Joni Mitchell is one of the foremost singer-songwriters of the late twentieth century. Yet despite her reputation, influence, and cultural importance, a detailed appraisal of her musical achievement is still lacking. Whitesell presents a through exploration of Mitchell's musical style, sound, and structure in order to evaluate her songs from a musicological perspective. His analyses are conceived within a holistic framework that takes account of poetic nuance, cultural reference, and stylistic evolution over a long, adventurous career.
Mitchell's songs represent a complex, meticulously crafted body of work. The Music of Joni Mitchell offers a comprehensive survey of her output, with many discussions of individual songs, organized by topic rather than chronology. Individual chapters each explore a different aspect of her craft, such as poetic voice, harmony, melody, and large-scale form. A separate chapter is devoted to the central theme of personal freedom, as expressed through diverse symbolic registers of the journey quest, bohemianism, creative license, and spiritual liberation.
Previous accounts of Mitchell's songwriting have tended to favor her poetic vision, expansive verse structures, and riveting vocal delivery. Whitesell fills out this account with special attention to musical technique, showing how such traits as complex or conflicting sonorities, dualities of harmonic mode, dialectical tensions of texture and register, intricately layered instrumental figuration, and a variable vocal persona are all essential to her distinctive identity as a songwriter. The Music of Joni Mitchell develops a set of conceptual tools geared specifically to Mitchell's songs, in order todemonstrate the extent of her technical innovation in the pop song genre, to give an account of the formal sophistication and rhetorical power characterizing her work as a whole, and to provide grounds for the recognition of her intellectual stature as a composer within her chosen field.

Following methods known to have been adopted by Bach himself, the exercises provided in chorale harmonization are graded in such a way as to encourage the student to develop both technique and imagination within a closely-defined framework. The instrumental counterpoint section is based on Bach's two-and three-part Inventions. By close analysis the author helps the reader to recognize the procedures Bach adopted in various musical situations. The exercises are taken largely from Bach's keyboard works.

This volume analyses the work of Nick Cave, a singular, idiosyncratic and brilliant musician, specifically through his engagements with theology and the Bible. It does so not merely in terms of his written work, the novels and plays and poetry and lyrics that he continues to produce, but also the music itself. Covering more than three decades of extraordinarily diverse creativity, the book has seven chapters focusing on: the modes in which Cave engages with the Bible; the total depravity of the worlds invoked in his novels and other written work; the consistent invocation of apocalyptic themes; his restoration of death as a valid dimension of life; the twists of the love song; the role of a sensual and heretical Christ; and then a detailed, dialectical analysis of his musical forms. The book draws upon a select number of theorists who provide the methodological possibilities of digging deep into the theological nature of Cave's work, namely Ernst Bloch, who is the methodological foundation stone, as well as Theodor Adorno, Theodore Gracyk and Jacques Attali.

In 1940 Sergei Rachmaninoff, living in exile in America, broke his creative silence and composed a swan song to his Russian homeland. What happened in those final haunted years and how did he come to write his farewell masterpiece, the Symphonic Dances? Rachmaninoff left Petrograd in 1917 in the throes of the Russian Revolution. He was 44 years old, at the peak of his powers as composer-conductor-performer, moving in elite Tsarist circles, as well as running the family estate, his refuge and solace. He had already written the music which, today, has made him one of the most popular composers of all time: the second and third Piano Concertos and two symphonies. The story of his years in exile in America and Switzerland, has only been told in passing. Reeling from the trauma of a life in upheaval, he wrote almost no music and quickly had to reinvent himself as a fêted virtuoso pianist, building up untold wealth and meeting the stars- from Walt Disney and Charlie Chaplin to his Russian contemporaries and polar opposites, Prokofiev and Stravinsky. Yet the melancholy of leaving his homeland never lifted. Using a wide range of sources, including important newly translated texts, Maddocks' immensely readable book conjures impressions of this enigmatic figure, his friends and the world he encountered. It explores his life as an emigré artist and how he clung to an Old Russia which no longer existed. That forging of past and present meets in his Symphonic Dances (1940), his last composition, written on Long Island shortly before his death in Beverly Hills, surrounded by a close-knit circle of Russian exiles.

