George Harrison was one of the most prolific popular music composers of the late 20th century. During his tenure with the Beatles, he caught the wave of 1960s pop culture and began channeling its pervasive influence through his music. Often described as "The Invisible Singer," his solo recordings reveal him to be an elusive, yet essential, element in the Beatles' sound. The discussion of George Harrison's Beatle tracks featured in the text employs a Songscape approach that blends accessible music analysis with an exploration of the virtual space created on the sound recording. This approach is then used to explore Harrison's extensive catalog of solo works, which, due to their varied cultural sources, seem increasingly like early examples of Global Pop. In that sense, the music of George Harrison may ultimately be viewed as an important locus for pan-cultural influence in the 20th century, making this book essential reading for those interested in the history of songwriting and recording as well as the cultural study of popular music.

Now in paperback, the national bestselling biography of American musical icon Jimi Hendrix It has been more than thirty-five years since Jimi Hendrix died, but his music and spirit are still very much alive for his fans everywhere. Charles R. Cross vividly recounts the life of Hendrix, from his difficult childhood and adolescence in Seattle through his incredible rise to celebrity in London's swinging sixties. It is the story of an outrageous life--with legendary tales of sex, drugs, and excess--while it also reveals a man who struggled to accept his role as idol and who privately craved the kind of normal family life he never had. Using never-before-seen documents and private letters, and based on hundreds of interviews with those who knew Hendrix--many of whom had never before agreed to be interviewed--Room Full of Mirrors unlocks the vast mystery of one of music's most enduring legends.

Boy Bands and the Performance of Pop Masculinity provides a history of the boy band from the Beatles to One Direction, placing the modern male pop group within the wider context of twentieth- and twenty-first-century popular music and culture. Offering the first extended look at pop masculinity as exhibited by boy bands, this volume links the evolving expressions of gender and sexuality in the boy band to wider economic and social changes that have resulted in new ways of representing what it is to be a man. The popularity of boy bands is unquestionable, and their contributions to popular music are significant, yet they have attracted relatively little study. This book fills that gap with chapters exploring the challenges of defining the boy band phenomenon, its origins and history from the 1940s to the present, the role of management and marketing, the performance of gender and sexuality, and the nature of fandom and fan agency. Throughout, the author illuminates the ways in which identity politics influence the production and consumption of pop music and shows how the mainstream pop of boy bands can both reinforce and subvert gender and class hierarchies.

Digital technology is transforming the musical score as a broad array of innovative score systems have become available to musicians. From attempts to mimic the print score, to animated and graphical scores, to artificial intelligence-based options, digital scoring affects the musical process by opening up new possibilities for dynamic interaction between the performer and the music, changing how we understand the boundaries between composition, score, improvisation and performance. The Digital Score: Musicianship, Creativity and Innovation offers a guide into this new landscape, reflecting on what these changes mean for music-making from both theoretical and applied perspectives. Drawing on findings from over a decade's worth of practice-based experimentation in the field, author Craig Vear builds a framework for understanding how digital scores create meaning. He considers the interactions between affect, embodiment and digital scores, offering the first comprehensive and critical consideration of an exciting field with no agreed-upon borders. Featuring insights from interviews with over fifty musicians and composers from across four continents, this book is a valuable resource for music researchers and practitioners alike.

Boy Bands and the Performance of Pop Masculinity provides a history of the boy band from the Beatles to One Direction, placing the modern male pop group within the wider context of twentieth- and twenty-first-century popular music and culture. Offering the first extended look at pop masculinity as exhibited by boy bands, this volume links the evolving expressions of gender and sexuality in the boy band to wider economic and social changes that have resulted in new ways of representing what it is to be a man. The popularity of boy bands is unquestionable, and their contributions to popular music are significant, yet they have attracted relatively little study. This book fills that gap with chapters exploring the challenges of defining the boy band phenomenon, its origins and history from the 1940s to the present, the role of management and marketing, the performance of gender and sexuality, and the nature of fandom and fan agency. Throughout, the author illuminates the ways in which identity politics influence the production and consumption of pop music and shows how the mainstream pop of boy bands can both reinforce and subvert gender and class hierarchies.

