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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Western music, periods & styles > General
What makes a classical song a song? In a wide-ranging 2004
discussion, covering such contrasting composers as Brahms and
Berberian, Schubert and Kurtag, Jonathan Dunsby considers the
nature of vocality in songs of the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. The essence and scope of poetic and literary meaning in
the Lied tradition is subjected to close scrutiny against the
backdrop of 'new musicological' thinking and music-theoretical
orthodoxies. The reader is thus offered the best insights available
within an evidence-based approach to musical discourse. Schoenberg
figures conspicuously as both songsmith and theorist, and some
easily comprehensible Schenkerian approaches are used to convey
ideas of musical time and expressive focus. In this work of
scholarship and theoretical depth, Professor Dunsby's highly
original approach and engaging style will ensure its appeal to all
practising musicians and students of Romantic and modern music.
Disaster Songs as Intangible Memorials in Atlantic Canada draws on
a collection of over 600 songs relating to Atlantic Canadian
disasters from 1891 up until the present and describes the
characteristics that define them as intangible memorials. The book
demonstrates the relationship between vernacular memorials -
informal memorials collectively and spontaneously created from a
variety of objects by the general public - and disaster songs. The
author identifies the features that define vernacular memorials and
applies them to disaster songs: spontaneity, ephemerality,
importance of place, motivations and meaning-making, content, as
well as the role of media in inspiring and disseminating memorials
and songs. Visit the companion website: www.disastersongs.ca.
Putting forward an extensive new argument for a humanities-based
approach to big-data analysis, The Music in the Data shows how
large datasets of music, or music corpora, can be productively
integrated with the qualitative questions at the heart of music
research. The author argues that as well as providing objective
evidence, music corpora can themselves be treated as texts to be
subjectively read and creatively interpreted, allowing new levels
of understanding and insight into music traditions. Each chapter in
this book asks how we define a core music-theory topic, such as
style, harmony, meter, function, and musical key, and then
approaches the topic through considering trends within large
musical datasets, applying a combination of quantitative analysis
and qualitative interpretation. Throughout, several basic
techniques of data analysis are introduced and explained, with
supporting materials available online. Connecting the empirical
information from corpus analysis with theories of musical and
textual meaning, and showing how each approach can enrich the
other, this book provides a vital perspective for scholars and
students in music theory, musicology, and all areas of music
research.
- Shows how a specialized music performance course can be
reimagined to achieve greater inclusivity and foster student
creativity - Connects traditional music teaching with contemporary
education goals and issues - By centering African American vocal
repertoire, enables instructors to challenge the Eurocentrism of
traditional vocal music canon
Articles on masterpieces of European religious music, from the
middle ages to Stravinsky and Tavener. The late Wilfrid Mellers,
who occupies a special place among music critics, described himself
as a non-believer; but his preference for music that "displays a
sense of the numinous" (in his words) will strike a chord with many
wholisten to religious music nowadays, and who share his view that
music that confronts first and last things is likely to offer more
than music that evades them. The essays form five groups, which
together offer a survey of religious music from around the first
millennium to the beginning of the second, in the context of the
difficult issues of what religious music is, and, for good measure,
what is religion? The parts are: The Ages of Christian Faith; The
Re-birth of a Re-birth: From Renaissance to High Baroque; From
Enlightenment to Doubt; From "the Death of God" to "the Unanswered
Question"; and The Ancient Law and the Modern Mind. Musical
discussion, with copious examples, is conducted throughout the book
in a context that is also religious - and indeed philosophical,
social, and political, with the open-endedness that such an
approach demands in the presentation of ideas aboutmusic's most
fundamental nature and purposes. COMPOSERS: Hildegard of Bingen;
Perotin; Machaut; Dunstable, Dufay; William Corniyshes father and
son; Tallis; Byrd; Monteverdi; Schutz; J.S. Bach; Couperin; Handel;
Haydn;Mozart; Beethoven; Schubert; Bruckner; Berlioz, Faure; Verdi,
Brahms; Elgar, Delius; Holst, Vaughan Williams, Howells; Britten;
Janacek; Messiaen, Poulenc; Rachmaninov; Stravinsky; Part, Tavener,
Gorecki, Macmillan, Finnissy; Copland.