'An indispensable compendium for Steely Dan fans' The Wire At its core a creative marriage between Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, Steely Dan are one of the defining and bestselling American rock acts of the last half-century, recording several of the cleverest and best-produced albums of the '70s - from the breathlessly catchy Can't Buy a Thrill to the sleekly sinister Gaucho. In the '90s they returned to remind us of how sorely we had missed their elegance and erudition, subsequently recording Two Against Nature and Everything Must Go during the following decade. They have sold close to forty-five million albums. 'A lot of people think of them as the epitome of boring '70s stuff,' novelist William Gibson said in 1993, when Becker and Fagen toured for the first time in nineteen years. 'They don't realize this is probably the most subversive material pop has ever thrown up.' Now fully embraced by the 'Yacht Rock' generation - semi-ironic devotees of '70s Southern-California slickness - Steely Dan no longer polarize lo-fi punks and studio geeks in the way they used to. In 2001 they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Major Dudes collects some of the smartest and wittiest interviews Becker and Fagen have ever given, along with insightful reviews of - and commentary on - their extraordinary songs. Compiled by Rock's Backpages editor Barney Hoskyns, the book's contributors include Charles Shaar Murray, Robert Palmer, Ian MacDonald, Bud Scoppa, Penny Valentine, Fred Schruers, Sylvie Simmons and Michael Watts.

Examines Joseph Joachim's vital legacy through a range of philological, philosophical and critical approaches. Joseph Joachim (1831-1907), violinist, composer, teacher, and founding director of Berlin's Royal Academy of Music, was one of the most eminent and influential musicians of the long nineteenth century. Born in a tiny Jewish community on the Austro-Hungarian border, he rose to a position of unsurpassed prominence in European cultural life. This timely collection of essays explores important yet little-known aspects of Joachim's life and art. Studies of his Jewish background, early assimilation into Christian society, Felix Mendelssohn's mentorship, and the influence of Hungarian vernacular music on the formation of his musical style elucidate the roots of Joachim's identity. The later chapters focus on his personal and creative responses to the contentious and rapidly evolving cultural milieu in which he lived: his choice of instruments as his musical "voice," his performances as sites of (re)enchantment in the modern age, his pathbreaking British career, his calling and sway as a quartet player, his pedagogical legacy, his influence on the establishment of the musical canon, and several of his most distinctive and original compositions. With a wide variety of approaches-analytical, philological, archival, philosophical, and critical-this collection will prove enlightening to scholars, performers, and others interested in this brilliant artist and the musical aesthetics, culture, and styles of his time.

An insightful and exquisitely written reconsideration of Ravel's modernity, his teaching, and his place in twentieth-century music and culture. What is it about Boléro, Gaspard de la nuit, and Daphnis et Chloé that makes musicians and listeners alike love them so? Stephen Zank here illuminates these and other works of Maurice Ravel through several of the composer's fascinations: dynamic intensification, counterpoint, orchestration, exotic influences on Western music, and an interest in multisensorial perception. Connecting all these fascinations, Zank argues, is irony. His book offers an appreciation of Ravel's musical irony that is grounded in the vocabularies and criticism of the time and in two early attempts at writing up a "Ravel Aesthetic" by intimates of Ravel. Thomas Mann calledirony the phenomenon that is, "beyond compare, the most profound and most alluring in the world." Irony and Sound, written with insight and flair, provides a long-needed reconsideration of Ravel's modernity, his teaching, and his place in twentieth-century music and culture. Musicologist Stephen Zank has taught at University of Illinois, University of North Texas, and University of Rochester. He is the author of Maurice Ravel: A Guideto Research.