Short, clear chapters each focus on a single topic, presenting necessary information thoroughly and clearly, in a manner that's easy for students to grasp Large number of musical examples allows students to better understand techniques by seeing them in multiple contexts Companion website provides video demonstrations that help students understand techniques in action

Questions about variation, similarity, enumeration, and classification of musical structures have long intrigued both musicians and mathematicians. Mathematical models can be found from theoretical analysis to actual composition or sound production. Increasingly in the last few decades, musical scholarship has incorporated modern mathematical content. One example is the application of methods from Algebraic Combinatorics, or Topology and Graph Theory, to the classification of different musical objects. However, these applications of mathematics in the understanding of music have also led to interesting open problems in mathematics itself.The reach and depth of the contributions on mathematical music theory presented in this volume is significant. Each contribution is in a section within these subjects: (i) Algebraic and Combinatorial Approaches; (ii) Geometric, Topological, and Graph-Theoretical Approaches; and (iii) Distance and Similarity Measures in Music.

The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Western Art is the first book to examine, under one umbrella, different kinds of analogies, mutual influences, integrations and collaborations of audio and visual in different art forms: painting, sculpture, installation, architecture, performance art, animation, film, video art, visual music, multimedia, experimental music, sound art, opera, theatre and dance. Sitting at the cutting edge of the field of music and visual arts, the book offers a unique, at times controversial view of this rapidly evolving area of study. The book is organized around three core thematic sections. The first, Sights & Sounds, concentrates on interaction between the experience of seeing and the experience of hearing. Sound, Space & Matter expands the idea of music to include environmental sounds, vibrating frequencies, homemade instruments, linguistic utterances, noise and silence. Architecture, likewise, faces a similar discourse that examines non-material spaces, environments, human habitats, performances, destruction and void. Enhanced by advanced digital technologies, this aesthetic shift opened the door for endless experiments, which give a new context to theoretical issues such as medium, matter and process in creating and perceiving art. In the third section, Performance, Performativity & Text, music as a performing art provides the point of departure. The new light shed by modernism and the avant-garde on the performative aspect of music have led it - together with sound and text - to become active in new ways in contemporary dance, theatre and the visual arts. The chapters in the handbook make and prove their arguments using case studies in contemporary art, music, and sound as illustrations, building upon exsiting thought as a foundation for discussion. Artists, curators, students and scholars will find here a panoramic view of cutting-edge discourse in the field, by an international roster of scholars and practitioners.

Morton Feldman viewed Piano and String Quartet as his capstone work-the culminating example of the aesthetic that Feldman spent his life seeking. Written in 1985, the year before Feldman's death, this single movement, roughly 80-minute composition was heralded by Steve Reich as "the most beautiful work [of Feldman's] I know." Ray Fields presents a detailed analysis of the complete piece and examines the elements that contribute to its formal and expressive design, including local and large-scale temporal architecture, pitch/interval formations, texture, timbre, and register. It discusses the aural experience of the music itself and provides insights into Feldman's aesthetic influences. Basic biographical information is provided, describing the music of his early, middle, and late periods and providing an overview of analyses of other Feldman works. By examining this beloved piece, the book addresses the question: what was everything Feldman wanted in his music? Also included are interviews with Kronos Quartet's David Harrington about the origins of Piano and String Quartet and Aki Takahashi providing crucial information about the work.

During the past 40 years, mathematical music theory has grown and developed in both the fields of music and mathematics. In music pedagogy, the need to analyze patterns of modern composition has produced Musical Set Theory, and the use of Group Theory and other modern mathematical structures have become almost as common as the application of mathematics in the fields of engineering or chemistry. Mathematicians have been developing stimulating ideas when exploring mathematical applications to established musical relations. Mathematics students have seen in Music in Mathematics courses, how their accumulated knowledge of abstract ideas can be applied to an important human activity while reinforcing their dexterity in Mathematics. Similarly, new general education courses in Music and Mathematics are being developed and are arising at the university level, as well as for high school and general audiences without requiring a sophisticated background in either music nor mathematics. Mathematical Music Theorists have also been developing exciting, creative courses for high school teachers and students of mathematics. These courses and projects have been implemented in the USA, in China, Ireland, France, Australia, and Spain.The objective of this volume is to share the motivation and content of some of these exciting, new Mathematical Theory and Music in Mathematics courses while contributing concrete materials to interested readers.

