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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Composers & musicians
The life and good times of one of the world's favourite songwriters. If you've ever hummed a popular film or stage song from the mid-1950s on, the chances are you've been humming one of Leslie's. The man behind songs such as Talk to the Animals, Goldfinger, Feeling Good and Pure Imagination has been celebrated throughout the music industry. The result is a string of awards to his name, including a Grammy, a couple of Oscars (as well as ten nominations) and eight Ivor Novellos. Leslie's story of talent, determination and a little bit of luck will take you on a fascinating journey from humble beginnings through this hardest of businesses to dizzying heights. Over the years, Leslie has collaborated with a dazzling array of stage and screen stars, including Rex Harrison, Peter O'Toole, Albert Finney, Richard Attenborough, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr, Julie Andrews, Roger Moore, Liza Minelli and Peter Sellers, and of course his sensational songwriting partnerships with Anthony Newley as well as with composers Henry Mancini, John Williams and John Barry. "Candid and hilarious, you'll devour Leslie Bricusse's autobiography in one delicious sitting. His recall is amazing and I can vouch for the authenticity." Joan Collins "His catalogue of songs is enormous - his achievements endless." Elton John "The book made me laugh aloud so many times. I'm in awe that you have pulled off such a monumental feat." Julie Andrews
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.
Saxophonist, multi-wind player, arranger, composer, music director, theater works producer, educator, and visionary, Pat Patrick performed with Duke Ellington's and Quincy Jones' orchestras, Thelonious Monk, Mongo Santamaria, Nat King Cole, James Moody, Eric Dolphy, Marvin Gaye, Patti Labelle, and Billy Taylor. Most of his career, however, was spent laying down the baseline grooves on the baritone saxophone with the indefinable Sun Ra Archestra for over 35 years. Based on research in the recently opened archive of personal papers, artifacts, scrapbooks, music, news clippings and photographs, Pat Patrick: American Musician and Cultural Visionary, explores the life and influence of this important musical man-behind-the-scenes. Musicologist Bill Banfield weaves a treasure trove of primary source material-including interviews with Patrick's family, friends, and associates-into a tapestry of Patrick's remarkable life as the musical right hand of some of America's greatest Black musical artists.
The Polish-born, British-based pianist Andre Tchaikowsky (1935-82) saw himself principally as a composer- one of several conflicting elements in his personality, charted by the diaries he kept between 1974 and 1982. Andre Tchaikowsky was only 46 when he died, internationally renowned as a pianist - and he made the headlines after his death when he left his skull to the Royal Shakespeare Company for use in performances of Hamlet. Yet for all his facility at the keyboard Tchaikowsky's real passion was composition. The internal conflict between pianist and composer compounded an already complex character. A Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor, Tchaikowsky was also a homosexual. The diaries he kept between 1974 and his death chronicle the struggles that ran through his life. Debt kept driving him back to the concert platform when his true wish was to find the time to compose. His spirited writing details the joys and vicissitudes of his life with striking candour. The diaries are introduced and annotated by Anastasia Belina-Johnson, who also provides a chronology of Tchaikowsky's life and a survey of his music. Includes a CDof the pianist in recital. Anastasia Belina-Johnson is Head of Classical Music at the Leeds College of Music.
Regarded by many as Brahms' first real chamber work, the Clarinet Quintet is here placed in the context of chamber music in general, Brahms' own earlier music, and the history and repertory of the clarinet generally. In addition to providing a detailed analysis, Colin Lawson pays special attention to performance traditions and also to the influence of Brahms' music on later composers. This handbook is the first comprehensive study of this work and it reflects the author's wide experience both as performer and scholar.
This comprehensive study of the piano music of award-winning American composer Samuel Adler will interest pianists, teachers, and anyone interested in the musical art of our day. American composer Samuel Adler has composed a huge and multi-faceted body of works ranging from symphonies, concertos, and oratorios to solos for every standard Western instrument, to a rich trove of vocal and choral music, to pieces for students. Among them, encompassing his compositional life of some seventy years, is an array of works for the piano: three concertos; fifteen solo pieces and sets of pieces; a sonata for two pianos; and four volumes of music for beginning and intermediate players. Bradford Gowen writes about each of these works with the knowledge of one who has studied, performed, and recorded Adler's piano music and has previously written about it. He begins with an overview of stylistic and pianistic traits found throughout these pieces and then examines each work chronologically according to genre, in a two-part format. The first part is an essay on the work's style, emotional content, and unique features, which at the same time places the work in the context of other music by Adler and by additional composers from the present and past eras. The second part, informal and practical, is directed to a pianist interested in getting to know this music. As a "lesson" on the piece, it offers specific suggestions for practicing and interpretation and many solutions to technical challenges. Rounding out the book are an in-depth interview with the composer plus six invaluable appendices.
