Robert Plant is one of the few genuine living rock legends. Frontman of Led Zeppelin, musical innovator and seller of millions of records, Plant has had a profound influence on music for over four decades. But the full account of his life has barely been told ... until now. Robert Plant: A Life is the first complete and comprehensive telling of Plant's story. From his earliest performances in folk clubs in the early 1960s, to the world's biggest stages as Led Zeppelin's self-styled 'Golden God', and on to his emergence as an emboldened solo star. The sheer scale of Zeppelin's success is extraordinary: in the US alone they sold 70 million records, a figure surpassed only by the Beatles. But their success was marred by tragedy. These pages contain first-hand accounts of Plant's greatest highs and deepest lows: the tragic deaths of his son Karac and his friend, Zeppelin drummer John Bonham. Told in vivid detail, this is the definitive story of a man of great talent, remarkable fortitude and extraordinary conviction.

Isaac Albéniz (1860-1909) composed some of the most enduring masterpieces in a Spanish style, works that remain favourites with guitarists, pianists, and music lovers the world over. This is the only biography in English of the fascinatingly complex man behind this music, and it presents much valuable new information about his career as a performer and composer.

'An attempt to retell an oft-told tale, this time informed by a desire to suck the hot air out of the more inflated earlier versions . . . this late-arriving history is perhaps the most reliable, and certainly the most entertaining, of all' Guardian Few bands are as shrouded in the murky haze of rock mythology as The Doors, and parsing fact from fiction has been a virtually impossible task. But now, after fifty years, The Doors' notoriously quiet guitarist is finally breaking his silence to set the record straight. Through a series of vignettes, Robby takes readers back to where it all happened: the pawn shop where he bought his first guitar; the jail cell he was tossed into after a teenage drug bust; his parents' living room where his first songwriting sessions with Jim Morrison took place; and the many concert venues that erupted into historic riots. Both a time capsule of the 1960s counterculture and a moving reflection on what it means to find oneself as a musician, Set the Night on Fire is a must-read for Doors fans and an essential volume of American pop. 'The very best . . . A well-told classic tale' Mojo 'Eschewing mythologising for unvarnished, often amusing memories, this is a book that Doors fans will love madly' Classic Rock Magazine

From Punk to Riot Grrl, Soul to Indie, this is a ground-breaking new study of women in popular music-making. The author, a sociologist and musician, interviewed over 100 women in British bands from the late 1970s to the mid-1990s. Amongst others, interviewees include Skin from Skunk Anansie, Debbie Smith from Echobelly, Candida Doyle from Pulp, Gail Greenwood from Belly and L7, Natasha Atlas from Transglobal Underground, and Vie Subversa from Poison Girls.

Although female vocalists have always been common, women playing instruments in bands are still relatively rare. Frock Rock explores the social factors that keep women from playing and those routes that have enabled women's involvement. The book then examines the everyday worlds of women's music-making from bands just starting up to the professional stage: songwriting, rehearsing, the first gig, getting a manager, record companies, recording, and touring.

A unique treatment of the key influences on the life of this important Australian composer, consisting of oral histories by people who knew Grainger, as well as reflections from his own writings. Percy Grainger [1882-1961] was a pianist, composer, ethnographer, essayist, and much more. The Australian-American musician aspired to the condition of a polymath, with strong interests in language, culture, ecology and technology. In an age of increasing specialisation Grainger held to a breathless all-roundedness. This book looks at the scrabbling diversity of Grainger's life through the eyes of others. Family and friends, pupils, musical associatesand chance acquaintances recall their experiences of Percy Grainger from his boyhood in colonial Australia, through his conservatorium years in Germany, on to his early professional years in London, and further to the zenith of his career and then years of decline in the United States. In the final chapter, Grainger himself explains the driving passions of his life. Fifty illustrations, including architectural drawings, scores and machine plans, vividly depict the enthusiasms described in over ninety recollections of Grainger. A composer of over four hundred compositions and virtuoso performer in some three thousand concerts, Grainger left a large legacy. He was an importantinfluence upon the folk-song movement in Britain, and, through such masterworks as Lincolnshire Posy, he was enduringly popular with the band movement in America. On a personal level, his development of the language of "blue-eyed English" was stillborn, and his muscular style of pianism found few adherents among the next generation of performers. His frankly expressed views on sexual licence were also many decades ahead of their time. Today, however, Grainger the musician is again in the ascendant. His more innovative works are gaining a belated hearing, while his standards, such as Country Gardens, remain firm favorites. Malcolm Gillies and David Pear areco-editors of Grainger on Music and 'The All-Round Man': Selected Letters of Percy Grainger, 1914-1961