Informed by theories pertaining to transnational mobility,
ethnicity and race, gender, postcolonialism, as well as Japanese
studies, Transnational Musicians explores the way Japanese
musicians establish their transnational careers in the
hierarchically structured classical music world. Drawing on rich
material from multi-sited fieldwork and in-depth interviews with
Japanese artists in Japan, France and Poland, this study portrays
the structurally - and individually - conditioned opportunities and
constraints of becoming a transnational classical musician. It
shows how transnational artists strive to conciliate the
irreconcilable: their professional identification with the dominant
image of 'rootless' classical musicianship and their ethnocultural
affiliation with Japan. As such this book critically engages with
the neoliberal discourse on talent and meritocracy prevailing in
the creative/cultural industry, which promotes the common image of
cosmopolitan artists, whose high, universal skills allow them to
carry out their occupational activity internationally, regardless
of such prescriptive criteria as gender, ethnicity and race. Highly
interdisciplinary, this book will appeal to students and
researchers interested in such fields as migration, transnational
mobility, ethnicity and race in the creative/cultural sector,
gender studies, Japanese culture and other related social issues.
It will also be instructive for professionals from the world of
classical music, as well as ordinary readers passionate about
Japanese society.
What is it like to work as a classical musician today? How can we
explain ongoing gender, racial, and class inequalities in the
classical music profession? What happens when musicians become
entrepreneurial and think of themselves as a product that needs to
be sold and marketed? Gender, Subjectivity, and Cultural Work
explores these and other questions by drawing on innovative,
empirical research on the working lives of classical musicians in
Germany and the UK. Indeed, Scharff examines a range of timely
issues such as the gender, racial, and class inequalities that
characterise the cultural and creative industries; the ways in
which entrepreneurialism - as an ethos to work on and improve the
self - is lived out; and the subjective experiences of precarious
work in so-called 'creative cities'. Thus, this book not only adds
to our understanding of the working lives of artists and creatives,
but also makes broader contributions by exploring how precarity,
neoliberalism, and inequalities shape subjective experiences.
Contributing to a range of contemporary debates around cultural
work, Gender, Subjectivity, and Cultural Work will be of interest
to scholars and students in the fields of Sociology, Gender and
Cultural Studies.
Race and Gender in the Western Music History Survey: A Teacher's
Guide provides concrete information and approaches that will help
instructors include women and people of color in the typical music
history survey course and the foundational music theory classes.
This book provides a reconceptualization of the principles that
shape the decisions instructors should make when crafting the
syllabus. It offers new perspectives on canonical composers and
pieces that take into account musical, cultural, and social
contexts where women and people of color are present. Secondly, it
suggests new topics of study and pieces by composers whose work
fits into a more inclusive narrative of music history. A thematic
approach parallels the traditional chronological sequencing in
Western music history classes. Three themes include people and
communities that suffer from various kinds of exclusion: Locales
& Locations; Forms & Factions; Responses & Reception.
Each theme is designed to uncover a different cultural facet that
is often minimized in traditional music history classrooms but
which, if explored, lead to topics in which other perspectives and
people can be included organically in the curriculum, while not
excluding canonical composers.
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.
Through the systematic analysis of data from music rehearsals,
lessons, and performances, this book develops a new conceptual
framework for studying cognitive processes in musical activity.
Grounding the Analysis of Cognitive Processes in Music Performance
draws uniquely on dominant paradigms from the fields of cognitive
science, ethnography, anthropology, psychology, and
psycholinguistics to develop an ecologically valid framework for
the analysis of cognitive processes during musical activity. By
presenting a close analysis of activities including instrumental
performance on the bassoon, lessons on the guitar, and a group
rehearsal, chapters provide new insights into the person/instrument
system, the musician's use of informational resources, and the
organization of perceptual experience during musical performance.
Engaging in musical activity is shown to be a highly dynamic and
collaborative process invoking tacit knowledge and coordination as
musicians identify targets of focal awareness for themselves, their
colleagues, and their students. Written by a cognitive scientist
and classically trained bassoonist, this specialist text builds on
two decades of music performance research; and will be of interest
to researchers, academics, and postgraduate students in the fields
of cognitive psychology and music psychology, as well as
musicology, ethnomusicology, music theory, and performance science.
