Renowned music historian Philipp Spitta has written that of all the German musicians of the 19th century, none has exercised a greater influence over his own generation and that succeeding it than Weber. Spitta s statement reflects Weber s popularity at the end of the nineteenth century both for his place as a foundational figure of German Romantic opera and for his role in the early German Nationalist movement in music. Indeed, Weber s Der Freischutz is still considered the first German Romantic opera, enjoying a place of privilege in the modern operatic repertoire with performances held the world over and at least two cinematic productions. Despite its enormous popularity throughout the nineteenth century, however, Weber s swan song, Oberon, has remained separate from the mainstream thrust of our modern understanding of German Romantic opera. In Carl Maria von Weber: Oberon and the Cosmopolitanism in the Early German Romantic, music historian and theorist Joseph E. Morgan reassesses Weber s work and aesthetics not just for their influence but also as an expression of the aesthetics and cosmopolitanism that underlay the early Romantic and Nationalist movement in Germany. In a discussion with analyses that features nearly one-hundred musical examples, Morgan tracks the development of Weber s musical style across his career. The investigation culminates with Weber s last and long-misunderstood work, explaining its thematic and harmonic organization, its stylistic idiosyncrasies, and the tenuous place that it holds on the margins of the operatic canon. The discussion is enhanced and corroborated by frequent attention to correlating developments in other art from the period, including painting, poetry and literature. This text will be of interest to students, scholars, and connoisseurs interested in acquiring a new insight on the performance, reception, and aesthetics of early German Romantic opera. Further, because of the interdisciplinary nature of the investigation, anyone interested in the early romantic and nationalist movement in Germany will also certainly find interesting and valuable insights in this book."

Graham Collier's career in jazz lasted over five decades. He was a bassist, a band-leader, a composer, an educator and an author, who wrote extensively about the music. His working life was littered with `firsts'. Amongst his many achievements, he was the first British jazz musician to study at the Berklee School of music in Boston and the first to receive an Arts Council grant. In 1985, Collier began teaching at the Royal Academy of Music, where he later established the first full-time jazz degree course in the UK in 1987. Mosaics draws extensively on Collier's personal archive, as well as on interviews with fellow musicians, ex-students and colleagues from the Royal Academy of Music. It locates Collier and his work within the social and cultural changes which occurred during his life and, particularly, in relation to developments in British and European jazz of the 1960s and 70s. Collier's work as a composer-bandleader represented an attempt to resolve the paradoxes inherent in jazz between composition and improvisation, familiarity and spontaneity and change and tradition. In this regard, Mosaics compares Collier's work with other composers such as Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Gil Evans, Mike Westbrook, Stan Tracey, Barry Guy and Butch Morris. Throughout, Collier emerges as a contradictory figure falling between several different camps. He was never an out-and-out musical, cultural or political radical but rather an individualist continually forced to confront the contradictions in his own position - a musical outsider working within a marginalised area of cultural activity; a gay man operating in a very male area of the music business and within heterosexist culture in general; a man of working class origins stepping outside traditionally prescribed class boundaries; and a musician-composer seeking individual solutions to collective problems of aesthetic and ethical value.

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.

Jazz great Gerald Wilson (1918-2014), born in Shelby, Mississippi, left a global legacy of paramount significance through his progressive musical ideas and his orchestra's consistent influence on international jazz. Aided greatly by interviews that bring Wilson's voice to the story, Steven Loza presents a perspective on what the musician and composer called his ""jazz pilgrimage."" Wilson uniquely adapted Latin influences into his jazz palette, incorporating many Cuban and Brazilian inflections as well as those of Mexican and Spanish styling. Throughout the book, Loza refers to Wilson's compositions and arrangements, including their historical contexts and motivations. Loza provides savvy musical readings and analysis of the repertoire. He concludes by reflecting upon Wilson's ideas on the place of jazz culture in America, its place in society and politics, its origins, and its future. With a foreword written by Wilson's son, Anthony, and such sources as essays, record notes, interviews, and Wilson's own reflections, the biography represents the artist's ideas with all their philosophical, historical, and cultural dimensions. Beyond merely documenting Wilson's many awards and recognitions, this book ushers readers into the heart and soul of a jazz creator. Wilson emerges a unique and proud African American artist whose tunes became a mosaic of the world.

