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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Western music, periods & styles > General
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.
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.
Thomas Salmon (1647-1706) is remembered today for the fury with
which Matthew Locke greeted his first foray into musical writing,
the Essay to the Advancement of Musick (1672), and the
near-farcical level to which the subsequent pamphlet dispute
quickly descended. Salmon proposed a radical reform of musical
notation, involving a new set of clefs which he claimed, and Locke
denied, would make learning and performing music much easier. The
incident has tended to be passed over rather briefly in the
scholarly literature, but beneath the unedifying invective employed
by Salmon, Locke and their supporters, serious and novel statements
were being made about what constituted musical knowledge and what
was the proper way to acquire it. This volume is the first
published scholarly edition of Salmon's writings on notation,
previously available only in microfilm and online facsimiles. A
second volume to follow will present Salmon's writings on pitch -
previously only available mostly in manuscript.
This is the second volume in a two-part set on the writings of
Thomas Salmon. Salmon (1647-1706) is remembered today for the fury
with which Matthew Locke greeted his first foray into musical
writing, the Essay to the Advancement of Musick (1672), and the
near-farcical level to which the subsequent pamphlet dispute
quickly descended. Salmon proposed a radical reform of musical
notation, involving a new set of clefs which he claimed, and Locke
denied, would make learning and performing music much easier (these
writings are the subject of Volume I). Later in his life Salmon
devoted his attention to an exploration of the possible reform of
musical pitch. He made or renewed contact with instrument-makers
and performers in London, with the mathematician John Wallis, with
Isaac Newton and with the Royal Society of London through its
Secretary Hans Sloane. A series of manuscript treatises and a
published Proposal to Perform Musick, in Perfect and Mathematical
Proportions (1688) paved the way for an appearance by Salmon at the
Royal Society in 1705, when he provided a demonstration performance
by professional musicians using instruments specially modified to
his designs. This created an explicit overlap between the spaces of
musical performance and of experimental performance, as well as
raising questions about the meaning and the source of musical
knowledge similar to those raised in his work on notation. Benjamin
Wardhaugh presents the first published scholarly edition of
Salmon's writings on pitch, previously only available mostly in
manuscript.
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.
Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, Op. 27, No. 2 is among the most
popular and most frequently performed compositions by any great
composer. Reflecting the depth of Beethoven's musical power, the
Moonlight Sonata is one of the best-loved sonatas Beethoven ever
composed. In this Belwin Classic Library edition, each page of the
music is spaciously laid out, meticulous and uncluttered, with
clear, clean engraving. All three movements are included: I. Adagio
sostenuto, II. Allegretto, and III. Presto agitato.
*** 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.
The Piano Player: Wintertide Collection presents 20 seasonal and
wintry pieces of classical music, specially arranged for
intermediate solo piano. Contents include Carol Of The Bells by
Mykola Leontovych, Sleigh Ride by Leroy Anderson, Dance of the
Sugar Plum Fairy by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and Sinfonia from
Christmas Oratorio by J.S. Bach. The cover features Edward Bawden's
watercolour Great Bardfield, 1955, and a double-side colour print
provides the full artwork as a beautiful collectible. With its
gorgeous presentation, superb musical selection, adept pianistic
arrangements and helpful fingering, it is very easy to recommend
this publication to late intermediate and more advanced players
everywhere.The Wintertide Collection really is a fabulous gift, and
one that will bring joy for many winters to come! Andrew Eales,
November 2023, pianodao.com
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.
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.
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.
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
Leonard Bernstein was arguably the most highly esteemed,
influential, and charismatic American classical music personality
of the twentieth century. Conductor, composer, pianist, writer,
educator, and human rights activist, Bernstein truly led a life of
Byronic intensity-passionate, risk-taking, and convention-breaking.