The anti-fascist cantata Il canto sospeso, the string quartet Fragmente - Stille, an Diotima and the 'Tragedy of Listening' Prometeo cemented Luigi Nono's place in music history. In this study, Carola Nielinger-Vakil examines these major works in the context of Nono's amalgamation of avant-garde composition with Communist political engagement. Part I discusses Il canto sospeso in the context of all of Nono's anti-fascist pieces, from the unfinished Fucik project (1951) to Ricorda cosa ti hanno fatto in Auschwitz (1966). Nielinger-Vakil explores Nono's position at the Darmstadt Music Courses, the evolution of his compositional technique, his penchant for music theatre and his use of spatial and electronic techniques to set the composer and his works against the diverging circumstances in Italy and Germany after 1945. Part II further examines these concerns and shows how they live on in Nono's work after 1975, culminating in a thorough analysis of Prometeo.

A detailed and long-overdue study of Frank Bridge's music and its socio-cultural and aesthetic contexts The English composer, violist, and conductor Frank Bridge (1879-1941), a student of Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, was one of the first modernists in British music, developing the most radical and lastingly modern musical languageof his generation. Bridge was also one of the most accomplished British composers of chamber music in the twentieth century. After the lyrical romanticism of the early period, a notable expansion of style can be observed as earlyas 1913, leading eventually to the radical language of the Piano Sonata and Third String Quartet, drawing on influences such as Debussy, Stravinsky and the Second Viennese School composers.However, Bridge became frustrated that his later, more complex music was often ignored in favour of his earlier 'Edwardian' works; this neglect of his mature music contributed to the growing obscurity into which his music and reputation fell in his last years and afterhis death. Symptomatically, Bridge is still often remembered primarily for privately tutoring Benjamin Britten, who later championed his teacher's music and paid homage to him in the 'Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge' (1937).This book, the first detailed, and long-overdue, study of Bridge's music and its relevant socio-cultural and aesthetic contexts, encourages a more thorough understanding of Bridge's style and development and will appeal to readers with interests in British music, early twentieth-century modernism and post-romanticism as well as genre and style. FABIAN HUSS is Visiting Fellow at the University of Bristol and has published widely on British music (particularly EJ Moeran), with an emphasis on cultural history, and aesthetic and analytical issues.

The intimate biography of the iconic DJ who was lost too soon. Tim Bergling was a musical visionary who, through his sense for melodies, came to define the era when Swedish and European house music took over the world. But Tim Bergling was also an introverted and fragile young man who was forced to grow up at an inhumanly fast pace. After a series of emergencies resulting in hospital stays, he stopped touring in the summer of 2016. Barely two years later, he took his own life. Tim - The Biography of Avicii is written by the award-winning journalist Mans Mosesson, who through interviews with Tim's family, friends and colleagues in the music business, has intimately gotten to know the star producer. The book paints an honest picture of Tim and his search in life, not shying from the difficulties that he struggled with.

If any one musical act of the rock and roll era can be said to have transcended the simple categorization of "band," the Grateful Dead is it: by the time they stopped performing in 1995, the Dead had become an international institution with a vast backing organization, a massive and devoted fanbase, and archival recordings both official and bootlegged. The cultural significance of these bootlegs - live concert cassettes which solidified the Dead's legendary status even as they occupied a legal gray area for decades - is utterly unique in the annals of music, and the story of their creation, trading, and endless proliferation is a people's history unto itself. Featuring dozens of interviews with tape enthusiasts and members of the Grateful Dead organization as well as the show stopping visuals from hundreds of archival cassette covers, After All Is Said and Done is artist Mark A. Rodriguez's exploration of that history, a saga of homegrown psychedelia, anarchic graphic styles, and black market fandom as written in magnetic tape.

