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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Theory of music & musicology > General
Collected Writings of the Orpheus Institute 6"We have developed a
tremendous amount of what might best be referred to as journalistic
knowledge concerning the ways that musicians of earlier periods
thought about musical structures. Now that we have that knowledge,
what might we do with it?" Joel LesterThe often complex connections
and intersections between modal and tonal idioms and contrapuntal
and harmonic organization during the transition from the
Renaissance to the Baroque era are considered from various
perspectives in Towards Tonality. Prominent musicians and scholars
from a wide range of fields testify here to their personal
understanding of this significant time of shifts in musical taste.
This collection of essays is based on lectures presented during the
conference "Historical Theory, Performance, and Meaning in Baroque
Music," organized by the International Orpheus Academy for Music
and Theory in Ghent, Belgium."
Examining innovations in audience behaviour, musical ensembles and
mass-music movements, this book provides insight into how musical
performances contributed to emerging ideas about class and national
identity. Offering a fresh reading of bestselling fictional works
of the day, Weliver draws upon crowd theory, climate theory,
ethnology, science, music reviews and books by professional
musicians to demonstrate how these discourses were mutually
constitutive. This interdisciplinary undertaking will interest
those working in the fields of English literature, musicology,
social history and cultural studies.
The only things truly universal in music are those that are based
on biological and/or perceptual facts. Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale
focuses on perceptions of consonance and dissonance, which are
defined in the Harvard Dictionary of Music: "Consonance is used to
describe the agreeable effect produced by certain intervals as
against the disagreeable effect produced others. Consonance and
dissonance are the very foundation of harmonic music... consonance
represents the element of smoothness and repose, while dissonance
represents the no less important elements of roughness and
irregularity.a Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale begins by asking (and
answering) the question: How can we build a device to measure
consonance and dissonance? The remainder of the book describes the
impact of such a "dissonance metera on music theory, on synthesizer
design, on the construction of musical scales and tunings, on the
design of musical instruments, and introduces related compositional
techniques and new methods of musicological analyses. This new and
greatly revised edition of William Sethares' classic book includes
an attached CD-ROM that contains over three hours of sound examples
that demonstrate the ideas in action, as well as computer programs
that enable readers to conduct their own explorations. A new
chapter contains a detailed explanation of how the software works.
It incorporates several important simplifications over the full
presentation in the current Chapter 7 in order to allow it to
function in real time. Another new chapter describes the various
ways that the software can be used. New sections throughout the
book bring it up to date with the current state of the subject.
Tuning TimbreSpectrum Scale offers a unique analysis of the
relationship between the structure of sound and the structure of
scale and will be useful to musicians and composers who use
inharmonic tones and sounds. This includes a large percentage of
people composing and performing with modern musical synthesizers.
It will be of use to arrangers, musicologists, and others
interested in musical analysis. Tuning Timbre Spectrum Scale
provides a unique approach to working with environmental sounds,
and there are clear applications for the use of inharmonic sounds
in film scoring. The book will also be of interest to engineers and
others interested in the design of audio devices such as musical
synthesizers, special effects devices, and keyboards.
Drawing on a passion for music, a remarkably diverse
interdisciplinary toolbox, and a gift for accessible language that
speaks equally to scholars and the general public, Jann Pasler
invites us to read as she writes "through" music, unveiling the
forces that affect our sonic encounters. In an extraordinary
collection of historical and critical essays, some appearing for
the first time in English, Pasler deconstructs the social, moral,
and political preoccupations lurking behind aesthetic taste.
Arguing that learning from musical experience is vital to our
understanding of past, present, and future, Pasler's work
trenchantly reasserts the role of music as a crucial contributor to
important public debates about who we can be as individuals,
communities, and nations.
The author's wide-ranging and perceptive approaches to musical
biography and history challenge us to rethink our assumptions about
important cultural and philosophical issues including national
identity and postmodern musical hybridity, material culture, the
economics of power, and the relationship between classical and
popular music. Her work uncovers the self-fashioning of modernists
such as Vincent d'Indy, Augusta Holmes, Jean Cocteau, and John
Cage, and addresses categories such as race, gender, and class in
the early 20th century in ways that resonate with experiences
today. She also explores how music uses time and constructs
narrative. Pasler's innovative and influential methodological
approaches, such as her notion of "question-spaces," open up the
complex cultural and political networks in which music
participates. This provides us with the reasons and tools to engage
with music in fresh and exciting ways.