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

Now appearing in an English translation, this book by Szymon Paczkowski is the first in-depth exploration of the Polish style in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach spent almost thirty years living and working in Leipzig in Saxony, a country ruled by Friedrich August I and his son Friedrich August II, who were also kings of Poland (as August II and August III). This period of close Polish-Saxon relations left a significant imprint on Bach's music. Paczkowski's meticulous account of this complex political and cultural dynamic sheds new light on many of Bach's familiar pieces. The book explores the semantic and rhetorical functions that undergird the symbolism of the Polish style in Baroque music. It demonstrates how the notion of a Polish style in music was developed in German music theory, and conjectures that Bach's successful application for the title of Court Composer at the court of the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland would induce the composer to deliberately use elements of the Polish style. This comprehensive study of the way Bach used the Polish style in his music moves beyond technical analysis to place the pieces within the context of Baroque customs and discourse. This ambitious and inspiring study is an original contribution to the scholarly conversation concerning Bach's music, focusing on the symbolism of the polonaise, the most popular and recognizable Polish dance in 18th-century Saxony. In Saxony at this time the polonaise was associated with the ceremonies of the royal-electoral court in Dresden, and Saxon musicians regarded it as a musical symbol of royalty. Paczkowski explores this symbolism of the Polish royal dance in Bach's instrumental music and, which is also to be found to an even greater extent, in his vocal works. The Polish Style in the Music of Johann Sebastian Bach provides wide-ranging interpretations based on a careful analysis of the sources explored within historical and theological context. The book is a valuable source for both teaching and further research, and will find readers not only among musicologists, but also historians, art historians, and readers in cultural studies. All lovers of Bach's music will appreciate this lucid and intriguing study.

Born the son of Scotland's last telescope-maker, Stuart Braithwaite was perhaps always destined for a life of psychedelic adventuring on the furthest frontiers of noise in MOGWAI, one of the best loved and most ground-breaking post-rock bands of the past three decades. Modestly delinquent at school, Stuart developed an early appetite for 'alternative' music in what might arguably be described as its halcyon days, the late '80s. Discovering bands like Sonic Youth, My Bloody Valentine, and Jesus and Mary Chain, and attending seminal gigs (often incongruously incognito as a young girl with long hair to compensate for his babyface features) by The Cure and Nirvana, Stuart compensated for his indifference to school work with a dedication to rock and roll . . . and of course the fledgling hedonism that comes with it. Spaceships Over Glasgow is a love song to live rock and roll; to the passionate abandon we've all felt in the crowd (and some of us, if lucky enough, from the stage) at a truly incendiary gig. It is also the story of a life lived on the edge; of the high-times and hazardous pit-stops of international touring with a band of misfits and miscreants.

This book asks what theological messages theologically educated Catholics in late-eighteenth-century Prague might have perceived in Mozart's late opera seria La clemenza di Tito. The book's thesis is two-fold: first, that Catholics might have heard the opera's advocacy of enlightened absolutism as a celebration of a distinctly Catholic understanding of political governance; and second, that they might have found in the opera a metaphor for the relationship between a gracious God and humanity caught up in sin, expressed as sexual concupiscence, pride, and lust for power. The book develops its interpretation of the opera through narrative character analyses of the main protagonists, an examination of their dramatic development, and by paying attention to the biblical and theological associations they may have evoked in a Catholic audience. The book is geared towards academic readers interested in opera, theologians, historians, and those who work at the intersection of theology and the arts. It contributes to a better understanding of the theological implications of Mozart's operatic work.

The first full-length study devoted to Ignaz Moscheles (1794-1870), pianist, conductor and composer. This book, the first full-length study devoted to Ignaz Moscheles (1794-1870), explores how the son of middle-class Jewish parents in Prague became one of the most important musicians of his era, achieving recognition and world-wide admiration as a virtuoso pianist, conductor and composer, a sought-after piano teacher, and a pioneer in the historical performance of early music. Placing Moscheles' career within the context of the social, political and economic milieu in which he lived, the book offers new insights into the business of music and music making; the lives and works of his contemporaries, such as Schumann, Meyerbeer, Chopin, Hummel, Rossini, Liszt, Berlioz and others; the transformation of piano playing from the classical to romantic periods; and the challenges faced by Jewish artists during a dynamic period in European history. A section devoted to Moscheles' engagement as both a performer and editor with the music of J. S. Bach and Handel enhances our understanding of nineteenth-century approaches to early music, and the separate chapters that detail Moscheles' interactions with Beethoven and his extraordinarily close relationship with Mendelssohn adds considerably to the existing literature on these two masters. MARK KROLL has earned worldwide recognition as a harpsichordist, scholar and educator during a career spanning more than forty years. Professor emeritus at Boston University, Kroll has published scholarly editions of the music of Hummel, Geminiani, Charles Avison and Francesco Scarlatti, and is the author of Johann Nepomuk Hummel: A Musician's Lifeand World; Playing the Harpsichord Expressively; and The Beethoven Violin Sonatas.

