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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Composers & musicians
First full monograph to focus entirely on the English-language songs set to music by Byrd. As he grappled with the challenges of composing for various instrumental and vocal ensembles, William Byrd (c. 1540-1623), England's premier Renaissance composer, devoted considerable attention to the poetry and prose of his native language, producing such treasured masterpieces as the hauntingly beautiful "Lulla lullaby"; the infectiously comedic "Though Amarillis dance in green"; and two extraordinarily dramatic Easter anthems. This book, the first full-length study specifically devoted to Byrd's English-texted music, provides a close reading of all of the works he published in the late 1580s, constituting nearly half of his total song output. It delves into the musical, political, literary, and, specifically, the sequential qualities of Byrd's 1588 and 1589 published collections as a whole, revealing, explaining, and interpreting an overall grand narrative, while remaining fully attentive to the particularities of each individual piece. Often deemed "unliterary" and generally considered political only in his approach to Latin texts, which were often of special interest to his fellow Catholics, Byrd was not only an inspiredcomposer who had mastered the challenges of his nation's burgeoning verse, but also one who used his voice in song to foster a more inclusive polity in a time of religious strife. Jeremy L. Smith is Associate Professorof Musicology at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Examines the remarkable career of leading soprano castrato Venanzio Rauzzini (1746-1810), the first castrato to make Britain his home. Venanzio Rauzzini (1746-1810), the celebrated Italian castrato, is best known for his performance in Mozart's Lucio Silla in 1772, with which Mozart was so pleased that he composed for the singer the famous motet Exsultate Jubilate. In 1774, Rauzzini moved to London where he performed three seasons of serious operas at the King's Theatre. From 1777 until his death in 1810, he was the director of the concert series in Bath, a series that matched the prestige of any that were given in London. In addition, he composed prolifically, writing music for eleven operas. This book is a study of Rauzzini's remarkable yet often overlooked career in Britain. Paul Rice chronicles Rauzzini's performances at the King's Theatre and examines his leadership of the Bath subscription concerts from 1780-1810, recovering much of the repertory. Rice shows in detail how Rauzzini responded musically to the social and political conditions of his adopted country, and analyzes the castrato's reception, as well as compositional choices, shedding new light on changing musical tastes in late eighteenth-century Britain. Paul F. Rice is Professor of Musicology at the School of Music, Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Whilst these records were being conceived, rehearsed, recorded and produced, Thom Yorke and Stanley Donwood made hundreds of images. These ranged from obsessive, insomniac scrawls in biro to six-foot-square painted canvases, from scissors-and-glue collages to immense digital landscapes. They utilised every medium they could find, from sticks and knives to the emerging digital technologies. The work chronicles their obsessions at the time: minotaurs, genocide, maps, globalisation, monsters, pylons, dams, volcanoes, locusts, lightning, helicopters, Hiroshima, show homes and ring roads. What emerges is a deeply strange portrait of the years at the commencement of this century. A time that seems an age ago - but so much remains the same.
The first thorough study of Liszt's use of the musical style associated with the Hungarian Roma ["Gypsies"] in his renowned Hungarian Rhapsodies and less overtly Hungarian works. Some of Franz Liszt's most renowned pieces -- most famously his Hungarian Rhapsodies -- are written in a nineteenth-century Hungarian style known as verbunkos. Closely associated with the virtuosic playing tradition of theHungarian-Gypsy band, the meaning and uses of this style in Liszt's music have been widely taken for granted and presented as straightforward. Taking a novel transcultural approach to nineteenth-century modernism, Shay Loya presents a series of critiques and sensitive music analyses that demonstrate how the verbunkos idiom, rich and artful in itself, interacted in myriad ways with Liszt's multiple cultural identities, compositional techniques, and modernist aesthetics. Even supposedly familiar works such as the Rhapsodies emerge in a new light, and more startlingly, we find out how the idiom inhabits and shapes works that bear no outward marks of nationality or ethnicity. Particularly surprising is its role in the famously enigmatic compositions of Liszt's old age, such as Nuages gris and Bagatelle sans tonalite. We are pleased to announce that Liszt's Transcultural Modernism and the Hungarian-Gypsy Tradition is one of two winners of the 2014 Alan Walker Book Award, given by the American Liszt Society. Shay Loya is a Lecturer at City University London and is a board member of the Societyfor Music Analysis (UK).
