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Books > Music > Composers & musicians
This volume makes available Rodrigo's writings to English-speaking
readers throughout the world. The generous selection reveals an
outstanding critical mind, equally illuminating on the main
developments in the history of classical music and its most
important composers, from Bach and Mozart to Verdi and Puccini, as
well as Rodrigo's contemporaries. Rodrigo's writings also cover
many aspects of the culture and music of Spain and the country's
major composers, as well as being an invaluable guide to an
understanding and appreciation of Rodrigo's own works. The
composer's style of writing is extremely varied: by turns incisive,
eloquent, poetic, or delightfully humorous. Given the world-wide
fame and popularity of his music, the availability in English of a
large number of the composer's many articles and critical reviews
will be of the greatest interest to musicians, scholars, music
critics, and music-lovers alike.
Fanny Hensel: A Research and Information Guide provides scholars in
Hensel studies with a resource to navigate the research surrounding
the composer's over 450 musical works. As part of the larger
blossoming of women's music history, new research in the 1980s and
1990s promoted an awareness of Hensel's output, in particular in
the genres of the lied and the solo piano work. This research guide
includes an introductory chapter, a summary paragraph at the
beginning of each chapter, and annotations for more than 500
entries, focusing on scholarly works as well as selected articles
from trade publications, catalogs, and Internet resources.
Presents a first analytical study that looks at the overarching
designs of Benjamin Britten's John Donne, Thomas Hardy and William
Blake solo song cycles. By questioning when a group of songs ought
to be understood not merely as a collection, but as a cycle, Sly
shows that Britten's personal selection and arrangement is
indispensable to understanding these cycles' extra-musical
communication. The Holy Sonnets of John Donne, Winter Words (poems
by Hardy) and Songs and Proverbs of William Blake - composed in
1945, 1953 and 1965 respectively - each represent a philosophical
exploration. The terrains set out by the three poets are distinct,
but also engage one another in important and unexpected ways. Their
cyclic architectures are expressed not only in their poetic
arrangement, but in their musical settings. Key relationships and
motive remain central for Britten. Keys convey a network of
interconnections, create groupings of songs, and establish levels
of tonal affinity or distance. Motive - often intervals that can
fit into any melodic, harmonic or rhythmic context - is used to
create aural affinities between or among individual songs. This
book also offers a broader narrative revealing Britten's evolving
philosophical convictions in post-war Britain. While it may not be
the case that Britten intended any broader philosophical comment,
the works together outline the cold and brittle state that emerges
from loss and aligns with their composer's increasingly stark
outlook on humanity.
Ralph Vaughan Williams: A Research and Information Guide presents
the most extensive annotated bibliography of its subject yet
produced. It offers comprehensive coverage of the English
composer's prose works and accounts for over 1,000 secondary
sources from all critical and scholarly eras. A single-numbering
format and substantial indexes facilitate efficient searches of
what is the most complete bibliography of Ralph Vaughan Williams
since Neil Butterworth's guide to research was published by Garland
in 1990.
The founding in 1777 of the Journal de Paris, France's first daily
and distinctly commercial paper, represents an early use of
disinformation as a tool for political gain, profit, and societal
division. To attract a large readership and bar competition for
C.W. Gluck's works at the Paris Opera, it launched a prolonged
campaign of anonymous lies, mockery, and defamation against two
prominent members of the Academie Francaise who wished the Opera to
be open to all deserving composers but lacked a comparable daily
forum with which to defend themselves. In this unique episode,
music served as a smokescreen for nefarious activity. No musical
knowledge is necessary to follow this purely political drama.