In these thoughtful essays, music--whether beautiful or
cacophonous, reassuring or seemingly incomprehensible--comes alive
as a bearer of ideas and practices that offers deep insights into
how we negotiate the world. Here, Jann Pasler's Writing through
Music brilliantly demonstrates how music can be a critical lens to
focus the contemporary critical, cultural, historical, and social
issues of our time.
With its 1.5 million words Blur is the biggest electronic corpus of
nonstandard English. The present study describes the stages in the
design, the compilation, and the editing of Blur and attempts to
gauge its linguistic profit. This is done both from a theoretical
perspective - blues poetry vs. natural speech, representativeness,
validity - and from an analytical perspective in particular
qualitative, quantitative, and comparative analyses of
morphological, morphosyntactic, and syntactic features. The
findings indicate that Blur provides an outstandingly rich and
reliable documentation of the vernaculars spoken by African
Americans between the Civil War and World War II. The more than
1,000 illustrative examples presented throughout this study attest
to the correctness of this statement.
In Ways of Listening, musicologist Eric Clarke explores musical
meaning, music's critical function in human lives, and the
relationship between listening and musical material. Clarke
outlines an "ecological approach" to understanding the perception
of music, arguing that the way we hear and understand music is not
simply a function of our brain structure or of the musical "codes"
given to us by culture, but must be considered within the physical
and social contexts of listening.
Examines Liszt's piano arrangements of music originally created for
other instruments, especially the symphony orchestra and the
Hungarian Gypsy band. Liszt's adaptation of existing music is
staggering in its quantity, scope, and variety of technique. He
often viewed the model work as a source that he strove to improve,
rival, and even surpass. Liszt's Representation of Instrumental
Sounds on the Piano: Colors in Black and White provides a
comprehensive survey of Liszt's reworking of instrumental music on
the piano, particularly his emulation of tone colors and idiomatic
gestures. The book relatesLiszt's sonic reproductions to the
widespread nineteenth-century interest in visual-art reproduction.
Hyun Joo Kim illustrates Liszt's diverse approaches to the
integrity of the music in a detailed, vivid, and insightful manner
through close study of his arrangements of Beethoven's symphonies
and Rossini's Guillaume Tell Overture, his two-piano arrangements
of his own symphonic poems such as Mazeppa and Hunnenschlacht, and
his Hungarian Rhapsodies. By examining orchestral music and
Hungarian Gypsy-style music as sources of Liszt's sound
representations, this book reveals Liszt's musical discourse as
straddling the musical, cultural, and aesthetic divides between
mainstream and peripheral, art and folk, serious and popular. HYUN
JOO KIM holds a PhD from Indiana University and is an independent
scholar in Seoul, South Korea.
Discovering Music Theory is a suite of workbooks and corresponding
answer books that offers all-round preparation for the updated
ABRSM Music Theory exams from 2020, including the new online
papers. This full-colour workbook will equip students of all ages
with the skills, knowledge and understanding required for the ABRSM
Grade 5 Music Theory exam. Written to make theory engaging and
relevant to developing musicians of all ages, it offers: -
straightforward explanations of all new concepts - progressive
exercises to build skills and understanding, step by step -
challenge questions to extend learning and develop music-writing
skills - helpful tips for how to approach specific exercises -
ideas for linking theory to music listening, performing and
instrumental/singing lessons - clear signposting and progress
reviews throughout - a sample practice exam paper showing you what
to expect in the new style of exams from 2020 As well as fully
supporting the ABRSM theory syllabus, Discovering Music Theory
provides an excellent resource for anyone wishing to develop their
music literacy skills, including GCSE and A-Level candidates, and
adult learners.