A giant of postwar music and the most powerful figure in the contemporary French music scene, Pierre Boulez is widely known to American and English audiences as both an important composer and as star conductor of the New York Philharmonic, the Cleveland Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. These candid interviews give us vintage Boulez - his bold views, enigmatic wit, practical wisdom, and uncompromising beliefs. Here the eminent composer, who has been called both "a wild man of the avant-garde" and "the last true maestro" (New York Times), talks about being one of the world's most controversial conductors and daring programmers of musical taste. Boulez sometimes locks horns with French author Jean Vermeil, who confronts him with his past and prods him to discuss the future of music and orchestras. Boulez tells how and why he chose his battles and lays out his vision of the conductor's mission. He tells what he learned - and didn't learn - from other conductors, and how he feels about the composers who compromise his repertoire, including Webern, Berg, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Messiaen (with whom he studied), and, of course, Boulez himself.

Violet Balestreri Archer is a leading force in contemporary music of North America. One of Canada's most prolific composers, she is also an outspoken advocate of contemporary music. Her career as an educator is exceptional, and she has been untiring in her efforts to persuade composers to write educational pieces for youth and publishers to publish them. Her own music has been performed throughout the world and at international festivals and music congresses. This bio-bibliography is the first book-length study of Archer. It is comprised of four main parts: a short biography; a complete list of more than 290 compositions, organized by genre, with information on premieres and selected performances; a discography; and a bibliography of writings by and about the composer. All sections are fully cross-referenced and indexed, and appendixes organize the works alphabetically by title and chronologically.

The seminal British band Motorhead have been rocking since 1975 and, led by the legendary Lemmy, show no signs of letting up. From early classics "Ace Of Spades," "Overkill" and "No Sleep 'Til Hammersmith" the band have racked up an incredible 25 albums, with 2011's "The World Is Yours" the latest success.
"Overkill" tells the whole story of the ultimate rock 'n' roll trip, through original interviews with those that were there. The book also features an exclusive foreword by rock legend Glenn Hughes (Black Sabbath, Deep Purple).

This book is a backstage pass to the ups, downs, and all-out craziness of arena rock-deep discussions with Rod Stewart, jamming with legends like Mick Jagger and Justin Timberlake, gaining groupies, and striking out solo. Stevie Salas was one of many boys coming of age in the 1980s-when the American dream was rock superstardom. As lead guitarist for a San Diego band, Salas played backyard parties and school dances and even scored the music for the cult classic Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. When he auditioned for Rod Stewart-where he was the youngest band member by a decade-Salas's life truly hit a turning point. Salas pulls no punches to describe the initial skepticism and hazing he faced as the youngest member of Stewart's band, the night he stood up for himself on the tour plane, and the emotional late-night talk with Rod Stewart that restored the frontman's faith in his young, untested guitar player and his new group that was struggling to find its groove. Yet they became a band of brothers and formed a camaraderie they share to this day. When We Were the Boys revolves around the year Salas began as an inexperienced musical prodigy and finished as a seasoned rock 'n' roll veteran-more mature as a man and musician.

Schoenberg is often viewed as an isolated composer who was ill-at-ease in exile. In this book Kenneth H. Marcus shows that in fact Schoenberg's connections to Hollywood ran deep, and most of the composer's exile compositions had some connection to the cultural and intellectual environment in which he found himself. He was friends with numerous successful film industry figures, including George Gershwin, Oscar Levant, David Raksin and Alfred Newman, and each contributed to the composer's life and work in different ways: helping him to obtain students, making recordings of his music, and arranging commissions. While teaching at both the University of Southern California and the University of California, Los Angeles, Schoenberg was able to bridge two utterly different worlds: the film industry and the academy. Marcus shows that alongside Schoenberg's vital impact upon Southern California Modernism through his pedagogy, compositions and texts, he also taught students who became central to American musical modernism, including John Cage and Lou Harrison.