Before we recorded Infernal Love, I didn t know if I was coming or
going. I developed quite a healthy drug habit and was drinking a
bottle of Absolut vodka every day. I thought that if I gave up
drinking, I d spend the next two weeks lying in bed and feeling
sick. I decided to keep going and see if inspiration would hit -
Andy Cairns, Therapy? So Much For The 30 Year Plan is the first
ever book to detail the life of Therapy?, one of rock s boldest and
most idiosyncratic acts. Written with the full co-operation of the
band s current members frontman Andy Cairns, bassist Michael
McKeegan, and drummer Neil Cooper this official biography explores
the dizzying highs and crushing lows they have experienced while
navigating a three-decade-long career. Featuring extensive
interviews with the band and key figures from throughout their
career, So Much For The 30 Year Plan offers insights into the band
s origins in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, the backlash
they received from the underground scene after signing to a major
label, the birth of their million-selling 1994 album Troublegum,
the full story behind their split with founding member Fyfe Ewing,
and much more. Published to coincide with the band s 30th
anniversary tour, this is essential reading for all Therapy? fans
and for anyone with an interest in the alternative music of the
era.
Kate Bush: the subject of murmured legend and one of the most
idiosyncratic musicians of the modern era. Comprising fifty
chapters or 'visions', Running Up That Hill is a multi-faceted
biography of this famously elusive figure, viewing her life and
work from fresh and illuminating angles. Featuring details from the
author's one-to-one conversations with Kate, as well as vignettes
of her key songs, albums, videos and concerts, this artful, candid
and often brutally funny portrait introduces the reader to the
refreshingly real Kate Bush. Along the way, the narrative also
includes vivid reconstructions of transformative moments in her
career and insights from the friends and collaborators closest to
Kate, including her photographer brother John Carder Bush and
fellow artists David Gilmour, John Lydon and Youth. Running Up That
Hill is a vibrant and comprehensive re-examination of Kate Bush and
her many creative landmarks.
The Original Portrayal of Mozart's Don Giovanni offers an original
reading of Mozart's and Da Ponte's opera Don Giovanni, using as a
lens the portrayal of the title role by its creator, the baritone
Luigi Bassi (1766-1825). Although Bassi was coached in the role by
the composer himself, his portrayal has never been studied in depth
before, and this book presents a large number of new sources
(first- and second-hand accounts), which allows us to reconstruct
his performance scene by scene. The book confronts Bassi's
portrayal with a study of the opera's early German reception and
performance history, demonstrating how Don Giovanni as we know it
today was not only created by Mozart, Da Ponte and Luigi Bassi but
also by the early German adapters, translators, critics and
performers who turned the title character into the arrogant and
violent villain we still encounter in most of today's stage
productions. Incorporating discussion of dramaturgical thinking of
the late Enlightenment and the difficult moral problems that the
opera raises, this is an important study for scholars and
researchers from opera studies, theatre and performance studies,
music history as well as conductors, directors and singers.
Neither Spem in alium, the widely acclaimed 'songe of fortie
partes' by Thomas Tallis, nor Alessandro Striggio's forty-part Mass
is the largest-scale counterpoint work in Western music. The actual
winner is Gregorio Ballabene, a relatively unknown Roman maestro di
cappella, a contemporary of Giovanni Paisiello, Joseph Haydn and
Luigi Boccherini, who composed in forty-eight parts for twelve
choirs. Ballabene's Mass has remained completely unstudied until
today, even though the score survives in prominent collections.
This study offers, for the first time, a historical and analytical
perspective on this overlooked manifestation of a very individual
musical intelligence.
John Taverner was the leading composer of church music under Henry
VIII. His contributions to the mass and votive antiphon are varied,
distinguished and sometimes innovative; he has left more important
settings for the office than any of his predecessors, and even a
little secular music survives. Hugh Benham, editor of Taverner's
complete works for Early English Church Music, now provides the
first full-length study of the composer for over twenty years. He
places the music in context, with the help of biographical
information, discussion of Taverner's place in society, and
explanation of how each piece was used in the pre-Reformation
church services. He investigates the musical language of Taverner's
predecessors as background for a fresh examination and appraisal of
the music in the course of which he traces similarities with the
work of younger composers. Issues confronting the performer are
considered, and the music is also approached from the listener's
point of view, initially through close analytical inspection of the
celebrated votive antiphon Gaude plurimum.
Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957) was famed for his dedication,
photographic memory, explosive temper and impassioned performances.