Felice Giardini and Professional Music Culture in Mid-Eighteenth-Century London explores Giardini's influence on British musical life through his multifaceted career as performer, teacher, composer, concert promoter and opera impresario. The crux of the study is a detailed account of Giardini's partnership with the music seller/publisher John Cox during the 1750s, presented using new biographical information which contextualizes their business dealings and subsequent disaccord. The resulting litigation, the details of which have only recently come to light, is explored here via a complex set of archival materials. The findings offer new information about the economics of professional music culture at the time, including detailed figures for performers' fees, the printing and binding of music scores, the charges arising from the administration of concerts and operas, the sale, hire and repair of various instruments and the cost of what today we would call intellectual property rights. This is a fascinating study for musicologists and followers of Giardini, as well as for readers with an interest in classical music, social history and legal history.
Paul Simon: An American Tune is the first full-scale survey of the career of one of the most honored musicians and songwriters in American history. Starting out as a teeny-bopper rocker in the late 1950s, Paul Simon went on to form the most influential pop duo of the 1960s-Simon & Garfunkel-and after their break-up in 1970, launch one of the most successful, varied, and surprising solo careers of our time. In Paul Simon: An American Tune, Cornel Bonca considers Simon's vast trove of songs in the biographical and cultural context in which he wrote them: from the pop cultural revolution of the 1960s which Simon himself helped to create, the singer-songwriter movement of the 1970s, the turn toward world music in the 1980s that gave the world the monumental Graceland, to the intimate personal turn his music took in the millennial era. Analyzing Simon's albums one by one, often song by song, Bonca provides a deep and artful exploration of the work of one of today's major songwriters. Offering a lucid and vivid portrait of an astonishing decades-long career, Paul Simon: An American Tune will interest a wide audience, from Simon fans to students and scholars of American popular culture.
Since ascending onto the world stage in the 1990s as one of the premier bassists and composers of his generation, William Parker has perpetually toured around the world and released over forty albums as a leader. He is one of the most influential jazz artists alive today. In Universal Tonality historian and critic Cisco Bradley tells the story of Parker's life and music. Drawing on interviews with Parker and his collaborators, Bradley traces Parker's ancestral roots in West Africa via the Carolinas to his childhood in the South Bronx, and illustrates his rise from the 1970s jazz lofts and extended work with pianist Cecil Taylor to the present day. He outlines how Parker's early influences-Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Albert Ayler, and writers of the Black Arts Movement-grounded Parker's aesthetic and musical practice in a commitment to community and the struggle for justice and freedom. Throughout, Bradley foregrounds Parker's understanding of music, the role of the artist, and the relationship between art, politics, and social transformation. Intimate and capacious, Universal Tonality is the definitive work on Parker's life and music.
On Mozart is an attempt to suggest how much more complicated a figure Mozart was than popular legends and media portrayals would have us believe. He was certainly a genius--in that, the legends are correct, and the evidence abounds--but he was also a working composer in a society crowded with other working composers, and he had to make a living at his craft to maintain the style of living to which he and his family had become accustomed. By observing a realistic and human genius, the collection of essays portrays a more complex individual than the divinely inspired Mozart of myth, who took his notes directly from God.
Adopting a two-books-in-one format. The Shostakovich Companion combines a full-length, single-author examination of the life and compositional evolution of the Soviet Union's most famous composer; and a symposium in which a variety of analytical techniques is applied to selected Shostakovich works and genres. This is the first comprehensive English-language book in twenty-five years in which the primary emphasis is on musical issues, and the secondary emphasis is on the biographical and much-debated political issues. The The Shostakovich Companion is divided into four parts. Part I considers the hermeneutic techniques that have been applied to Shostakovich's music, along with the various controversies surrounding his life and his relationship to Soviet politics. Part II comprises the book's central life-and-works discussion, uniting a comprehensive examination of Shostakovich's compositional evolution with a full account of his life. Coming from a variety of authors, the chapters in Part III demonstrate a cross-section of analytical techniques that may usefully be brought to bear upon Shostakovich's music. These range from literary and cinematically-based methods to the more traditional types of musical analysis. Part IV considers three independent but crucial aspects of Shostakovich's life: his contributions to the Soviet film industry, his career as a pianist, and his legacy and influence as a teacher.
The Rhapsody in Blue (1924) established Gershwin's reputation as a serious composer and has since become one of the most popular of all American concert works. In this richly informative guide David Schiff considers the piece as musical work, historical event and cultural document. He traces the history of the Rhapsody's composition, performance and reception, placing it within the context of American popular song and jazz and the development of modernism. He also provides a full account of the different published and recorded versions of the work and explores the many stylistic sources of Gershwin's music.