Master interviewer Balint Andras Varga poses three probing questions to renowned contemporary composers about their work, and carefully renders their answers in their own words. Do today's composers draw inspiration from life experiences or from, say, the natural world? What influences, past and present, have influenced recent composers? How essential is it for a composer to develop a personal style, and when does this degenerate into self-repetition? These are questions about which some of the most important composers of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century often have quite strong feelings--but have seldom been asked. In this pathbreaking book, Balint Andras Varga puts these three questions to such renowned composers as Luciano Berio, Pierre Boulez, Alberto Ginastera, Sofia Gubaidulina, Hans Werner Henze, Helmut Lachenmann, Gyoergy Ligeti, Witold Lutoslawski, Luigi Nono, Krzysztof Penderecki, Wolfgang Rihm, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Toru Takemitsu, and Iannis Xenakis. Varga's sensitive English renderings capture the subtleties of their sometimes confident, sometimes hesitant, answers. All statements from English-speaking composers -- such as Milton Babbitt, John Cage, Elliott Carter, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Morton Feldman, Lukas Foss, Steve Reich, Gunther Schuller, andSir Michael Tippett -- consist of the composers' own carefully chosen words. Three Questions for Sixty-Five Composers is vital reading for anybody interested in the current state of music and the arts. TheHungarian music publisher Balint Andras Varga has spent nearly forty years working for and with composers. He has published several books, including extensive interviews with Lutoslawski, Berio, and Xenakis. His previous book forthe University of Rochester Press is Gyoergy Kurtag: Three Interviews and Ligeti Homages.

NELSON RIDDLE was possibly the greatest; one of the most successful arrangers in the history of American popular music. He worked with global icons such as Peggy Lee, Judy Garland and many more. And in a time of segregation and deep racial tensions in the US, he collaborated with leading black artists such as Nat King Cole and Ella Fitzgerald, forming close, personal friendships with both. He also wrote successful TV themes and Oscar-winning film scores. A complex and often forlorn genius, he will forever be remembered for his immortal work with FRANK SINATRA, but like fine wines his later vintage was just as palatable, if somewhat of a surprise.

The life and works of one of the most difficult yet rewarding composers of modern time. Jean Barraque is increasingly being recognized as one of the great composers of the second half of the 20th century. Though he left only seven works, his voice in each of them is unmistakeable, and powerful. He had no doubt of hisresponsibility, as a creator, to take his listeners on challenging adventures that could not but leave them changed. After the collapse of morality he had witnessed as a child growing up during the Second World War, and having taken notice of so much disarray in the culture around him, he set himself to make music that would, out of chaos, speak. Three others were crucial to him. One was Pierre Boulez, who, three years older, provided him with keysto a new musical language -- a language more dramatic, driving and passionate than Boulez's. Another was Michel Foucault, to whom he was close personally for a while, and with whom he had a dialogue that was determinative for bothof them. Finally, in the writings of Hermann Broch-and especially in the novel The Death of Virgil-he found the myth he needed to realize musically. He played for high stakes, and he took risks with himself as well as in hisart. Intemperate and difficult, even with his closest friends, he died in 1973 at the age of forty-five. Paul Griffiths was chief music critic for the London Times (1982-92) and The New Yorker (1992-96) and since 1996 has written regularly for the New York Times. He has written books on Boulez, Cage, Messiaen, Ligeti, Davies, Bartok and Stravinsky, as well as several librettos, among them The Jewel Box (Mozart, 1991), Marco Polo (Tan Dun, 1996) and What Next? (Elliott Carter, 1999).

Cultural, historical and reception-related contexts are central to understanding Mozart, one of the greatest and most famous musicians of all time. Widening and refining the lens through which the composer is viewed, the essays in Mozart Studies 2 focus on themes, issues, works and repertories perennially popular among Mozart scholars of all kinds, pointing to areas primed for future study and also suitable for investigation by musicians outside the scholarly community. Following on from the first Mozart Studies volume, internationally renowned contributors bring new perspectives to bear on many of Mozart's most popular works, as well as the composer's letters, biography, and reception. Chapters are grouped according to topics covered and collectively affirm the vitality of Mozart scholarship and the significant role it continues to play in defining and redefining musicological priorities in general.