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER "Mark Lanegan-primitive, brutal, and apocalyptic. What's not to love?" NICK CAVE "A stoned cold classic" IAN RANKIN 'Mark Lanegan writes like he sings, from the pained heart of a damaged soul with brutal honesty' BOBBY GILLESPIE "Powerfully written and brutally, frighteningly honest" LUCINDA WILLIAMS A ROUGH TRADE AND MOJO BOOK OF THE YEAR From the back of the van to the front of the bar, from the hotel room to the emergency room, Mark Lanegan takes us back to the sinister, needle-ridden streets of Seattle, to an alternative music scene that was simultaneously bursting with creativity and saturated with drugs. He tracks the tumultuous rise and fall of Screaming Trees, from a brawling, acid-rock bar band to world-famous festival favourites with an enduring legacy, and tells of his own personal struggles with addiction, culminating in homelessness, petty crime, and the tragic deaths of his closest friends. Gritty, gripping and unflinchingly raw, SING BACKWARDS AND WEEP is about a man who learned how to drag himself from the wreckage, dust off the ashes, and keep living and creating. 'The most brutally honest rock memoir imaginable' DAILY TELEGRAPH
William Billings (1746-1800) was the most important native-born composer of the American colonial and Federal eras. He wrote hundreds of choral compositions, which were set to sacred or devotional texts for use by church choirs, singing schools, and musical societies. Extremely popular in his own time, Billings's music was denigrated during the nineteenth century when European styles governed American musical tastes. In the twentieth century his genius was recognized, and his music is widely sung and studied. Originally published in six tunebooks, the 338 extant pieces were issued in a scholarly edition by the American Musicological Society and The Colonial Society of Massachusetts as The Complete Works of William Billings (4 vols., 1977-1990). The present catalog complements the Complete Works by serving as a guide to its contents and providing a wealth of additional data. Included for each composition are exact title; text source; first line; technical information on length, meter, key, and melody; manuscript sources and contemporaneous reprints; bibliography and modern recordings. An extensive list of works cited is followed by five indexes providing access to the material in the catalog by first line of text, Billings's anthem titles, text sources, musical form (tune types), and musical incipits. The catalog provides for Billings's music information similar to that found in Schmeider's listings for Bach and Koechel's listings for Mozart.
John Ireland (1879-1962) had a long and close friendship with Alan Bush (1900-1995) which lasted forty years, from 1922, when John Ireland was already fifty years old, until Ireland's death in 1962. It was the relationship of master and pupil and this was clearly reflected in their letters. The two men came to know each other well once Bush had left the Royal Academy of Music in 1922 and became a student of composition with Ireland until 1927. 160 letters are published here for the first time and they provide not only a compelling and engaging narrative, but also a unique insight into the musical and day-to-day lives of the two men. The letters were written during a most interesting and turbulent period in British history: the inter-war period of the 1920s and 30s, the situation during the Second World War and the post-war era. The volume will therefore appeal to those interested in wider aspects of British musical life and social and political history, as well as followers of Ireland and Bush.
Published in the run-up to the 200th anniversary of the composer's birth in 2013, and written by one of the most distinguished Wagner scholars in the world, this will be the Wagner book of the bicentenary. Richard Wagner (1813-1883) is one of the most influential - and also one of the most polarizing - composers in the history of music. Over the course of his long career, he produced a stream of spellbinding works that challenged musical convention through their richness and tonal experimentation, ultimately paving the way for modernism. This book presents an in-depth but easy-to-read overview of Wagner's life, work and times. Making use of the very latest scholarship - much of it undertaken by the author himself in connection with his editorship of The Wagner Journal - Millington reassesses received notions about Wagner and his work, demolishing ill-informed opinion in favour of proper critical understanding. It is a radical - and occasionally controversial - reappraisal of this most perplexing of composers. The book considers a whole range of themes, including the composer's original sources of inspiration; his fetish for exotic silks; his relationship with his wife, Cosima, and with his mistress, Mathilde Wesendonck; his anti-semitism; the operas' proto-cinematic nature; and the turbulent legacy both of the Bayreuth Festival and of Wagnerism itself. The volume's arrangement - unique among books on the composer - combines an accessible text, intriguing images and original documents in carefully co-ordinated sections, thus ensuring a consistently fresh approach.
The role of affect in how people think and behave in social
situations has been a source of fascination to laymen and
philosophers since time immemorial. Surprisingly, most of what we
know about the role of feelings in social thinking and behavior has
been discovered only during the last two decades. Affect in Social
Thinking and Behavior reviews and integrates the most recent
research and theories on this exciting topic, and features original
contributions reviewing key areas of affect research from leading
researchers active in the area.
The Beatles and Black Music discusses the influence that black music and culture has had over the Beatles throughout their career. The book adopts a musicological and historiographic account to demonstrate the extent to which Liverpool’s colonial history has influenced the Beatles’ music. Beginning with the grand narrative British colonial history pre-Beatles, it moves through the influence on the Beatles teenage years in the 1950s, through their association with Lord Woodbine, the Beatles love American Rhythm and Blues in the mid-1960s, a discussion of post-colonial British identity to the lasting effect black music has for the Beatles’ legacy and still has on the solo careers of Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney. Tracing the history from the Slave Trade in 1795 to the nascent Mersey Beat scene in the early 1960s, this book is the first to explore the Beatles from this important cultural lens.