To tell the story of Morris Day is to tell the story of Prince. Not because they were inseparable or because their paths never diverged, but because, even when their paths did diverge, they always intersected again. Each artist lifted the other up, pushing one another to be something bigger and better than they thought themselves capable of. There was plenty of one-upmanship and some (un)healthy competition, but the respect Day and Prince had for one another never wavered, from the time they met in junior high until His Royal Badness's untimely death in 2016. In telling his own story and writing about Prince, Day turns Prince into the narrative's Greek chorus. Prince is there to protect his legacy, argue with Morris's interpretation of events, and continue the dialogue that started when both musicians were in their early teens. Because of their lifelong friendship emotional intimacy, the founder and still current leader of The Time is the one man who can pull this off, and in so doing shed a new light on Prince and the culture from which the Minneapolis funk scene was born. On Time recounts Day's fight to overcome cocaine addiction, his search for meaning in both music and romance, and his subsequent second-act success by once again leading The Time, whose music is his lifeblood and soul. Day's book is a comprehensive, free-wheeling extension of his music--the ride is wild and the funk unfiltered.

Winner of the 2022 Vincent H. Duckles Award, Music Library Association John Adams: A Research and Information Guide offers the first comprehensive guide to the musical works and literature of one of the leading American composers of our time. The research guide catalogs and summarizes materials relating to Adams's work, providing detailed annotated bibliographic entries for both primary and secondary sources. Covering writings by and interviews with Adams, books, journal articles and book chapters, newspaper articles and reviews, dissertations, video recordings, and other sources, the guide also contains a chronology of Adams's life, a discography, and a list of compositions. Robust indexes enable researchers to easily locate sources by author, composition, or subject. This volume is a major reference tool for all those interested in Adams and his music, and a valuable resource for students and researchers of minimalism, contemporary American music, and twentieth-century music more broadly.

My Neighbor Totoro is a long-standing international icon of Japanese pop culture that grew out of the partnership between the legendary animator Miyazaki Hayao and the world-renowned composer Joe Hisaishi. A crucial step in the two artists' collaboration was the creation of the album, My Neighbor Totoro: Image Song Collection, with lyrics penned by Miyazaki and Nakagawa Rieko, a famed children's book author, and music composed by Hisaishi. The album, released in 1987 prior to the opening of the film, served not only as a promotional product, but also provided Miyazaki with concrete ideas about the characters and the themes of the film. This book investigates the extent to which Hisaishi's music shaped Miyazaki's vision by examining the relationship between the images created by Miyazaki and the music composed by Hisaishi, with special emphasis on their approaches to nostalgia, one of the central themes of the film.

In The Gaithers and Southern Gospel, Ryan P. Harper examines songwriters Bill and Gloria Gaither's Homecoming video and concert series-a gospel music franchise that, since its beginning in 1991, has outperformed all Christian and much secular popular music on the American music market. The Homecomings represent "southern gospel." Typically that means a musical style popular among white evangelical Christians in the American South and Midwest, and it sometimes overlaps in style, theme, and audience with country music. The Homecomings' nostalgic orientation-their celebration of "traditional" kinds of American Christian life-harmonize well with southern gospel music, past and present. But amidst the backward gazes, the Homecomings also portend and manifest change. The Gaithers' deliberate racial integration of their stages, their careful articulation of a relatively inclusive evangelical theology, and their experiments with an array of musical forms demonstrate that the Homecoming is neither simplistically nostalgic, nor solely "southern." Harper reveals how the Gaithers negotiate a tension between traditional and changing community norms as they seek simultaneously to maintain and expand their audience as well as to initiate and respond to shifts within their fan base. Pulling from hisfield work at Homecoming concerts, behind the scenes with the Gaithers, and with numerous Homecoming fans, Harper reveals the Homecoming world to be a dynamic, complicated constellation in the formation of American religious identity.

A translation of the only book that focuses solely on the pianistic aspect of Busoni's wide-ranging career. Ferruccio Busoni is most widely known today as the composer of such works as the Second Violin Sonata, the incidental music for Gozzi's Turandot, and the most monumental piano concerto in the repertory (some eighty minuteslong, with male chorus in the finale). But Busoni was also renowned in his day as an author and pedagogue and, most especially, as a pianist. Busoni's recordings of pieces by Chopin and Liszt -- and of his own arrangements of keyboard works by Bach and Beethoven -- are much prized and studied today by connoisseurs of piano playing. Yet even his most important biographers have cast only a cursory glance at the pianistic aspect of Busoni's fascinating career. Grigory Kogan's book Busoni as Pianist (published in Russian in 1964, and here translated for the first time) was and remains the first and only study to concentrate exclusively on Busoni's contributions to the worldof the piano. Busoni as Pianist summarizes reviews of Busoni's playing and his own writings on the subject. It also closely analyzes the surviving piano roles and recordings, and examines Busoni's editions, arrangements, and pedagogical output. As such, it will be of interest to pianists, teachers and students of the piano, historians, and all who love piano music and the art of piano playing. Grigory Kogan (1901-1979) was a leading Soviet pianist and music critic. A conservatory professor at the age of twenty-one, Kogan created the first-ever course in Russia dealing with the history and theory of pianism. Through his brilliant lectures, his concert performances, and his many books, articles, and reviews, Kogan influenced an entire generation of Soviet pianists. Svetlana Belsky is a teacher and performer, and is coordinator of Piano Studies at the University of Chicago.

