock star of all time. And through Bowie's transition from pop group member to solo performer, Phil Lancaster was by his side. As the drummer in Bowie's band, the Lower Third, Phil was there as the singer's musical stripes began to show, and was witness to his early recording techniques, his first experimental forays into drug-taking, and the band's discovery of his bisexuality in shocking circumstances. In this riveting - and often very funny - memoir, Phil tells the story of life alongside the insecure yet blazingly talented boy who became Bowie, at a critical crossroad of time and place in music history. What follows is an intimate, personal and important perspective on the genesis of one of the most iconic musicians of the twentieth century - one that gets under the skin of the man himself, before the personas and alter-egos masked the fascinating figure beneath them. At the Birth of Bowie is essential reading for anyone who knows what happened on Bowie's journey, but wants to understand how, and why, it ever began.
This is a collection of scholarly essays on music of the Classical era in honour of Alan Tyson. A leading authority on composers and music of the Classical period, Tyson has made an outstanding contribution to the study of composers' sketches, manuscript compositions, and early printed editions. An international group of 19 distinguished musicologists contribute essays on Mozart, Haydn, Clementi and Beethoven and other topics under the editorship of Sieghard Brandenburg. The book also includes a complete checklist of Alan Tyson's writings on music.
The harp is both the oldest and the newest of instruments. It has existed in some form in nearly all cultures since man has made music. The contemporary concert instrument has been known since the mid-19th century. This work is a compendium of the biographies of many notable harpists of the modern era. The biographies make clear how these performers shaped the contrasts in style and technique of harp playing that have developed over the past 150 years, as cultural, social, and psychological forces influenced individual performance. In addition to the biographical information, the A-Z entries include critical reviews, discographies, and selected bibliographies where possible. New material from the former Soviet states is included.
In a recent poll (Harris 1996), the Statler Brothers, country and gospel music legends, were rated second only to Frank Sinatra as America's favorite singers. They are known as the most awarded act in the history of country music and are still going strong after 30 years. Their performances and the songs they write reflect where they were born--in the birthplace of gospel music, the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia. Presented here in a clear format are the expected discography details plus additional information that Statler fans will find fun to read. This work contains the usual session and release information, single and album chart histories, television programs, awards, and indices for song titles, composers, and musicians plus extras such as album notes and Statler proverbs. This is a well-researched, documented, and concise work suitable for scholars and fans alike.
Taking piano lessons at three years of age and composing by five, William Mathias became one of Britain's leading 20th-century composers. (He was invited to compose the wedding anthem for the marriage of the Prince of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer.) This work provides, for the first time in one volume, up-to-date and comprehensive details of the composer's life's work. It includes a biography, a complete list of works and performances, a discography of sound recordings, and an annotated bibliography, along with useful appendixes and an index. This book will be of interest to musicologists, students, and 20th century music buffs alike. Mathias was a prolific and versatile composer whose works included opera and music for orchestra, chamber groups, solo instruments, organ, brass ensembles, choral, church, and children's groups. His wedding anthem for Prince Charles and Lady Diana was heard by over 750 million people around the world on television—probably the largest audience for any first performance of a new work.
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