This book is a concise, evocative, and thoroughly researched study of one of the great rock'n'roll pioneers. After "Tutti Frutti," Little Richard began garnering fans from both sides of the civil rights divide. He brought black and white youngsters together on the dance floor and even helped to transform race relations. In June, 2007, Little Richard's 1955 Specialty Records single, "Tutti Frutti," topped Mojo magazine's list of "100 Records That Changed the World." But back in the early 1950s, nobody gave Little Richard a second glance, unless you count staring at a "gay black cripple (one of Richard's legs is shorter than the other) from the wrong side of the tracks" as a second glance. It was a time in America where the black and white worlds had co-existed separately for nearly two centuries. After "Tutti Frutti," Little Richard began garnering fans from both sides of the civil rights divide. He brought black and white youngsters together on the dance floor and even helped to transform race relations. "Little Richard: The Birth of Rock 'n' Roll" begins by grounding the reader in the fertile soil from which Little Richard's music sprang. In Macon, Georgia, David Kirby interviews local characters, who knew Little Richard way back when, citing church and family as his true inspiration. His antics began as early as grade school, performing for his classmates every time the teacher would leave the room, connecting to an age-old American show biz tradition of charade and flummery. On the road, Little Richard faced competition from his peers, honing his stage show and making it, too, an act that could not be counterfeited. Kirby sees Little Richard as a foxy warrior, one fighting with skill and cunning to take his place among the greats. In the words of Keith Richards (on hearing "Tutti Frutti" for the first time), "it was as though the world changed suddenly from monochrome to Technicolor." Those sentiments have consistently been echoed by the music-listening world, and the time is ripe for a reassessment of Little Richard's genius and legacy.

Sir William Schwenk Gilbert and Sir Arthur Sullivan created fourteen comic operas - witty satires set to sparkling music - that instantly won a large and enthusiastic audience and remain immensely popular today. Their talents brought the two men together and their temperaments finally drove them apart. Here, in forty interviews and recollections, is a record of what was said about them during and shortly after their lifetimes by friends, musicians, theatrical managers, singers, actors, and actresses, journalists and authors. For Gilbert and Sullivan devotees everywhere, this entertaining collection will provide fresh insights into the careers and collaborative achievements of one of the most successful - and enduring - enterprises of Victorian theatre.

Examines the life and compositional oeuvre of prolific eighteenth century musician, composer, and singer Marianna Martines (1744-1813). Marianna Martines (1744-1813) was one of the most accomplished, prolific, and highly honored female musicians of the eighteenth century. She spent most of her life in a remarkable household that included celebrated librettist Pietro Metastasio, who supervised her education and remained a powerful and supportive mentor. She studied with the young Joseph Haydn, and Vienna knew her as a gifted, aristocratic singer and keyboard player who performed for the pleasure of the Empress Maria Theresa. The regular private concerts she held in her home attracted the presence and participation of some of Vienna's leading musicians; Mozart enjoyed playing keyboard duets with her. She composed prolifically and in a wide variety of genres, vocal and instrumental, writing church music, oratorios, Italian arias, sonatas, and concertos. Much of that music survives, and those who study it, perform it, and listen to it will be impressed today by its craftsmanship and beauty. This book, the first volume fully devoted to Martines, examines her life and compositional oeuvre. Based largely on eighteenth-century printed sources, archival documents, and letters [including several by Martines herself, most of them published here for the first time] the book presents a detailed picture of the small but fascinating world in which she lived and demonstrates the skillfulness and creativity with which she manipulated the conventions of the gallant style. Focusing on a limited number of representative works, and using many musical examples, it vividly conveys the nature and extent of her compositional achievementand encourages the future performance of her works. The late Irving Godt was Professor of Music at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. John A. Rice, independent scholar, is a member of the Akademie fur Mozart-Forschungin Salzburg.