At times he dominated La Scala, the Metropolitan Opera, the New
York Philharmonic, and the Bayreuth, Salzburg and Lucerne
festivals. His reforms influenced generations of musicians, and his
opposition to Nazism and Fascism made him a model for artists of
conscience. With unprecedented access to the conductor's archives,
Harvey Sachs has written a new biography positioning Toscanini's
musical career and sometimes scandalous life against the currents
of history. Set in Italy, across Europe, the Americas and in
Palestine, with portraits of Verdi, Puccini, Caruso, Mussolini and
others, Toscanini soars in its exploration of genius, music and
moral courage.
"A history of cool." — Airmail "Without a doubt she
is the great reference of photography in the Hip Hop Culture, with
photos that are already the history of contemporary culture of the
20th century." — Staf Magazine "In over 240 pages,
the book encapsulates the spirit of history-making generations and
their influence on fashion and wider visual
culture." — The Luupe Covering four decades of
photography, this book serves as a stunning snapshot of Beckman’s
significance in the world of art, photojournalism, music, fashion,
and popular culture – but most prevalently, it’s a testament to
her unique ability to extract beauty from the outliers of society.
With written contributions from Beckman’s peers including
academia’s Jason King, Chair of NYU’s Clive Davis Institute of
Recorded Music & Vivien Goldman Author & Professor at NYU;
journalists Vikki Tobak, and co-founder of PAPER, Kim Hastreiter;
visual artist Cey Adams; music legends Sting, Run DMC, Paul Weller,
Salt-n-Pepa, Belinda Carlisle, and Slick Rick; and fashion’s
Dapper Dan, Dior’s Maria Grazia Chiuri, Levi’s Chad Hinson –
Rebels: From Punk to Dior showcases Janette Beckman’s influence
in her realm. In addition to publishing five books, Janette
Beckman’s work has been exhibited in galleries worldwide and is
included in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian National
Museum of African American History and Culture, the Museum of the
City of New York, and the British National Portrait Gallery. She is
represented by the Fahey Klein Gallery.
It is extremely detailed, with a particularly impressive range of
references, including some quite obscure material that is
nevertheless relevant. It would appeal chiefly to researchers of
Beethoven and the Classical period in music. It would also appeal
to scholars and students investigating the reception history of
Ancient Greece and Rome in the 18th-19th century.
Jim Cregan's career as a rock guitarist, songwriter and producer
has spanned over fifty years, touring and recording albums with
stars such as Elton John, Cat Stevens, Family, Willie Nelson, Steve
Harley and Cockney Rebel, Joe Cocker, The Gypsy Kings, and Katie
Melua. However, he is perhaps best known for his forty-year
association with Rod Stewart, not only as his guitarist but also
being best friends and godfathers to each other's children. In his
autobiography Jim Cregan lifts the lid on his extraordinary life,
recounting his experiences with music's biggest stars, from his
first band at the age of 14 playing in youth clubs in Poole to
performing in front of 350,000 people in Rio de Janeiro. In And on
Guitar . . . Cregan holds nothing back: from his early life and
anecdotes about his family to shenanigans on the road and
extraordinary tales of hedonism, love and loss, his stories feature
a Who's Who of music's biggest stars.
Musician, novelist, poet, actor: Nick Cave (b. 1957) is a
Renaissance man. His wide-ranging artistic output always
uncompromising, hypnotic, and intense is defined by an
extraordinary gift for storytelling. In Nick Cave: Mercy on Me,
Reinhard Kleist employs a cast of characters drawn from Cave's
music and writing to tell the story of a formidable artist and
influencer. Kleist paints an expressive and enthralling portrait of
Cave's childhood in Australia; his early years fronting The
Birthday Party; the sublime highs of his success with The Bad
Seeds; and the crippling lows of his battle with heroin. Capturing
everything from Cave's frenzied performances in Berlin to the
tender moments he spent with love and muse Anita Lane, Kleist's
graphic biography, like Cave's songs, is by turns electrifying,
sentimental, morbid, and comic but always engrossing.
Women's Music for the Screen: Diverse Narratives in Sound shines a
long-overdue light on the works and lives of female-identifying
screen composers. Bringing together composer profiles, exclusive
interview excerpts, and industry case studies, this volume
showcases their achievements and reflects on the systemic gender
biases women have faced in an industry that has long excluded them.