Linda T. Kaastra has taught courses in cognitive science, music,
and discourse studies at the University of British Columbia (UBC)
and Simon Fraser University. She earned a PhD from UBC's Individual
Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies Program.
The Classical Music Encylopedia, now fully updated, traces the
development of Western music from medieval times through to the
twenty-first century. Each chapter begins with an Introduction to
the era, followed by an A to Z of the key composers and musicians
of the era, with an expert's recommended recording for each entry.
Within these, the musical greats - from Mozart to Stravinksy - have
more extensive entries. The Styles and Forms sections discuss the
many different styles of music, from the earliest notation to the
minimalism of the twentieth century, while the development of each
era's Instruments is also extensively investigated. Written by many
of the world's leading experts in the field, this invaluable
encyclopedia is comprehensive, easy-to-use and highly informative -
an essential guide for readers of all levels.
Vladimir de Pachmann was perhaps history's most notorious pianist.
Widely regarded as the greatest player of Chopin's works, Pachmann
embedded comedic elements-be it fiddling with his piano bench or
flirting with the audience-within his classic piano recitals to
alleviate his own anxiety over performing. But this wunderkind,
whose admirers included Franz Liszt and music critic James Gibbons
Huneker (who cheekily nicknamed Pachmann the "Chopinzee"), would by
the turn of the century find his antics on the concert stage
scorned by critics and out of fashion with listeners, burying his
pianistic legacy. In Chopin's Prophet: The Life of Pianist Vladimir
de Pachmann, the first biography ever of this remarkable figure,
Edward Blickstein and Gregor Benko explore the private and public
lives of this master pianist, surveying his achievements within the
context of contemporary critical opinion and preserving his legacy
as one of the last great Romantic pianists of his time. Chopin's
Prophet paints a colorful portrait of classical piano performance
and celebrity at the turn of the 20th century while also
documenting Pachmann's attraction to men, which ultimately ended
his marriage but was overlooked by his audiences. As the authors
illustrate, Pachmann lived in a radically different world of music
making, one in which eccentric personality and behavior fit into a
much more flexible, and sometimes mysterious, musical community,
one where standards were set not by certified experts with degrees
but by the musicians themselves. Detailing the evolution of concert
piano playing style from the era of Chopin until World War I,
Chopin's Prophet tells the fantastic and true story of an artist of
and after his time.
*** With a foreword by Alexander Armstrong. Do you know your Chopin
from your Schubert? Your concerto from your cadenza? The Classic FM
Puzzle Book 365 will sharpen your musical knowledge with a fun and
stimulating puzzle to challenge and entertain you every single day
of the year. From quizzes to wordsearches, logic tests to missing
symbols - via emojis, sudoku, crosswords and more - our classical
music experts have created a compendium of 365 puzzles to keep you
guessing the whole year round.
From 1660 through approximately 1830, the alteration of
Shakespearean texts to comply with contemporary dramaturgy was a
normal occurrence, and the need to adapt Shakespeare to popular
tastes generated music quite different in style, function, and
influence from that envisioned by the Elizabethan playwright.
Shakespeare's plots and poetry were updated, and the role of music
elevated. The musical repertoire created for this transfigured
Shakespeareana represents the staggering variety of music on the
English stage and shows the effect of Continental musical
influences, especially Italian opera and ballad opera. Proceeding
chronologically, this book discusses music used in Shakespeare
productions on the London stage during the 170-year period
following the Restoration. Included are settings of Shakespeare's
song lyrics, other original texts, and added non-Shakespearean
texts, as well as incidental music, masques, operas and afterpieces
based on the plays. Source materials documenting the arguments
include manuscript scores, the extant music printed in play texts,
and contemporary commentary from advertisements, criticism,
playbills, and memoirs and correspondence. An appendix summarizes
information about important productions and source materials in a
series of charts cross-referenced to the extensive bibliography.
Numerous musical examples illustrate the text, and scores of
Shakespearean music by Arne, Boyce, Leveridge, Vernon, Weldon, and
others are reprinted. Theater historians as well as music
historians working in this period will find this book a valuable
resource, as will theater practitioners interested in period
productions.