The Music Man stands as one of the greatest achievements in American musical theatre, but few know about its rocky beginnings and the against-all-odds success story of its creator Meredith Willson. Mark Cabaniss steps back into the Golden Age of Broadway and brings to life the origins of this classic show, the music behind it, and the unlikely story of its creator. Interweaving behind-the-scenes accounts of people who worked with Willson, Cabaniss looks at his long and unusual career as a composer, conductor, radio personality, and flutist, which reached its pinnacle in The Music Man. No one initially believed in Willson's "Valentine to Iowa," seeing it as nothing but a corny flop or, worse, a recipe for disaster. But when the curtain fell on opening night, a star called The Music Man was born. Over 65 years later, that star is still marching right to this day, endeared by millions around the world. To understand Willson, his career, and his music is to understand how The Music Man came to be: he was truly the only person who could have ever written this show due to his unique background, talent, incredible persistence, and belief. The show's ultimate success and longevity was anything but inevitable-rather, it was truly a miracle.

Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics is a landmark celebration of the remarkable life and career of a country music and pop culture legend. As told by Dolly Parton in her own inimitable words, explore the songs that have defined her journey. Illustrated throughout with previously unpublished images from Dolly Parton's personal and business archives. Mining over 60 years of songwriting, Dolly Parton highlights 175 of her songs and brings readers behind the lyrics. Packed with never-before-seen photographs and classic memorabilia Explores personal stories, candid insights, and myriad memories behind the songs Dolly Parton, Songteller: My Life in Lyrics reveals the stories and memories that have made Dolly a beloved icon across generations, genders, and social and international boundaries. Containing rare photos and memorabilia from Parton's archives, this book is a show- stopping must-have for every Dolly Parton fan. Learn the history behind classic Parton songs like "Jolene," "9 to 5," "I Will Always Love You," and more. The perfect gift for Dolly Parton fans (everyone loves Dolly!) as well as lovers of music history and country Add it to the shelf with books like Coat of Many Colors by Dolly Parton, The Beatles Anthology by The Beatles, and Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen.

Casts new and valuable light on English musical history and on Enlightenment culture more generally. This is a book guaranteed to make waves. It skilfully weaves the story of one key musical figure into the story of one key institution, which it then weaves into the general story of music in eighteenth-century England. Anyone reading it will come away with fresh knowledge and perceptions - plus a great urge to hear Cooke's music.' Michael Talbot, Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Liverpool and Fellow of the British Academy. Amidst the cosmopolitan, fashion obsessed concert life of later eighteenth century London there existed a discrete musical counterculture centred round a club known as the Academy of Ancient Music. Now largely forgotten, this enlightened school of musical thinkers sought to further music by proffering an alternative vision based on a high minded intellectual curiosity. Perceiving only ear-tickling ostentation in the showy styles that delighted London audiences, they aspired to raise the status of music as an art of profound expression, informed by its past and founded on universal harmonic principles. Central to this group of musical thinkers was the modest yet highly accomplished musician-scholar Benjamin Cooke, who both embodied and reflected this counterculture. As organist of Westminster Abbey and conductor of the Academy of Ancient Music for much of the second half of the eighteenth century, Cooke enjoyed prominence in his day as a composer, organist, teacher, and theorist. This book shows how, through his creativity, historicism and theorising, Cooke was instrumental in proffering an Enlightenment-inspired reassessment of musical composition and thinking at the Academy. The picture portrayed counters the current tendency to dismiss eighteenth-century English musicians as conservative and provincial. Casting new and valuable light on English musical history and on Enlightenment culture more generally, this book reveals how the agenda for musical advancement shared by Cooke and his Academy associates foreshadowed key developments that would mould European music of the nineteenth century and after. It includes an extensive bibliography, a detailed overview of the Cooke Collection at the Royal College of Music and a complete list of Cooke's works. TIM EGGINGTON is College Librarian at Queens'College, Cambridge.