Across 16 essays, an international array of contributors present a
wealth of research data, biographical content, and musical analysis
of film, television, and video game scores to understand how the
industry excludes women, the consequences of these deficits, and
why such inequities persist - and to document women's rich
contributions to screen music in diverse styles and genres. The
chapters amplify the voices of women composers including Bebe
Barron, Delia Derbyshire, Wendy Carlos, Anne Dudley, Rachel
Portman, Hildur Gudnadottir, Mica Levi, Winifred Phillips, and
more. From the mid-twentieth century to the present, and from
classic Hollywood scores to pioneering electronic music, these are
the stories and achievements of the women who have managed to forge
successful careers in a male-dominated arena. Suitable for
researchers, educators, and students alike, Women's Music for the
Screen urges the screen music industry to consider these sounds and
stories in a way it hasn't before: as voices that more accurately
reflect the world we all share.
See the film Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song from Sony
Pictures Classics This "thoughtful and illuminating" (The New York
Times) work of music journalism is an unforgettable, fascinating,
and unexpected account of one of the most performed and beloved
songs in pop history-Leonard Cohen's heartrending "Hallelujah."
Featuring a new foreword and afterword by the author. When Leonard
Cohen first wrote and recorded the song "Hallelujah," it attracted
little attention or airplay, dismissed by both fans and critics
alike. Today, it is one of the most recorded songs in history,
having been covered by a variety of music icons including Celine
Dion, Bon Jovi, Willie Nelson, and, most famously, Jeff Buckley.
It's been featured on soundtracks as diverse as Shrek to The West
Wing. And in the days after major tragedies, it has brought comfort
to thousands after being featured in the MTV 9/11 tribute video and
the telethon for the 2010 Haitian earthquake. So how did one
relatively unknown song become an unofficial international anthem
for human triumph and tragedy, one which each successive generation
feels they have discovered and claimed as uniquely their own?
Through in-depth interviews and expansive research, longtime music
journalist Alan Light follows the captivating and improbable
journey of "Hallelujah" to the heart of popular culture. Discover
how great songs come to be, and how we as listeners have the
endless ability to project a succession of meanings onto a cultural
artifact, forever reinterpreting art through the lens of current
events and the latest trends. "A combination mystery tale,
detective story, pop critique, and sacred psalm of its own" (Daily
News, New York),The Holy or the Broken is a revelatory and
masterful exploration of the overwhelming power of music.
Philip Glass and Robert Wilson's most celebrated collaboration, the
landmark opera Einstein on the Beach, had its premiere at the
Avignon Festival in 1976. During its initial European tour,
Metropolitan Opera premiere, and revivals in 1984 and 1992,
Einstein provoked opposed reactions from both audiences and
critics. Today, Einstein is well on the way itself to becoming a
canonized avant-garde work, and it is widely acknowledged as a
profoundly significant moment in the history of opera or musical
theater. Einstein created waves that for many years crashed against
the shores of traditional thinking concerning the nature and
creative potential of audiovisual expression. Reaching beyond
opera, its influence was felt in audiovisual culture in general: in
contemporary avant-garde music, performance art, avant-garde
cinema, popular film, popular music, advertising, dance, theater,
and many other expressive, commercial, and cultural spheres.
Inspired by the 2012-2015 series of performances that
re-contextualized this unique work as part of the present-day nexus
of theoretical, political, and social concerns, the editors and
contributors of this book take these new performances as a pretext
for far-reaching interdisciplinary reflection and dialogue. Essays
range from those that focus on the human scale and agencies
involved in productions to the mechanical and post-human character
of the opera's expressive substance. A further valuable dimension
is the inclusion of material taken from several recent interviews
with creative collaborators Philip Glass, Robert Wilson, and
Lucinda Childs, each of these sections comprising knee plays, or
short intermezzo sections resembling those found in the opera
Einstein on the Beach itself. The book additionally features a
foreword written by the influential musicologist and cultural
theorist Susan McClary and an interview with film and theater
luminary Peter Greenaway, as well as a short chapter of
reminiscences written by the singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega.