Combining the "International Who's Who in Classical Music" and the
"International Who's Who in Popular Music," this two-volume set
provides a complete view of the whole of the music world.
Product information not available.
**WINNER OF THE NME BEST BOOK AWARD** 'This book is going to try and get as close as possible to the full story of what informed the noise of The Streets. Obviously that's something I should be fairly well-qualified to know about, and I'm going to be as honest as the publisher's lawyers will allow.' With the 2001 release of The Streets' debut single 'Has It Come To This?' the landscape of British popular music changed forever. No longer did homegrown rappers have to anxiously defer to transatlantic influences. Mike Skinner's witty, self-deprecating sagas of late-night kebab shops and skunk-fuelled Playstation sessions showed how much you could achieve simply by speaking in your own voice. In this thoroughly modern memoir, the man the Guardian once dubbed 'half Dostoevsky . . . half Samuel Pepys' tells a freewheeling, funny and fearlessly honest tale of Birmingham and London, ecstasy and epilepsy, Twitter-fear and Spectrum joysticks, spread-betting and growing up. He writes of his musical inspirations, role models and rivals, the craft of songwriting and reflects on the successes and failures of the decade-long journey of The Streets.
Liszt's Final Decade reveals in the composer's own words to his confidantes Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein and Olga von Meyendorff how he resolved his conflicted self-image as a celebrated performer but underappreciated composer. Toward the end of his life Franz Liszt maintained extensive correspondence with two women who were at the time his closest confidantes, Carolyne von Sayn-Wittgenstein and Olga von Meyendorff. Liszt wrote to them regularly, expressing his intimate feelings about personal and career events and his conflicted self-image as a celebrated performer but underappreciated composer. Absent a diary, the letters offer the most direct avenue into Liszt's psyche in hisfinal years. Liszt's Final Decade explores through these letters the mind and music of one of the nineteenth century's most popular musicians, providing insight into Liszt's melancholia in his last years and his struggle to gain recognition for his music yet avoid criticism. The exchange indicates that Liszt ultimately resolved his inner conflict through a personally constructed Christian moral philosophy that embraced positive resignation to suffering, compassionate love, and trust in a just reward to come. The book also examines how Liszt's late sacred compositions affirm the yielding of suffering to joy and hope. Significantly, Liszt viewed these works, commonly overlooked today, as a major part of his compositional legacy. This volume thus challenges the idea of a single "late" Lisztian style and the notion that despair overwhelmed the composer in his final years. We are pleased to announce that Liszt's Final Decade is the winner of the 2017 Alan Walker Book Award, given by the American Liszt Society. Dolores Pesce is the Avis Blewett Professor of Music in Arts and Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.
A complete biographical reference work covering all aspects of the
classical music world.
This book is the first biography of 20th-century pianist Rudolf Serkin, providing a narrative of Serkin's life with emphasis on his European roots and the impact of his move to America. With the help of interviews, the authors focus on three key aspects of Serkin's work, particularly as it unfolded in America: his art and career as a pianist, his activities as a pedagogue, including his long association with the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, and his key role in institutionalizing a redefinition of musical values in America through his work as artistic director of the Marlboro Music School and Festival in Vermont. The book concludes with a discography by Paul Farber that documents an essential part of Serkin's achievement.
This is a guide to research on the great composer, Maurice Ravel. It includes over 2000 annotated entries of the scholarly literature on Ravel, including catalogues, facsimilies of autographs, music editions, textual criticism, bibliographies, monographs, articles, and dissertations covering his life and music.
'Just be yourself, there is no one better.' From her girl squad to the Swifties to the world at large, Taylor's the BFF of the pop music world. As the go-to shoulder to cry on and chronicler of heartbreak, she relates her personal life and experiences in a 'dear diary' style in her music, but the artist is even more popular than her hit songs. One of the most followed on social media, she is a defender of the underdog, open about her feminist and pro-choice views and frequently speaks up against sexism and LGBTQ discrimination. This collection of Taylor's relatable, inspiring and hugely optimistic quotes and lyrics reveals a caring, generous personality who is all about 'the feels' and following your dreams. Sparkling with positivity and feel-good vibes, Taylor is always there to give you the best advice and lift you up when you're down – she's your own personal cheerleader. SAMPLE FACT: Swift has so far won a whopping 11 Grammys, smashing several records for the most wins as artist and as female artist.