A few weeks after the reunification of Germany, Leonard Bernstein
raised his baton above the ruins of the Berlin Wall and conducted a
special arrangement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The central
statement of the work, that "all men will be brothers," captured
the sentiment of those who saw a brighter future for the newly
reunited nation. This now-iconic performance is a palpable example
of "musical monumentality" - a significant concept which underlies
our cultural and ideological understanding of Western art music
since the nineteenth-century. Although the concept was first raised
in the earliest years of musicological study in the 1930s, a
satisfying exploration of the "monumental" in music has not yet
been made. Alexander Rehding, one of the brightest young stars in
the field, takes on the task in Music and Monumentality, an
elegant, thorough treatment that will serve as a foundation for all
future discussion in this area.
Rehding sets his focus on the main players of the period within
the Austro-German repertoire -Beethoven, Liszt, Wagner, Brahms,
Bruckner and Mahler- as he unpacks a two-fold definition of
"musical monumentality." In the conventional sense, monumentality
is a stylistic property often described as 'grand, ' 'uplifting, '
and 'sublime' and rife with overpowering brass chorales, sparkling
string tremolos, triumphant fanfares, and glorious thematic
returns. Yet Rehding sees the monumental in music performing a
cultural task as well: it is employed in the service of
establishing national identity. Through a clear theoretical lens,
Rehding examines how grand sound effects are strategically employed
with the view to overwhelming audiences, how supposedly immutable
musical halls of fame change over time, how challenging musical
works are domesticated, how the highest cultural achievements are
presented in immediately consumable form-in a word, how German
music emerges as a unified cultural and musical brand.
Jean Sibelius's Violin Concerto is the story of Sibelius as
performer and composer, of violin performing traditions, of
histories of musical transmission, and of virtuosity itself. It
investigates the history and legacy of one of the most recorded
concertos in the violin repertoire. Sibelius, a celebrated and
influential composer of the late 19th and 20th centuries, was an
accomplished violinist, whose enduring interest in the instrument
has been paralleled by the broad success of the only concerto in
his oeuvre: his violin concerto (premiered in 1904 and revised in
1905). Considering how violinists engage with the work, author Tina
K. Ramnarine discusses technology's central role in the concerto's
transmission from Jascha Heifetz's seminal 1935 recording to
contemporary online performances, gender issues in violin solo
careers, and nature-based musical aesthetics that lead to thinking
about the ecology of virtuosity in an era of environmental crisis.
Beginning with Sibelius's early training as a violinist and his
aspirations as a performer, Ramnarine traces the dramatic
historical context of the violin concerto. It was composed as
Finland underwent a period of heightened self-determination,
nationalism, and protest against Russian imperial policies, and it
heralded intense political dynamics relating to Europe's East-West
border that have extended to the present. This story of the violin
concerto points to the notion of Sibelius - and the virtuoso more
generally - as a political figure.
Coping with trauma and the losses of World War I was a central
concern for French musicians in the interwar period. Almost all of
them were deeply affected by the war as they fought in the
trenches, worked in military hospitals, or mourned a friend or
relative who had been wounded, killed, or taken prisoner. In
Resonant Recoveries, author Jillian C. Rogers argues that French
modernist composers processed this experience of unprecedented
violence by turning their musical activities into locations for
managing and performing trauma. Through analyses of archival
materials, French medical, philosophical, and literary texts, and
the music produced between the wars, Rogers frames World War I as a
pivotal moment in the history of music therapy. When musicians and
their audiences used music to remember lost loved ones, perform
grief, create healing bonds of friendship, and find consolation in
soothing sonic vibrations and rhythmic bodily movements, they
reconfigured music into an embodied means of consolation-a healer
of wounded minds and bodies. This in-depth account of the profound
impact that postwar trauma had on French musical life makes a
powerful case for the importance of addressing trauma, mourning,
and people's emotional lives in music scholarship. This is an open
access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and
offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access
locations.
Using Schumann's Eichendorff Liederkreis as the primary example, this book sheds new light on the structure of nineteenth century song cycles and on the Schumann's particular response to the problem of musical coherence in large scale works. Drawing on analysis, literary criticism, and source studies, this book argues for a new conception of the nineteenth-century song cycle. Rather than a unified whole, the cycle is seen as a fragmentary and open-ended form that enables Schumann to express the romantic themes of transcendence and ineffability in musical terms. THe book begins with a general discussion of the cycle as a genre. The heart of the book is a series of closely argued analyses of five of the Eichendorff songs, with particular attention on the relationship between text and music. Ferris concludes by setting the Liederkreis within the context of Schumann's other 1840 song cycles.