The Muse That Sings: Composers Speak About the Creative Process is a collection of interviews with 25 various American composers, born between 1930 and 1960, who explain how they think in sound, mould musical ideas, and ultimately transfer sonic creations to the printed page.

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.

From Gilbert and Sullivan to Andrew Lloyd Webber, from Julie Andrews to Hugh Jackman, from Half a Sixpence to Matilda, Pick a Pocket Or Two is the story of the British musical: where it began and how it developed. In Pick a Pocket Or Two, acclaimed author Ethan Mordden brings his wit and wisdom to bear in telling the full history of the British musical, from The Beggar's Opera (1728) to the present, with an interest in isolating the unique qualities of the form and its influence on the American model. To place a very broad generalization, the American musical is regarded as largely about ambition fulfilled, whereas the British musical is about social order. Oklahoma!'s Curly wins the heart of the farmer Laurey-or, in other words, the cowboy becomes a landowner, establishing a truce between the freelancers on horseback and the ruling class. Half a Sixpence, on the other hand, finds a working-class boy coming into a fortune and losing it to fancy Dans, whereupon he is reunited with his working-class sweetheart, his modest place in the social order affirmed. Anecdotal and evincing a strong point of view, the book covers not only the shows and their authors but the personalities as well-W. S. Gilbert trying out his stagings on a toy theatre, Ivor Novello going to jail for abusing wartime gas rationing during World War II, fabled producer C. B. Cochran coming to a most shocking demise for a man whose very name meant "classy, carefree entertainment." Unabashedly opinionated and an excellent stylist, author Ethan Mordden provokes as much as he pleases. Mordden is the preeminent historian of the form, and his book will be required reading for readers of all walks, from the most casual of musical theater goers to musical theater buffs to students and scholars of the form.

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.

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.

The manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, fonds français 146, one of the most sumptuous and important of the fourteenth century, stands as an unparalleled witness to the politics, society, and culture of the French royal court in the early fourteenth century. It contains an interpolated version of the Roman de Fauvel, completed by Gervès de Bus in 1314, that uniquely combines the Old French text with music setting poetry in French and Latin, high-quality illuminations (including early depictions of the architecture of medieval Paris), and further literary elaborations and additions. This volume assembles papers by leading medievalists and younger scholars in different fields. Generously illustrated, it includes essential new reference material for medievalists in political, social and urban history, art and architectural history, musicology, the history of the book and codicology, and medieval languages and literatures, principally Old French and Latin.

Although eighteenth-century Viennese keyboard music, especially by such composers as Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, is among the most popular ever written, there has been surprisingly little serious research into the instruments for which it was composed. Consequently myths and guesses abound, while accurate and reliable information is hard to come by. This book fills that gap. Based on evidence from primary source material, much of it previously undiscovered or neglected, Maunder traces the history and development of the various keyboard instruments available in Vienna throughout the eighteenth century-harpsichords, clavichords, and pianos-and their use by composers and performers. There are detailed descriptions of many surviving Viennese instruments, several of which have only recently come to light; contemporary newspaper advertisements for over 1200 keyboard instruments are reproduced, in the original German as well as in English translation; and an alphabetical list of eighteenth-century Viennese makers includes much newly-discovered biographical information as well as some previously unknown names.