The first full-length volume on the life work of one of the most well-known and prolific masters of our time, "William Thomas McKinley: A Bio-Bibliography" provides both musicologists and performers with a guide toward further exploration of the composer and his music. Included within are a complete biography on McKinley, the man and performer; a discography of both McKinley's compositions and his performances; and an in-depth catalog of his works. Each entry of the catalog contains a complete manuscript description, a detailed listing of any sketches or drafts which exist, a piece-specific bibliography, a complete performance history, and editorial notes. Also included are the composer's own writings about his works in the form of his program notes. Program notes by other authors are included as well, as they are the product of interviews with the composer. The book has been organized with easy access and a larger audience of performers, musicologists, and other interested parties firmly in mind. The works numbering system has been completely restructured from previous bio-bibliographies in order to provide performers with quicker access to works for their particular instrument or group of instruments. Works are cross-listed in several ways and the book is thoroughly indexed, making for easy information access.
Indispensable reading for historians and musicologists as well as those interested in Wagner's philosophy and the aesthetics of music. Despite the enormous and accelerating worldwide interest in Wagner leading to the bicentenary of his birth in 2013, his prose writings have received scant scholarly attention. Wagner's book-length essay on Beethoven, written to celebrate the centenary of Beethoven's birth in 1870, is really about Wagner himself rather than Beethoven. It is generally regarded as the principal aesthetic statement of the composer's later years, representing a reassessment ofthe ideas of the earlier Zurich writings, especially Oper und Drama, in the light of the experience gained through the composition of Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg and the greater part of DerRing des Nibelungen. It contains Wagner's most complete exegesis of his understanding of Schopenhauer's philosophy and its perceived influence on the compositional practice of his later works. The essay also influenced the young Nietzsche. It is an essential text in the teaching of not only Wagnerian thought but also late nineteenth-century musical aesthetics in general. Until now the English reader with no access to the German original has been obliged to work from two Victorian translations. This brand new edition gives the German original and the newly translated English text on facing pages. It comes along with a substantial introduction placing the essay not onlywithin the wider historical and intellectual context of Wagner's later thought but also in the political context of the establishment of the German Empire in the 1870s. The translation is annotated throughout with a full bibliography. Richard Wagner's Beethoven will be indispensable reading for historians and musicologists as well as those interested in Wagner's philosophy and the aesthetics of music. ROGER ALLEN is Fellow and Tutor in Music at St Peter's College, Oxford.
This lavishly illustrated hard back book tells the incredible story of Francis Albert Frank Sinatra and begins in Hoboken New Jersey on December 12th 1915 where Frank is born the only child of Italian immigrants. Beginning his musical career in the swing era as a boy singer with Harry James and Tommy Dorsey, Sinatra found success as a solo artist from the early 1940s after being signed by Columbia Records in 1943. Sinatra became one of the best-selling artists of all time, having sold more than 150 million records worldwide including the hits New York New York, My Way and Strangers in the Night. He was a founding member of the Rat Pack with Sammy Davis Junior and Dean Martin. Sinatra won an Academy Award for his performance in From Here to Eternity. He starred in a number of musicals including On the Town, Guys and Dolls and High Society. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1985 and the Congressional Gold Medal in 1997. Sinatra was also the recipient of eleven Grammy Awards, including the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. One of the most popular and influential musical artists of the 20th century, Sinatra had a popularity that was later matched only by Elvis Presley, The Beatles and Michael Jackson. He has been called the greatest singer of the 20th Century.
A complete biographical reference work covering all aspects of the
classical music world.
'How refreshing, to read a book about music written for a music lover and not a musicologist. In clear, lucid, entertaining prose, Jane Glover makes those of us who lack musical literacy better understand and appreciate Handel's divinity.' - Donna Leon, author of Handel's Bestiary and the Inspector Brunetti mysteries Handel in London tells the story of a young German composer who in 1712, followed his princely master to London and would remain there for the rest of his life. That master would become King George II and the composer was George Frideric Handel. Handel, then still only twenty-seven and largely self-taught, would be at the heart of musical activity in London for the next four decades, composing masterpiece after masterpiece, whether the glorious coronation anthem, Zadok the Priest, operas such as Giulio Cesare, Rinaldo and Alcina or the great oratorios, culminating, of course, in Messiah. Here, Jane Glover, who has conducted Handel's work in opera houses and concert halls throughout the world, draws on her profound understanding of music and musicians to tell Handel's story. It is a story of music-making and musicianship, of practices and practicalities, but also of courts and cabals, of theatrical rivalries and of eighteenth-century society. It is also, of course, the story of some of the most remarkable music ever written, music that has been played and sung, and loved, in this country - and throughout the world - for three hundred years. |
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