More than thirty years after The Beatles split up, the music of
Lennon, McCartney and Harrison lives on. What exactly were the
magical ingredients of those legendary songs? why are they still so
influential for today's bands? This groundbreaking book sets out to
exlore The Beatles' songwriting techniques in a clear and readable
style. It is aimed not only at musicians but anyone who has ever
enjoyed the work of one of the most productive and successful
songwriting partnerships of the 20th century. Author Dominic Pedler
explains the chord sequences, melodies and harmonies that made up
The Beatles' self penned songs and how they uncannily complemented
the lyrical themes. He also assesses the contributions that rhythm,
form and arrangement made to the Beatles unique sound. Throughout
the book the printed music of the Beatles' songs appears alongside
the text, illustrating the authors explanations. The Songwriting
Secrets of The Beatles is an essential addition to Beatles
literature - a new and perceptive analysis of the music itself
itself as performed by what Paul McCartney still calls 'a really
good, tight little band'.
This classic has outlived its original title, but not its
usefulness.
This Historical Dictionary of Romantic Music provides detailed and
authoritative articles for the most important composers, concepts,
genres, music educators, performers, theorists, writings, and works
of cultivated music in Europe and the Americas during the period
1789-1914. The roster of biographical entries includes not only
canonical composers such as Beethoven, Berlioz, Brahms, Chopin,
Faure, Grieg, Liszt, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Mussorgsky, Rossini,
Schubert, Robert Schumann, Sibelius, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Verdi,
Wagner, and Wolf, but also less-well-known distinguished
contemporaries of those composers (among them George Whitefield
Chadwick, Cecile Chaminade, Ernesto Elorduy, Chiquinha Gonzaga,
Fanny Hensel, C. H. Parry, and Clara Schumann, to name but a few).
Significant literary and cultural topics such as Goethe's Faust and
Wagner's theoretical writings of the 1850s, as well as entries on
other cultural luminaries who significantly influenced music's
Romanticisms - among them J. S. Bach, Goethe, Haydn, Handel, Heine,
Mozart, Schiller, and Shakespeare - are also included. Entries on
important institutions (conservatory, orpheon, Mannerchor),
concepts (biographical fallacy, copyright, exoticism, feminism,
nationalism, performance practice), and political caesurae and
movements (First and Second French Empire, First, Second, and Third
French Republic, Franco-Prussian War, Revolutions of 1848,
Risorgimento) round out the dictionary section. Like other volumes
in this series, this book's more than 500 entries are preceded by
an introductory essay that explains the essential concepts
necessary for understanding and exploring further the vast and
complex musical landscape of Romanticism, plus a detailed
Chronology. Concluding the volume is an extensive bibliography that
lists the most important source-critical series of editions of
Romantic music, important general writings on the period and its
music, and composer-by-composer bibliographies.
What does music have to say about modernity? How can this
apparently unworldly art tell us anything about modern life? In Out
of Time, author Julian Johnson begins from the idea that it can,
arguing that music renders an account of modernity from the inside,
a history not of events but of sensibility, an archaeology of
experience. If music is better understood from this broad
perspective, our idea of modernity itself is also enriched by the
specific insights of music. The result is a rehearing of modernity
and a rethinking of music - an account that challenges ideas of
linear progress and reconsiders the common concerns of music, old
and new. If all music since 1600 is modern music, the similarities
between Monteverdi and Schoenberg, Bach and Stravinsky, or
Beethoven and Boulez, become far more significant than their
obvious differences. Johnson elaborates this idea in relation to
three related areas of experience - temporality, history and
memory; space, place and technology; language, the body, and sound.
Criss-crossing four centuries of Western culture, he moves between
close readings of diverse musical examples (from the madrigal to
electronic music) and drawing on the history of science and
technology, literature, art, philosophy, and geography. Against the
grain of chronology and the usual divisions of music history,
Johnson proposes profound connections between musical works from
quite different times and places. The multiple lines of the
resulting map, similar to those of the London Underground, produce
a bewildering network of plural connections, joining Stockhausen to
Galileo, music printing to sound recording, the industrial
revolution to motivic development, steam trains to waltzes. A
significant and groundbreaking work, Out of Time is essential
reading for anyone interested in the history of music and
modernity.