Thomas Ades (b. 1971) is an established international figure, both as composer and performer, with popular and critical acclaim and admiration from around the world. Edward Venn examines in depth one of Ades's most significant works so far, his orchestral Asyla (1997). Its blend of virtuosic orchestral writing, allusions to various idioms, including rave music, and a musical rhetoric encompassing both high modernism and lush romanticism is always compelling and utterly representative of Ades's distinctive compositional voice. The reception of Asyla since its premiere in 1997 by Sir Simon Rattle and the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra (CBSO) has been staggering. Instantly hailed as a classic, Asyla won the 1997 Royal Philharmonic Society Award for Large-Scale Composition. An internationally acclaimed recording made of the work was nominated for the 1999 Mercury Music Prize, and in 2000, Ades became the youngest composer (and only the third British composer) to win the Grawemeyer prize, for Asyla. Asyla is fast becoming a repertory item, rapidly gaining over one hundred performances: a rare distinction for a contemporary work.

A RADIO 4 BOOK OF THE WEEK 'Full of delightful nuggets' Guardian online 'Entertaining, informative and philosphical ... An essential read' All About History 'Extraordinary range ... All the world and more is here' Evening Standard 165 million years ago saw the birth of rhythm. 66 million years ago came the first melody. 40 thousand years ago Homo sapiens created the first musical instrument. Today music fills our lives. How we have created, performed and listened to music throughout history has defined what our species is and how we understand who we are. Yet it is an overlooked part of our origin story. The Musical Human takes us on an exhilarating journey across the ages - from Bach to BTS and back - to explore the vibrant relationship between music and the human species. With insights from a wealth of disciplines, world-leading musicologist Michael Spitzer renders a global history of music on the widest possible canvas, from global history to our everyday lives, from insects to apes, humans to artificial intelligence. 'Michael Spitzer has pulled off the impossible: a Guns, Germs and Steel for music' Daniel Levitin 'A thrilling exploration of what music has meant and means to humankind' Ian Bostridge

When he emerged from the nightclubs of Greenwich Village, Bob Dylan was often identified as a "protest" singer. As early as 1962, however, Dylan was already protesting the label: "I don't write no protest songs," he told his audience on the night he debuted "Blowin' in the Wind." "Protest" music is largely perceived as an unsubtle art form, a topical brand of songwriting that preaches to the converted. But popular music of all types has long given listeners food for thought. Fifty years before Vietnam, before the United States entered World War I, some of the most popular sheet music in the country featured anti-war tunes. The labor movement of the early decades of the century was fueled by its communal "songbook." The Civil Rights movement was soundtracked not just by the gorgeous melodies of "Strange Fruit" and "A Change Is Gonna Come," but hundreds of other gospel-tinged ballads and blues. In Which Side Are You On, author James Sullivan delivers a lively anecdotal history of the progressive movements that have shaped the growth of the United States, and the songs that have accompanied and defined them. Covering one hundred years of social conflict and progress across the twentieth century and into the early years of the twenty-first, this book reveals how protest songs have given voice to the needs and challenges of a nation and asked its citizens to take a stand - asking the question "Which side are you on?"

In the 1990s, expressive culture in the Caribbean was becoming noticeably more feminine. At the annual Carnival of Trinidad and Tobago, thousands of female masqueraders dominated the street festival on Carnival Monday and Tuesday. Women had become significant contributors to the performance of calypso and soca, as well as the musical development of the steel pan art form. Drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork conducted by the author in Trinidad and Tobago, What She Go Do demonstrates how the increased access and agency of women through folk and popular musical expressions has improved inter-gender relations and representation of gender in this nation. This is the first study to integrate all of the popular music expressions associated with Carnival - calypso, soca, and steelband music - within a single volume. The book includes interviews with popular musicians and detailed observation of musical performances, rehearsals, and recording sessions, as well as analysis of reception and use of popular music through informal exchanges with audiences. The popular music of the Caribbean contains elaborate forms of social commentary that allows singers to address various sociopolitical problems, including those that directly affect the lives of women. In general, the cultural environment of Trinidad and Tobago has made women more visible and audible than any previous time in its history. This book examines how these circumstances came to be and what it means for the future development of music in the region.

An Anthology of Australian Albums offers an overview of Australian popular music through the lens of significant, yet sometimes overlooked, Australian albums. Chapters explore the unique qualities of each album within a broader history of Australian popular music. Artists covered range from the older and non-mainstream yet influential, such as the Missing Links, Wendy Saddington and the Coloured Balls, to those who have achieved very recent success (Courtney Barnett, Dami Im and Flume) and whose work contributes to international pop music (Sia), to the more exploratory or experimental (Curse ov Dialect and A.B. Original). Collectively the albums and artists covered contribute to a view of Australian popular music through the non-canonical, emphasizing albums by women, non-white artists and Indigenous artists, and expanding the focus to include genres outside of rock including hip hop, black metal and country.