In November 1989, just a year before his death, Bernstein invited
writer Jonathan Cott to his country home in Fairfield, Connecticut
for what turned out to be his last major interview-an unprecedented
and astonishingly frank twelve-hour conversation. Now, in Dinner
with Lenny, Cott provides a complete account of this remarkable
dialogue in which Bernstein discourses with disarming frankness,
humor, and intensity on matters musical, pedagogical, political,
psychological, spiritual, and the unabashedly personal. Bernstein
comes alive again, with vodka glass in hand, singing, humming, and
making pointed comments on a wide array of topics, from popular
music ("the Beatles were the best songwriters since Gershwin"), to
great composers ("Wagner was always in a psychotic frenzy. He was a
madman, a megalomaniac"), and politics (lamenting "the
brainlessness, the mindlessness, the carelessness, and the
heedlessness of the Reagans of the world"). And of course,
Bernstein talks of conducting, advising students "to look at the
score and make it come alive as if they were the composer. If you
can do that, you're a conductorand if you can't, you're not. If I
don't become Brahms or Tchaikovsky or Stravinsky when I'm
conducting their works, then it won't be a great performance."
After Rolling Stone magazine published an abridged version of the
conversation in 1990, the Chicago Tribune praised it as "an
extraordinary interview" filled with "passion, wit, and acute
analysis." Studs Terkel called the interview "astonishing and
revelatory." Now, this full-length version provides the reader with
a unique, you-are-there perspective on what it was like to converse
with this gregarious, witty, candid, and inspiring American dynamo.
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.
Often considered Romania's greatest musical force and a significant
mind of the 20th century, composer George Enescu (1881-1955)
achieved international fame and succeeded in incorporating Romanian
spirituality into worldwide culture. Masterworks of George Enescu
provides a profound and very detailed analysis of more than 25 of
this important composer's most representative works. Translated
from musicologist Pascal Bentoiu's Romanian publication, Lory
Wallfisch presents this vital work for the first time to
English-speaking audiences, providing the worldwide public with the
tools to understand and enjoy Enescu's music. Bentoiu presents a
kind of travel diary through Enescu's creative legacy, offering a
comprehensive, well-documented, knowledgeable, and generously
illustrated analytical study of the composer's greatest
masterpieces. Works such as the Romanian Rhapsodies, the Second
Suite for Orchestra, Vox Maris, Impressions d'Enfance, his opera
Oedipe, and several sonatas and quartets are carefully examined and
admired for their substance and their ability to add dignity to the
musical world. The works are presented chronologically, considering
their conceptual realization as well as their inception and
completion. Illustrated with more than 400 musical examples, this
impressive study is a perfect guide toward the thorough enjoyment
of Enescu's masterpieces.
Following the successful volumes of Song on Record, this book
surveys all the recordings of major choral works from the
Monteverdi Vespers to Britten's War Requiem. Discussion of the
various interpretations on record is preceded, in each chapter, by
informed criticism of the work concerned, including--where
appropriate--a clarification of editions, revisions, etc. (all the
many changes in Messiah are, for instance, described in detail).
The coverage of recordings is exhaustive and its value is enhanced
by a detailed discography, with up-to-date numbers of each
recording. Each contributor is an authority within his or her
specialist area and collectively, their insights and observations
of leading music critics make the book invaluable to record
collectors, music lovers and anyone with an interest in changing
tastes and styles of musical performance. Alan Blyth, formerly with
The Times (London) is now the music critic of The Daily Telegraph.
He is on the editorial board of Opera, the editor of the
three-volume Opera on Record and two-volume Song on Record (CUP),
as well as author of Remembering Britten and Introduction to
Wagner's Ring.
Classical Concert Studies: A Companion to Contemporary Research and
Performance is a landmark publication that maps out a new
interdisciplinary field of Concert Studies, offering fresh ways of
understanding the classical music concert in the twenty-first
century. It brings together essays, research articles, and case
studies from scholars and music professionals including musicians,
music managers, and concert designers. Gathering both historical
and contemporary cases, the contributors draw on approaches from
sociology, ethnology, musicology, cultural studies, and other
disciplines to create a rich portrait of the classical concert's
past, present, and future. Based on two earlier volumes published
in German under the title Das Konzert (The Concert), and with a
selection of new chapters written for the English edition, this
companion enables students, researchers, and practitioners in the
classical and contemporary music fields to understand this emerging
field of research, go beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries
and methodologies, and spark a renaissance for the classical
concert.
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