Ever since the nineteenth century, descriptions of musical form
have tended to rely heavily on architectonic analogies. In
contrast, earlier discussions more often invoked the metaphor of a
journey to describe the structure of a composition. In Journeys
Through Galant Expositions, author L. Poundie Burstein encourages
readers to view the form of Galant music through this earlier
metaphorical lens, much as those who composed, performed,
improvised, and listened to music in the mid-1700s would have
experienced it. By elucidating eighteenth-century ideas regarding
musical form and applying them to works by a wide range of
composers - including Haydn and Mozart, as well as a host of others
who are often overlooked - this innovative study provides an
accessible new window into the music of this time. Rather than
dissecting concepts from the 1700s as a mere historical exercise or
treating them as a precursor of later theories, Burstein
invigorates the ideas of theorists such as Heinrich Christoph Koch
and shows how they can directly impact our understanding and
appreciation of Galant music as audiences and performers.
The music of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven forms a cornerstone of the modern repertoire, but very little is known about the context in which these composers worked. Beginning with the early decades of the eighteenth century, the essays in this volume consider some of the musical traditions and practices of this little understood period of music history. Four main areas are covered: orchestral music, sacred music, opera and keyboard music.
Amid enormous changes in higher education, audience and music
listener preferences, and the relevant career marketplace, music
faculty are increasingly aware of the need to reimagine classical
music performance training for current and future students. But how
can faculty and administrators, under urgent pressure to act, be
certain that their changes are effective, strategic, and beneficial
for students and institutions? In this provocative yet measured
book, Michael Stepniak and Peter Sirotin address these questions
with perspectives rooted in extensive experience as musicians,
educators, and arts leaders. Building on a multidimensional
analysis of core issues and drawing upon interviews with leaders
from across the performing arts and higher education music fields,
Stepniak and Sirotin scrutinize arguments for and against radical
change, illuminating areas of unavoidable challenge as well as
areas of possibility and hope. An essential read for education
leaders contemplating how classical music can continue to thrive
within American higher education.
How was large-scale music directed or conducted in Britain before
baton conducting took hold in the 1830s? This book investigates the
ways large-scale music was directed or conducted in Britain before
baton conducting took hold in the 1830s. After surveying practice
in Italy, Germany and France from Antiquity to the eighteenth
century,the focus is on direction in two strands of music making in
Stuart and Georgian Britain: choral music from Restoration
cathedrals to the oratorio tradition deriving from Handel, and
music in the theatre from the Jacobean masque to nineteenth-century
opera, ending with an account of how modern baton conducting spread
in the 1830s from the pit of the Haymarket Theatre to the
Philharmonic Society and to large-scale choral music. Part social
and musical history based on new research into surviving performing
material, documentary sources and visual evidence, and part polemic
intended to question the use of modern baton conducting in
pre-nineteenth-century music, Before the Baton throws new light on
many hitherto dark areas, though the heart of the book is an
extended discussion of the evidence relating to Handel's operas,
oratorios and choral music. Contrary to near-universal modern
practice, he mostly preferred to play rather than beat time.
The search for the origins of language was one of the most pressing philosophical issues of the eighteenth century. It has escaped notice, however, that music figured prominently in that search. This study analyzes reflections on music and music theory as they appear within the logical and narrative structure of texts by, for example, Rousseau, Diderot, Rameau and Condillac, and considers the ways in which music facilitates links between language and meaning, between conceptions of an original society and an ideal social order.
Women, Music, Culture: An Introduction, Third Edition is the first
undergraduate textbook on the history and contributions of women in
a variety of musical genres and professions, ideal for students in
Music and Gender Studies courses. A compelling narrative,
accompanied by 112 guided listening experiences, brings the world
of women in music to life. The author employs a wide array of
pedagogical aides, including a running glossary and a comprehensive
companion website with links to Spotify playlists and supplementary
videos for each chapter. The musical work of women throughout
history-including that of composers, performers, conductors,
technicians, and music industry personnel-is presented using both
art music and popular music examples. New to this edition: An
expansion from 57 to 112 listening examples conveniently available
on Spotify. Additional focus on intersectionality in art and
popular music. A new segment on Music and #MeToo and increased
coverage of protest music. Additional coverage of global music.
Substantial updates in popular music. Updated companion website
materials designed to engage all learners. Visit the author's
website at www.womenmusicculture.com
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