This monograph offers a unique analysis of social protest in
popular music. It presents theoretical descriptions, methodological
tools, and an approach that encompasses various fields of
musicology, cultural studies, semiotics, discourse analysis, media
studies, and political and social sciences. The author argues that
protest songs should be taken as a musical genre on their own. He
points out that the general approach, when discussing these songs,
has been so far that of either analyzing the lyrics or the social
context. For some reason, the music itself has been often
overlooked. This book attempts to fill this gap. Its central thesis
is that a complete overview of these repertoires demands a thorough
interaction among contextual, lyrical, and musical elements
together. To accomplish this, the author develops a novel model
that systemizes and investigates musical repertoires. The model is
then applied to four case studies, those, too, chosen among topics
that are little (or not at all) frequented by scholars.
Discovering Music Theory is a suite of workbooks and corresponding
answer books that offers all-round preparation for the updated
ABRSM Music Theory exams from 2020, including the new online
papers. This full-colour workbook will equip students of all ages
with the skills, knowledge and understanding required for the ABRSM
Grade 1 Music Theory exam. Written to make theory engaging and
relevant to developing musicians of all ages, it offers: *
Discovering Music Theory is a suite of workbooks and corresponding
answer books that offers all-round preparation for the updated
ABRSM Music Theory exams from 2020, including the new online
papers. This full-colour workbook will equip students of all ages
with the skills, knowledge and understanding required for the ABRSM
Grade 2 Music Theory exam. Written to make theory engaging and
relevant to developing musicians of all ages, it offers: -
straightforward explanations of all new concepts - progressive
exercises to build skills and understanding, step by step -
challenge questions to extend learning and develop music-writing
skills - helpful tips for how to approach specific exercises -
ideas for linking theory to music listening, performing and
instrumental/singing lessons - clear signposting and progress
reviews throughout - a sample practice exam paper showing you what
to expect in the new style of exams from 2020 As well as fully
supporting the ABRSM theory syllabus, Discovering Music Theory
provides an excellent resource for anyone wishing to develop their
music literacy skills, including GCSE and A-Level candidates, and
adult learners.
The Shubert name has been synonymous with Broadway for almost as
long as Broadway entertainment itself. With seventeen Broadway
theatres including the Ambassador, the Music Box, and the Winter
Garden, The Shubert Organization perpetuates brothers Lee and Jacob
Shubert's business legacy. In The Shuberts and Their Passing Shows:
The Untold Tale of Ziegfeld's Rivals, author Jonas Westover
investigates beyond the Shuberts' business empire into their early
revues and the centrifugal role they played in developing American
theatre as an art form. The Shubert-produced revues, titled Passing
Shows, were terrifically popular in the teens and twenties,
consistently competing with Florenz Ziegfeld's Follies for the
greatest numbers of stars, biggest spectacles, and ultimately the
largest audiences. The Shuberts and Their Passing Shows is the
first-ever book to unpack the colorful history of the productions,
delving into their stars, costumes, stagecraft, and orchestration
in unprecedented detail. Providing a fresh and exciting window into
American theatrical history, Westover traces the fascinating
history of the Shuberts' revue series, presented annually from
1912-1924, and covers more broadly the glorious days of early
Broadway. In addition to its compelling history of Broadway's
Golden Age, The Shuberts and Their Passing Shows also provides a
revisionary argument about the overarching history of the revue.
Bolstered by a rich collection of documents in the Shubert Theater
Archive, Westover argues against the popular misconception that the
Shubert's competitor, producer Florenz Ziegfield - responsible for
the better-known Follies - was the sole proprietor of Broadway
audiences. As Westover proves, not only were the Passing Shows as
popular as the Follies but also a key component in a history of the
revue that is vastly more complex than previous scholarship has
shown. The Shuberts and Their Passing Shows brings to fruition
years of original research and invaluable insights into the gilded
formation of present day Broadway.
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