|
|
Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Western music, periods & styles > General
'A magnificent treasury . . . a fascinating tour de force.'
Observer 'Year of Wonder is an absolute treat - the most
enlightening way to be guided through the year.' Eddie Redmayne
Classical music for everyone - an inspirational piece of music for
every day of the year, celebrating composers from the medieval era
to the present day, written by award-winning violinist and BBC
Radio 3 presenter Clemency Burton-Hill. Have you ever heard a piece
of music so beautiful it stops you in your tracks? Or wanted to
discover more about classical music but had no idea where to begin?
Year of Wonder is a unique celebration of classical music by an
author who wants to share its diverse wonders with others and to
encourage a love for this genre in all readers, whether complete
novices or lifetime enthusiasts. Clemency chooses one piece of
music for each day of the year, with a short explanation about the
composer to put it into context, and brings the music alive in a
modern and playful way, while also extolling the positive
mindfulness element of giving yourself some time every day to
listen to something uplifting or beautiful. Thoughtfully curated
and expertly researched, this is a book of classical music to keep
you company: whoever you are, wherever you're from. 'The only
requirements for enjoying classical music are open ears and an open
mind.' Clemency Burton-Hill Playlists are available on most
streaming music platforms including Apple Music and Spotify.
James Hogg's Jacobite Relics - originally commissioned by the
Highland Society of London in 1817 - is an important addition to
The Collected Works of James Hogg. It created a canon for the
Jacobite song which had an enormous influence on subsequent
collections, and was of great importance in defining the
relationship between the Scottish song tradition and its Romantic
editors and collectors. From the first publication of the Relics in
1819 the majority of scholars have argued about how many of them
were authored or at least substantially altered by Hogg. Professor
Murray Pittock has conducted extensive research in this area since
1987, and has identified many previously neglected or unknown
sources from which Hogg would have worked as he developed his
collection. He has identified contemporary 17th- and 18th-century
sources for the majority of the songs in the edition. This has
implications not only for Hogg's integrity as a writer, but for our
understanding of the history of the Scottish song as a whole. The
introduction to volume one includes the crucial issue of Hogg's
relationship to the Jacobite song tradition, and the place of the
Relics within Hogg's career and personal context, facilitating
further interpretations of Hogg's range of creative strategies.
Considerable annotation accurately communicates the context of the
songs and Hogg's relationship to the textuality of Jacobite
culture. The introduction to volume two deals with the genesis of
the text and Hogg's relationship with the Highland Society. This
volume will be available from November 2002.
(Ensemble Collection). This classic series of duets for like
instruments is recognizable to nearly everyone who has ever studied
an instrument. The wealth of material supplements musical
development and provides a rich experience for growing musicians.
Duet playing is often a student's first form of ensemble experience
- technique, tone quality, intonation and balance are introduced as
students do one of the things they enjoy most - making music with a
friend. And duet playing leads easily and naturally to competent
performance in larger ensembles. (Vol. I Easy to Medium, Vol. 2
Medium to Advanced)
The importance of nineteenth-century writing about culture has long
been accepted by scholars, yet so far as music criticism is
concerned, Victorian England has been an area of scholarly neglect.
This state of affairs is all the more surprising given that the
quantity of such criticism in the Victorian and Edwardian press was
vast, much of it displaying a richness and diversity of critical
perspectives. Through the study of music criticism from several key
newspapers and journals (specifically The Times, Daily Telegraph,
Athenaeum and The Musical Times), this book examines the reception
history of new English music in the period surveyed and assesses
its cultural, social and political, importance. Music critics
projected and promoted English composers to create a national music
of which England could be proud. J A Fuller Maitland, critic on The
Times, described music journalists as 'watchmen on the walls of
music', and Meirion Hughes extends this metaphor to explore their
crucial role in building and safeguarding what came to be known as
the English Musical Renaissance. Part One of the book looks at the
critics in the context of the publications for which they worked,
while Part Two focuses on the relationship between the
watchmen-critics and three composers: Arthur Sullivan, Hubert Parry
and Edward Elgar. Hughes argues that the English Musical
Renaissance was ultimately a success thanks largely to the work of
the critics. In so doing, he provides a major re-evaluation of the
impact of journalism on British music history.
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
In many ways the history of British light music knits together the
social and economic history of the country with that of its general
musical heritage. Numerous 'serious' composers from Elgar to
Britten composed light music, and the genre adapted itself to
incorporate the changing fashions heralded by the rise and fall of
music hall, the drawing room ballad, ragtime, jazz and the revue.