When everything fell apart for Lynn Melnick, she went to Dollywood.
It was perhaps an unusual refuge. The theme park, partly owned by
and wholly named for Dolly Parton, celebrates a country music
legend who grew up in church and in poverty in rural Tennessee. Yet
Dollywood is exactly where Melnick—a poet, urbanite, and daughter
of a middle-class Jewish family—needed to be. Because Melnick,
like the musician she adores, is a survivor. In this bracing
memoir, Melnick explores Parton’s dual identities as feminist
icon and objectified sex symbol—identities that reflect the
author’s own fraught history with rape culture and the grueling
effort to reclaim her voice in the wake of loss and trauma. Each
chapter engages with the artistry and cultural impact of one of
Parton’s songs, as Melnick reckons with violence, creativity,
parenting, abortion, sex work, love, and the consolations and
cruelties of religion. Guided by Parton’s music, Melnick walks
the slow path to recovery in the company of those who came before
her and stand with her, as trauma is an experience both unique and
universal. Candid and discerning, I’ve Had to Think Up a Way to
Survive is at once a memoir and a love song—a story about one
life and about an artist who has brought life to millions.
The Rolling Stones' Beggars Banquet is one of the seminal albums in
rock history. Arguably it not only marks the advent of the 'mature'
sound of the Rolling Stones but lays out a new blueprint for an
approach to blues-based rock music that would endure for several
decades. From its title to the dark themes that pervade some of its
songs, Beggars Banquet reflected and helped define a moment marked
by violence, decay, and upheaval. It marked a move away from the
artistic sonic flourishes of psychedelic rock towards an embrace of
foundational streams of American music - blues, country - that had
always underpinned the music of the Stones but assumed new primacy
in their music after 1968. This move coincided with, and
anticipated, the 'roots' moves that many leading popular music
artists made as the 1960s turned toward a new decade; but unlike
many of their peers whose music grew more 'soft' and subdued as
they embraced traditional styles, the music and attitude of the
Stones only grew harder and more menacing, and their status as
representatives of the dark underside of the 60s rock
counterculture assumed new solidity. For the Rolling Stones, the
1960s ended and the 1970s began with the release of this album in
1968.
Music scholarship has been rethinking its understanding of Franz
Schubert and his work. How might our modern aesthetic values and
historical knowledge of Schubert's life affect how we interpret his
music? Schubert's Instrumental Music and Poetics of Interpretation
demonstrates how updated analysis of Schubert and his instrumental
works reveals expressive meaning. In six chapters, each devoted to
one or two of Schubert's pieces, René Rusch explores alternate
forms of unity and coherence, offers critical assessments of
biographical and intertextual influence, investigates narrative,
and addresses the gendering of the composer and his music. Rusch's
comparative analyses and interpretations address four significant
areas of scholarly focus in Schubert studies, including his use of
chromaticism, his unique forms, the impact of events in his own
life, and the influence of Beethoven. Drawing from a range of
philosophical, hermeneutic, historical, biographical, theoretical,
and analytical sources, Schubert's Instrumental Music and Poetics
of Interpretation offers readers a unique and innovative foray into
the poetics of contemporary analysis of Schubert's instrumental
music and develops new ways to engage with his repertoire.
Yes: A Visual Biography I: 1968 - 1981 documents the progressive
rock pioneer's first twelve years from the release of their
eponymous debut album through to 1980's Drama: A suitable name for
a band whose career has been full of drama as documented in
Popoff's narrative that charts Yes's ups and downs as the band
glided out of the sixties with a full-on assault on the seventies
music scene that saw them become one of the biggest global
acts-selling out venues around the world from New York's Madison
Square Garden to London's Wembley Arena. Popoff takes you on a
journey from the early days of the band with original members Chris
Squire, Jon Anderson, Bill Bruford, Peter Banks and Tony Kaye; to
the hugely successful seventies when the likes of Steve Howe,
Patrick Moraz, Rick Wakeman and Alan White all added their
individual stamps on the band's identity. Then the surprise union
with The Buggles that saw Yes enter the eighties a world apart from
the way they had entered the seventies but continuing to delight
their legion of fans.
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