Beethoven's seventy-two settings of traditional Irish airs constitute his most prolific output in any genre. The arrangements were commissioned in the early nineteenth century by the Scottish editor and publisher, George Thomson, who sent airs, but no texts, to Beethoven. Poetry, mostly by less well-known poets, was attached to the finished settings before publication by Thomson, and perhaps therein lies the reason why the songs never achieved the popularity which they deserve: many of the poems have been judged to be of inferior quality. In this edition, the first in which all Beethoven's Irish folksong settings are published together, the late baritone, broadcaster and musicologist, Tomas O Suilleabhain, selected texts, mostly by Burns and Moore, which he felt were more appropriate to the airs and to Beethoven's settings.

In what ways does listening to music shape everyday perception? Is music particularly effective in promoting shifts in consciousness? Is there any difference perceptually between contemplating one's surroundings and experiencing a work of art? Everyday Music Listening is the first book to focus in depth on the detailed nature of music listening episodes as lived mental experiences. Ruth Herbert uses new empirical data to explore the psychological processes involved in everyday music listening scenarios, charting interactions between music, perceiver and environment in a diverse range of real-world contexts. Findings are integrated with insights from a broad range of literature, including consciousness studies and research into altered states of consciousness, as well as ideas from ethology and evolutionary psychology, suggesting that a psychobiological capacity for trancing is linked to the origins of making and receiving of art. The term 'trance' is not generally associated with music listening outside ethnomusicological studies of strong experiences, yet 'hypnotic-like' involvements in daily life have long been recognized by hypnotherapy researchers. The author argues that multiply distributed attention - prevalent in much contemporary listening- does not necessarily indicate superficial engagement. Music emerges as a particularly effective mediator of experience. Absorption and dissociation, as manifestations of trancing, are self-regulatory processes, often operating at the level of unconscious awareness, that support individuals' perceptions of psychological health. This fascinating study brings together research and theory from a wide range of fields to provide a new framework for understanding the phenomenology of music listening in a way that will appeal to both specialist academic audiences and a broad general readership.

For students learning the principles of music theory, it can often seem as though the tradition of tonal harmony is governed by immutable rules that define which chords, tones, and intervals can be used where. Yet even within the classical canon, there are innumerable examples of composers diverging from these foundational "rules." Drawing on examples from composers including J.S. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Brahms, and more, Bending the Rules of Music Theory seeks to take readers beyond the basics of music theory and help them to understand the inherent flexibility in the system of tonal music. Chapters explore the use of different rule-breaking elements in practice and why they work, introducing students to a more nuanced understanding of music theory.

In recent years, scholars and musicians have become increasingly interested in the revival of musical improvisation as it was known in the Renaissance and Baroque periods. This historically informed practice is now supplanting the late Romantic view of improvised music as a rhapsodic endeavour-a musical blossoming out of the capricious genius of the player-that dominated throughout the twentieth century. In the Renaissance and Baroque eras, composing in the mind (alla mente) had an important didactic function. For several categories of musicians, the teaching of counterpoint happened almost entirely through practice on their own instruments. This volume offers the first systematic exploration of the close relationship among improvisation, music theory, and practical musicianship from late Renaissance into the Baroque era. It is not a historical survey per se, but rather aims to re-establish the importance of such a combination as a pedagogical tool for a better understanding of the musical idioms of these periods. The authors are concerned with the transferral of historical practices to the modern classroom, discussing new ways of revitalising the study and appreciation of early music. The relevance and utility of such an improvisation-based approach also changes our understanding of the balance between theoretical and practical sources in the primary literature, as well as the concept of music theory itself. Alongside a word-centred theoretical tradition, in which rules are described in verbiage and enriched by musical examples, we are rediscovering the importance of a music-centred tradition, especially in Spain and Italy, where the music stands alone and the learner must distil the rules by learning and playing the music. Throughout its various sections, the volume explores the path of improvisation from theory to practice and back again.

What does it mean to talk about musical coherence at the end of a century characterised by fragmentation and discontinuity? How can the diverse influences which stand behind the works of many late twentieth-century composers be reconciled with the singular immediacy of the experiences that they can create? How might an awareness of the distinctive ways in which these experiences are generated and controlled affect the way we listen to, reflect upon and write about this music? Mark Hutchinson outlines a novel concept of coherence within Western art music from the 1980s to the turn of the millennium as a means of understanding the work of a number of contemporary composers, including Thomas Ades, Kaija Saariaho, Toru Takemitsu and Gyoergy Kurtag, whose music cannot be fitted easily into a particular compositional school or analytical framework. Coherence is understood as a multi-layered phenomenon experienced, above all, in the act of listening, but reliant upon a variety of other aspects of musical experience, including compositional statements, analysis, and connections of aesthetic, as well as listeners' own, imaginative conceptualisations. Accordingly, the approach taken here is similarly multi-faceted: close analytical readings of a number of specific works are combined with insights drawn from philosophy and aesthetics, music perception, and critical theory, with a particular openness to novel metaphorical presentations of basic musical ideas about form, language and time.