Roger Daltrey is the voice of a generation. That generation was the first to rebel, to step out of the shadows of the Second World War... to invent the concept of the teenager. This is the story from his birth at the height of the Blitz, through tempestuous school days to his expulsion, age 15, for various crimes and misdemeanours within a strict school system. Thanks to Mr Kibblewhite, his authoritarian headmaster, it could all have ended there. The life of a factory worker beckoned. But then came rock and roll. He made his first guitar from factory off-cuts. He formed a band. The band became The Who - Maximum R&B - and, by luck and by sheer bloody-mindedness, Roger Daltrey became the frontman of one of the biggest rock bands on the planet. This is the story of My Generation, Tommy and Quadrophenia, of smashed guitars, exploding drums, cars in swimming pools, fights, arrests and redecorated hotel rooms. But it is also the story of how that post-war generation redefined the rules of youth. Out of that, the modern music industry was born - and it wasn't an easy birth. Money, drugs and youthful exuberance were a dangerous mix. This is as much a story of survival as it is of success. Four years in the making, this is the first time Roger Daltrey has told his story. It is not just his own hilarious and frank account of more than 50 wild years on the road. It is the definitive story of The Who and of the sweeping revolution that was British rock 'n' roll.
In The Art of Listening, Anthony Arnone interviews 13 of the top cello teachers of our time, sharing valuable insights about performing, teaching, music, and life. While almost every other aspect of twenty-first-century life has been changed by technological advancements, the art of playing and teaching the cello has largely remained the same. Our instruments are still made exactly the same way and much of what we learn is passed on by demonstration and word of mouth from generation to generation. We are as much historians of music as we are teachers of the instrument. The teaching lineage in the classical music world has formed a family tree of sorts with a select number of iconic names at the top of the tree, such as Pablo Casals, Gregor Piatigorsky, and Leonard Rose. A large percentage of professional cellists working today studied with these giants of the cello world, or with their students. In addition to discussing the impact of these masters and their personal experience as their students, the renowned cellists interviewed in this book touch on a variety of topics from teaching philosophies to how technology has changed classical music.
Joaquin Rodrigo: A Research and Information Guide catalogues and summarizes the musical works and related literature of Joaquin Rodrigo (1901-99), perhaps the most important Spanish composer of concert music in the second half of the twentieth century. The guide provides annotated bibliographic entries for both primary and secondary sources, detailing several guitar concertos, concertos for flute, violin, harp, cello, and piano, as well as symphonic pieces, piano solos, chamber music, and choral and stage works. Rodrigo's reputation rests on the Concierto de Aranjuez for guitar and orchestra and its expressive middle movement, which inspired jazz arrangements by Miles Davis and Chick Corea in the 1960s and continues to appear in film scores even eighty years after its composition. A major reference tool for all those interested in the prolific Rodrigo and his music-featuring a chronology of the composer's life and robust indices that enable researchers to easily locate sources by author, composition, or subject-Joaquin Rodrigo: A Research and Information Guide is a valuable resource for students and researchers alike.
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.
The first systematic assessment of the symphonic style of the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu [1890-1959], tracing the evolution of his musical language and including detailed analyses of all six symphonies. Over the past few decades the music of the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959) has enjoyed a slow but steady rise in popularity, and his six symphonies, written between 1942 and 1953, have now been recorded many times; concert performances are on the increase, too. But Martinu and the Symphony is not only the first book in English intended to help the music-lover to a deeper understanding of these glorious works - it is by far the most comprehensive work on the subject in any language. Each Symphony is examined in turn, the analyses revealing what makes each creation so individual yet also so clearly part of a close-knit family of works and identifying the elements of his melodic, harmonic and instrumental style which produce Martinu's very personal vibrant and organic symphonic manner. Martinu and the Symphony is illustrated with almost 200 musical examples, taken not only fromthe Symphonies but also from his other works for large orchestra. His path to symphonic mastery is examined in unprecedented detail: attention is at last paid to the early orchestral works which, although largely unperformed andunpublished even now, afford fascinating glimpses of the composer to come. A study of the late triptychs The Frescoes of Piero della Francesca and The Parables rounds out this appraisal of Martinus enthralling symphonic and orchestral legacy.
The unlikely, rocky relationship between an American country superstar and his straightlaced Canadian manager. Before there was Johnny and June, there was Johnny and Saul. The Man Who Carried Cash chronicles a relationship that was both volatile and affectionate between Johnny Cash and his manager, Saul Holiff. From roadside taverns to the roaring crowds at Madison Square Garden, from wrecked cars and jail cells all the way to the White House, the story of Johnny and Saul is a portrait of two men from different worlds who were more alike than either cared to admit. Saul handled the bookings and the no-shows, the divorce and the record deals, drugs, overdoses, and arrests. He was there for the absolute worst of times, but also for the best: Carnegie Hall, Folsom Prison, "A Boy Named Sue," and Cash's hit television series. But in 1973, at the zenith of Cash's career, Saul quit. Until now, no one knew why.
