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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Composers & musicians
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.
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.
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.
This is a full biography of the talented American woman composer Ruth Crawford Seeger. She was a prominent member of the American avant-garde composers in the 1920s, then married Charles Seeger and became very involved in the American folk song movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which also included Seeger's son Peter and John Lomax. The book also discusses the dilemma of a creative woman who was caught in domestic life and thus could never fully realize her musical potential.
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Charles Mackerras
(Hardcover)
Nigel Simeone, John Tyrrell; Contributions by Ales Brezina, Alfred Brendel, Anne Evans, …
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R939
Discovery Miles 9 390
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Ships in 18 - 22 working days
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Comprising a brief biography and chapters written by those who
worked with him, such as Janet Baker and Alfred Brendel, this is a
celebration of an exceptional, creative life. By the time of his
death in 2010 at the age of 84, Sir Charles Mackerras had achieved
widespread recognition, recorded extensively and developed into a
conductor of major international significance. In addition to areas
in which he already had forged a distinctive profile (Janácek,
Mozart, Handel, Sullivan) he revisited - and rethought - much of
the standard repertoire. The last thirty years were particularly
momentous in the coming to fruition of so manycherished projects:
not only the Janácek operas but the Gilbert and Sullivan series,
the Mozart operas, the two Beethoven cycles, other projects with
the Scottish Chamber Orchestra (Schumann and Brahms at Edinburgh;
the outstanding late Mozart) and at the Royal Opera House and the
Met. Unspoilt by fame, and undeterred by personal tragedies and
increasing physical frailty, he remained productive and inventive:
for him music-making, whether with world-classsingers and
orchestras or with students, was a kind of joyous oxygen that kept
him going right to the end. A detailed account of his life is
complemented by contributions from performers and scholars who
worked closely with Mackerras, as well as interviews with his
family. The book is richly illustrated with photographs and
documents, and includes a comprehensive discography along with
listings of many of his concert and opera performances. While
SirCharles's whole life is considered, emphasis is given to his
final quarter century, a period in which so many important projects
were realized. This book celebrates and epitomizes an exceptional
life. NIGEL SIMEONE is awriter and teacher. He has published
extensively on Messiaen and Janácek and recently edited The
Leonard Bernstein Letters. JOHN TYRRELL is Honorary Professor of
Music at Cardiff University. He has published bookson Janácek and
Czech opera and, with Sir Charles Mackerras, edited two Janácek
operas. CONTRIBUTORS: Janet Baker, Alfred Brendel, Ales Brezina,
Alex Briger, Rosenna East, Anne Evans, Nicholas Hytner, Simon
Keenlyside, David Lloyd-Jones, David Mackie, Chi-chi Nwanoku,
Antonio Pappano, Nigel Simeone, John Stein, Heinz Stolba, Patrick
Summers, John Tyrrell, Malcolm Walker, David Whelton, JirÃ
Zahrádka.
Experiencing Music Composition in Middle School General Music is
designed to help teachers and students create original music
through materials and activities that are enticing and accessible.
The text offers an innovative approach to composition teaching and
learning to promote the development of the compositional capacities
of feelingful intention, musical expressivity, and artistic
craftsmanship. With instructional materials aligned to real world
tasks from the genres of songwriting/choral music, composition and
visual media, instrumental music, electronic music and digital
media, and music theater, program activities easily fit into
existing curricular frames. Students will transition from
participation in teacher-facilitated whole class lessons to more
independent compositional work using Sketchpages to guide their
critical and creative thinking. These unique graphic organizers
blend elements of the composer's notebook with doodle space to help
students plan compositions, track their thinking through the
compositional process, and document their analysis of completed
works.
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