The flourishing of religious or spiritually-inspired music in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries remains largely unexplored. The engagement and tensions between modernism and tradition, and institutionalized religion and spirituality are inherent issues for many composers who have sought to invoke spirituality and Otherness through contemporary music. Contemporary Music and Spirituality provides a detailed exploration of the recent and current state of contemporary spiritual music in its religious, musical, cultural and conceptual-philosophical aspects. At the heart of the book are issues that consider the role of secularization, the claims of modernity concerning the status of art, and subjective responses such as faith and experience. The contributors provide a new critical lens through which it is possible to see the music and thought of Cage, Ligeti, Messiaen, Stockhausen as spiritual music. The book surrounds these composers with studies of and by other composers directly associated with the idea of spiritual music (Harvey, Gubaidulina, MacMillan, Part, Pott, and Tavener), and others (Adams, Birtwistle, Ton de Leeuw, Ferneyhough, Ustvolskaya, and Vivier) who have created original engagements with the idea of spirituality. Contemporary Music and Spirituality is essential reading for humanities scholars and students working in the areas of musicology, music theory, theology, religious studies, philosophy of culture, and the history of twentieth-century culture.

Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998) was arguably the most important Russian composer since Shostakovich, and his music has generated a great deal of academic interest in the years since his death. Schnittke Studies provides a variety of perspectives on the composer and his music. The field is currently diverse and vibrant, and this book demonstrates the range of academic approaches being applied to Schnittke's work and the insights they provide, covering: polystylism, for which Schnittke is best known, the significance of the composer's Christian faith, and detailed formal analyses of key works, with connections drawn between the apparently divergent periods of the composer's career. This book has been prepared as a memorial to Professor Alexander Ivashkin, a leading scholar in the field, who died in 2014, and will be of interest not only to those studying Schnittke's music, but also those with an interest in late Soviet-era music in general.

Since Gyoergy Ligeti's death in 2006, there has been a growing acknowledgement of how central he was to the late twentieth-century cultural landscape. This collection is the first book devoted to exploring the composer's life and music within the context of his East European roots, revealing his dual identities as both Hungarian national and cosmopolitan modernist. Contributors explore the artistic and socio-cultural contexts of Ligeti's early works, including composition and music theory, the influence of East European folk music, notions of home and identity, his ambivalent attitude to his Hungarian past and his references to his homeland in his later music. Many of the valuable insights offered profit from new research undertaken at the Paul Sacher Foundation, Basel, while also drawing on the knowledge of long-time associates such as the composer's assistant, Louise Duchesneau. The contributions as a whole reveal Ligeti's thoroughly cosmopolitan milieu and values, and illuminate why his music continues to inspire new generations of performers, composers and listeners.

German music critic and opera producer Paul Bekker (1882-1937) is a rare example of a critic granted the opportunity to turn his ideas into practice. In this first full-length study of Bekker in English, Nanette Nielsen investigates Bekker's theory and practice in light of ethics and aesthetics, in order to uncover the ways in which these intersect in his work and contributed to the cultural and political landscape of the Weimar Republic. By linking Beethoven's music to issues of freedom and individuality, as he argues for its potential to unify the masses, Bekker had already in 1911 begun to construct the ethical framework for his musical sociology and opera aesthetics. Nielsen discusses some of the complex (and conflicting) layers of modernism and conservatism in Bekker that would have a continued presence in his work and its reception throughout his career. Bekker's demands for a 'practical ethics' led to his criticisms of metaphysically grounded approaches to aesthetics, and his ethical views are put into further relief in a sketch of the development of his music phenomenology in the 1920s. Nielsen unravels the complex intersections between Bekker's ethics and his opera aesthetics in connection with his practice as an Intendant at the Wiesbaden State Theatre (1927-1932), offering a critical reading of an opera staged during his tenure: Hugo Herrmann's Vasantasena (1930). Further works are considered in light of the theoretical framework underpinning the book, inspired by several intersections between ethics and aesthetics encountered in Bekker's work.