This book demonstrates that one is capable of achieving any goals, that one sets for him/herself. I hope it will be an inspiration to others, as they journey along the pathways of life. This book summarizes the achievements, the difficulties and sometimes struggles that were encountered along the way. It speaks of anxiety, fear, anticipation, but never apathy. There were times of restlessness, working and studying until the wee hours of the morning, just to meet the class assignments. Those were used as motivation to succeed. The vagaries of the weather in the UK and its unpredictability, played a part in my planning every move and decision. That too helped me to realize the nature of things and how essential it is to prepare, if possible, for the future. It is indeed a wonderful feeling, when one is able to look back over many years on a long journey and a productive life, and feel satisfied that something of note has been left behind. I trust this book will give food for thought and be of help to others
Tangle of Matter & Ghost: Leonard Cohen's Post-Secular Songbook of Mysticism(s) Jewish & beyond analyzes the lyrical poetry of Leonard Cohen through a post-secular lens. The volume fuses sophisticated theory and popular culture with critical analysis that is lacking in most of the rock n' roll biographies about Leonard Cohen. How does this mystical maestro's songbook emerge to illuminate questions of meaning making in a post-secular context when correlated with thinkers like Charles Taylor, Edward S. Casey, Jurgen Habermas, Slavoj Zizek, Jeffrey Kripal and Harold Bloom along with others. Cohen's mysticism is also analyzed in relationship to Kabbalah, Hasidism and Rinzai Buddhism. Tangle of Matter & Ghost presents a unique inter-disciplinary approach to Jewish philosophy and literary studies with wide appeal for diverse audiences and readership.
The book examines from various viewpoints Britten's War Requiem, written in 1962 to celebrate the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral and uniting the famous anti-war poetry of Wilfred Owen with the Latin Requiem Mass. Britten's and Owen's pacifist beliefs are compared, and the chronology of the compositional process unraveled from documentary and manuscript sources. The musical language is analyzed in detail, and the fluctuating critical responses to the score are assessed.
First study of Juan Esquivel, a highly significant figure in Spanish musical life in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Juan Esquivel was a cathedral choirmaster and composer, active in Spain during the period c.1580-c .1623 in which all aspects of the arts flourished, and one of the few peninsular composers of his generation to see his works published. He is known to have produced three large volumes of sacred polyphony - masses, motets, hymns, psalms, magnificats, and Marian antiphons - under the titles Liber primus missarum, Motecta festorum([both published 1608)and Tomus secondus, psalmorum, hymnorum... et missarum (published 1613); they reveal him to be a highly skilled craftsman. This first full-length study of his life and works presents a critical assessment of the man and his music, setting him within the social and religious context of the so-called Counter-Reformation. Beginning by outlining the facts of his life, the book goes on to offer an analysis and assessment of his output. Clive Walkley was until his retirement a lecturer in music and music education at Lancaster University.
A comprehensive and immersive survey of thirty-five Beethoven piano sonatas "Beethoven piano sonatas accompany every pianist, amateur or professional for his or her entire life and constitute one of the most miraculous constants of the human civilization. To help us around the exciting journey through those masterpieces Jan Marisse Huizing combines his expertise, knowledge, and above all his unconditional love for this music."- Alexander Melnikov, pianist Beethoven's piano sonatas are among the iconic cornerstones of the classical music repertoire. Jan Marisse Huizing offers an in-depth study of the sonatas using available autographs, first editions, recordings, and nearly three hundred musical examples. Digging into the historical background and historical performance practice, the book provides illuminating detail on Beethoven's pianism as well as his characteristics of notation, form and content, "types of touch," articulation, beaming, pedal indications, character, rubato, meter, metric constructions, tempo, and metronome marks. Packed with anecdotes, quotations, and considerable new information, the book will inspire all involved with these masterworks, playing a fortepiano or modern Grand, giving the sense of the composer sitting beside them as he translates his inspiration and ideas into his notation.
It is the first monograph in which the concertos of all composers active in this field in the Republic of Venice in the years 1695-1740 are methodically discussed. The Venetian instrumental concerto from Vivaldi's time is portrayed here through an extensive and thorough survey of the most complete and representative musical material that allowed for the making of conclusions as to its typology, form, style and technique. The concertos discussed here include 974 works by fifteen composers active in Venice, Brescia, Bergamo and Padua. Such an approach not only gives an exhaustive but also a more objective view on the history of the Baroque concerto in its Venetian variant. It shows Vivaldi's work in a new and broad context, which allows us to better understand its unique character. |
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