Frank Bello, bassist with the legendary New York thrash metal band Anthrax since 1984, has sold over ten million albums, travelled the globe more times than he cares to count, and enthralled audiences from the world’s biggest stages. His long-awaited memoir would be a gripping read even if its pages only contained stories about his life as a recording and touring musician. While those stories are indeed included—and will blow your mind—Bello also focuses on deeper subjects in Fathers, Brothers, and Sons. Once you’ve heard his life story, you’ll understand why. Born into a family of five, Frank grew up in difficult circumstances. His father abandoned his wife and children, and Frank’s mother moved heaven and earth to keep them fed and educated. Left with no male role model, Frank found inspiration in heavy metal bass players, following their example and forging a career with Anthrax from his early teens—first as a roadie, and then as the group’s bass player. International stardom came Frank’s way by the mid-to-late 1980s, when he was still in his early twenties, but tragedy struck in 1996 when his brother Anthony was murdered in New York. Although the case went to trial, the suspected killer was released without charge after a witness, intimidated by violent elements, withdrew his testimony. Two decades later, Frank is a father himself to a young son. Like many men who grew up without the guidance of a dad, he asks himself important questions about the meaning of fatherhood and how to do the job well. This is the wisdom which Fathers, Brothers, and Sons offers readers. Despite the emotive nature of these topics, Fathers, Brothers, and Sons is a funny, entertaining read. A man with a keen sense of humor and the perspective to know how surreal his story has been, Frank doesn’t preach or seek sympathy in his book. Instead, he simply passes on the wisdom gained from a lifetime of turbulence, paying tribute to his loved ones in a way that will resonate with us all.

In 1972, a group of creative Brazilian musicians and poets informally led by singer-songwriter Milton Nascimento recorded a landmark double-LP titled Clube da Esquina (Corner Club). The album saw highly original songs by Milton, already an award-winning international star, sharing vinyl with those of Lo Borges, an unknown eighteen-year-old from Belo Horizonte, the capital of the state of Minas Gerais. There, where the street "corner" still exists, grew their collective also known as the Corner Club, as the artists collaborated on many subsequent albums boasting innovative blends of pop, jazz, rock, folk, classical influences, and, before Brazil's return to civilian rule in 1985, poignant protest songs aimed at a cruel dictatorship. Drawing on a thirty-year relationship with Minas Gerais that includes interviews with Corner Club members and extensive research of Portuguese language sources, Jonathon Grasse presents an analysis of the artists, songs, and ideas comprising the LP that helps define this Brazilian generation. 33 1/3 Global, a series related to but independent from 33 1/3, takes the format of the original series of short, music-based books and brings the focus to music throughout the world. With initial volumes focusing on Japanese and Brazilian music, the series will also include volumes on the popular music of Australia/Oceania, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and more.

Though The Velvet Underground were critically and commercially unsuccessful in their time, in ensuing decades they have become a constant touchstone in art rock, punk, post-punk, indie, avant pop and alternative rock. In the 1970s and 80s Lou Reed, John Cale and Nico produced a number of works that traveled a path between art and pop. In 1993 the original band members of Reed, Cale, Morrison and Tucker briefly reunited for live appearances, and afterwards Reed, Cale and briefly Tucker, continued to produce music that travelled the idiosyncratic path begun in New York in the mid-1960s. The influence of the band and band members, mediated and promoted through famous fans such as David Bowie and Brian Eno, seems only to have expanded since the late 1960s. In 1996 the Velvet Underground were in inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, demonstrating how far the band had traveled in 30 years from an avant-garde cult to the mainstream recognition of their key contributions to popular music. In these collected essays, Pattie and Albiez present the first academic book-length collection on The Velvet Underground. The book covers a range of topics including the band's relationship to US literature, to youth and cultural movements of the 1960s and beyond and to European culture - and examines these contexts from the 1960s through to the present day.