This is the first book about the life of jazz pianist and composer Stan Tracey CBE (1926-2013). Drawn largely from his personal diaries and some of his many interviews, his son Clark Tracey pieces together what made the late Stan Tracey a unique character in jazz music. Stan's wit and wisdom also come shining through in abundance in this long overdue account of one of the UK's most important jazz musicians.In a career that spanned 70 years, Stan Tracey recalls his earliest memories in war torn London and his first experiences of hearing jazz. As a teenager, he joined ENSA and the RAF Gang Show and for the next three years played at more venues than many musicians do in a lifetime. Once demobbed, Stan befriends pianist Eddie Thomson, vibist and drummer Victor Feldman and clarinettist Vic Ash and begins his career in music. He toured with Kenny Baker's band and the Kirchin Band before joining the Ted Heath Orchestra, then began recording under his own name. He was asked by Ronnie Scott to be the house pianist at Scott's new club, where Stan's legendary status grew for the next six years.He accompanied giants of American jazz such as Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Roland Kirk, Dexter Gordon, Freddie Hubbard and many others. During this period he wrote and recorded the seminal album Under Milk Wood, which to this day remains his best selling work. Stan left Ronnie's club following a drug addiction and in the 1970s found himself penniless. His wife Jackie employed her skill in the music business as an A&R from previous years and began presenting concerts to keep Stan afloat, as he formed new musical friendships in the free/improvised idiom at that time, such as Mike Osborne and Keith Tippett. Commissions for suites emerged and Stan's writing skills found an outlet again through the formation of his various groups that were to last for nearly 30 years. Stan's achievements and awards are ample and in many cases unique. Recipient of an OBE and a CBE, Stan also received several lifetime achievement awards and in his last year became the first recipient of the Ivor Novello Jazz Award.

His name was Prince, and he was funky. He was also inspiring, infuriating, visionary and otherworldly. Channelling contradictions in search of his own unique truth, he eventually changed his name to an unpronounceable glyph that merged the male and female symbols in an outward expression of his inner dualities. Gifted with the ability to play almost every instrument on his records, and shifting between musical styles as much as he switched-up his looks, he refused to acknowledge boundaries. Instead, he brought opposing forces together in a life-long quest to reconcile a dirty mind with a love for God. In doing so, the mini Minneapolis genius became a world-conquering icon whose towering legacy continues to shape pop culture.

Beyonce is not simply a pop sensation. She is a cultural phenomenon empowering the oppressed and dispossessed, challenging white privilege and misogyny and exploding gender politics. But who is Beyonce Knowles-Carter? And how did a small girl from Houston become the strong confident woman whose albums sell in their millions and whose songs have become anthems against racial and sexual discrimination and oppression? This biography sets out to reveal exactly that.

This scholarly analysis of the music of Taylor Swift identifies how and why she is one of the early 21st century's most recognizable and most popular stars. By the age of 13, singer-songwriter Taylor Swift had already inked a development deal with a major record label. This early milestone was an appropriate predictor of what accomplishments were to come. Now a superstar artist with an international fanbase of millions and several critically acclaimed and commercially successful albums, Swift has established herself as one of the most important musicians of the 21st century. This accessible book serves Taylor Swift fans as well as students of contemporary popular music and popular culture, critically examining all of this young artist's work to date. The book's organization is primarily chronological, covering Taylor Swift's album and single releases in order of release date while also documenting the elements of her music and personality that have made her popular with fans of country music and pop music across a surprisingly diverse age range of listeners. The chapters address how Swift's songs have been viewed by some fans as anthems of empowerment or messages of encouragement, particularly by members of the LGBTQ community, those who have been bullied or been seen as outsiders, and emerging artists. The final chapter places Swift's work and her public persona in the context of her times with respect to her use of and relationship with technology-for example, her use of social media and songwriting technology-and her expressions of a new type of feminism that is unlike the feminism of the 1970s. Provides the only scholarly critical analysis of the songs and recordings of megastar Taylor Swift Places Swift, her work, and her public stances in the context of her generation and its definition of "empowerment" and "feminism" Explores Swift's work as an extension of the early 1970s' confessional singer-songwriter movement

In this memoir, iconic singer Linda Ronstadt weaves together a captivating story of her origins in Tucson, Arizona, and her rise to stardom in the Southern California music scene of the 1960s and '70s.
Tracing the timeline of her remarkable life, Linda Ronstadt, whose forty-five year career has encompassed a wide array of musical styles, weaves together a captivating story of her origins in Tucson, Arizona, and her rise to stardom in the Southern California music scene of the 1960s and '70s.
Linda Ronstadt was born into a musical family, and her childhood was filled with everything from Gilbert and Sullivan to Mexican folk music to jazz and opera. Her artistic curiosity blossomed early, and she and her siblings began performing their own music for anyone who would listen. Now, in this beautifully crafted memoir, Ronstadt tells the story of her wide-ranging and utterly unique musical journey.
Ronstadt arrived in Los Angeles just as the folkrock movement was beginning to bloom, setting the stage for the development of country-rock. As part of the coterie of like-minded artists who played at the famed Troubadour club in West Hollywood, she helped define the musical style that dominated American music in the 1970s. One of her early backup bands went on to become the Eagles, and Linda went on to become the most successful female artist of the decade.
In "Simple Dreams," Ronstadt reveals the eclectic and fascinating journey that led to her long-lasting success, including stories behind many of her beloved songs. And she describes it all in a voice as beautiful as the one that sang "Heart Like a Wheel"--longing, graceful, and authentic.

Breaking the global record for streams in a single day, nearly 10 million people around the world tuned in to hear Kendrick Lamar's sophomore album in the hours after its release. To Pimp a Butterfly was widely hailed as an instant classic, garnering laudatory album reviews, many awards, and even a canonized place in Harvard's W. E. B. Du Bois archive. Why did this strangely compelling record stimulate the emotions and imaginations of listeners? This book takes a deep dive into the sounds, images, and lyrics of To Pimp a Butterfly to suggest that Kendrick appeals to the psyche of a nation in crisis and embraces the development of a radical political conscience. Kendrick breathes fresh life into the Black musical protest tradition and cultivates a platform for loving resistance. Combining funk, jazz, and spoken word, To Pimp a Butterfly's expansive sonic and lyrical geography brings a high level of innovation to rap music. More importantly, Kendrick's introspective and philosophical songs compel us to believe in a future where, perhaps, we gon' be alright.

Important insight into the work of a truly great songwriter. Updated to include the albums Western Stars and Letter To You and packed full of insightful stories from Springsteen's long career, Bruce Springsteen: The Stories Behind the Songs takes a detailed look at each and every one of his tracks, providing a unique look at this rock legend's method, as well as some of the many anecdotes and tales that are prolific in his long music history. The legend of Bruce Springsteen may well outlast rock 'n' roll itself. And for all the muscle and magic of his life-shaking concerts with the E Street Band, it comes down to the songs - music that helped define the best version of the United States for itself and the rest of the world; that bridged the gap between Bob Dylan and James Brown, between Phil Spector and Hank Williams; and that somehow managed to make New Jersey seem like a promised land. Deeply researched, laced with insight from decades of fandom and original reporting, this book is an exhaustive and unique look at the writing, recording and significance of Springsteen's singular catalog of songs - the first book to cover every officially released track, from hits to obscurities, from 1974's Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. to 2014's High Hopes.

Published to complement Mozart Studies (published in 1991), Mozart Studies 2 offers a forum for the most important trends in recent Mozart scholarship including gender and genre studies, close readings of individual works, textual and contextual research and new directions in analysis, both for the operas and instrumental music.

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."

The Letters of C.P.E. Bach is a complete edition of the correspondence of the most famous of J.S. Bach's sons. Very few of these letters have appeared previously in English translation. They provide a fascinating picture of an eighteenth-century composer hard at work publishing his own music, debating aesthetic matters, and championing the music and teachings of his father. The readable translation, detailed index, extensive cross referencing, and glossary of names make this an accessible and useful volume.

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.