From the 1950s the recording and broadcasting industries provided a
new home for light music as an accompaniment to radio programmes
and films. Geoffrey Self deftly handles a wealth of information to
illustrate the immense role that light music has played in British
culture over the last 130 years. His insightful assessments of the
best and the most shameful examples of the genre help to pinpoint
its enduring qualities; qualities which enable it to maintain a
presence in the face of today's domination by commercial popular
music.
First published in 1989, The Singing Bourgeois challenges the myth
that the 'Victorian parlour song' was a clear-cut genre. Derek
Scott reveals the huge diversity of musical forms and styles that
influenced the songs performed in middle class homes during the
nineteenth century, from the assimilation of Celtic and
Afro-American culture by songwriters, to the emergence of forms of
sacred song performed in the home. The popularity of these domestic
songs opened up opportunities to women composers, and a chapter of
the book is dedicated to the discussion of women songwriters and
their work. The commercial success of bourgeois song through the
sale of sheet music demonstrated how music might be incorporated
into a system of capitalist enterprise. Scott examines the early
amateur music market and its evolution into an increasingly
professionalized activity towards the end of the century. This new
updated edition features an additional chapter which provides a
broad survey of music and class in London, drawing on sources that
have appeared since the book's first publication. An overview of
recent research is also given in a section of additional notes. The
new bibliography of nineteenth-century British and American popular
song is the most comprehensive of its kind and includes information
on twentieth-century collections of songs, relevant periodicals,
catalogues, dictionaries and indexes, as well as useful databases
and internet sites. The book also features accompanying
downloadable resources of songs from the period.
(Music Sales America). A compendium of the world's most loved
music. True to the spirit of the great composers, this volume fills
the needs of students and teachers. Over 100 works, including
Schubert's "Moment Musicale," Chopin's "Minute Waltz," Beethoven's
"Rondo a Cappriccio," and much more. Spiral bound.
This volume constitutes the first complete publication of Marina
Lobanova's study - banned in Russia in 1979 as "too avant-garde"
and published there only in a bowdlerized version in 1990.
Drawing on baroque, classical, romantic, and contemporary music,
Dr. Lobanova proposes an original concept of musical syntax with
special emphasis on the role of the categories of time, space, and
motion. Embracing such aspects of cultural life as poetry and
philosophy, she deals with the problems of cultural dialogue and
the disintegration of the concept of "absolute music."
Contents: Introduction. Lawrence Kramer 'Red War is My Song': Whitman, Higginson and Civil War Music. John Picker 'No Armpits, Please: We're British': Whitman and English Music, 1884-1936. Byron Adams Eros, Expressionism and Exile: Whitman in German Music. Walter and Werner Grünzweig Reclaiming Walt: Marc Blitzstein's Whitman Settings. David Metzer A Visionary Backward Glance: Divided Experience in Paul Hindemith's 'When Lilacs Last in the Doorway Bloom'd'. Kathy Rugoff Like Falling Leaves: The Erotics of Mourning in Four Drum-Taps Settings. Lawrence Kramer
This book is the first comprehensive account of classical music on
all British radio stations, BBC and commercial, between 1945 and
1995. It narrates the shifting development of those services, from
before the launch of the Third Programme until after the start of
Classic FM, examining the output from both qualitative and
quantitative perspectives, as well as recounting some of the
stories and anecdotes which enliven the tale. During these fifty
years, British classical music radio featured spells of broad,
multi-channel classical music radio, with aspirational and
mainstream culture enjoying positive interactions, followed by
periods of more restricted and exclusive output, in a paradigm of
the place of high culture in UK society as a whole. The history was
characterised by the recurring tensions between elite and popular
provision, and the interplay of demands for highbrow and middlebrow
output, and also sheds new light on the continuing relevance of
class in Britain. It is an important and unique resource for those
studying British history in the second half of the twentieth
century, as well as being a compelling and diverting account for
enthusiasts for classical music radio.
First published in 1996, this volume counters the attitude of
paying more attention to the performer than to the piece. Too
often, Anthony Hopkins argues, music is simply regarded as a
pleasant background noise to accompany our other activities,
whereas Beethoven offers much more than that. Hopkins aim to
promote hearing, rather than listening. He examines Beethoven's
piano concertos numbers 1 through 5, along with the violin concerto
in D Major, Op. 61, and the Triple Concerto, Op. 56.
First published in 1998, this broad survey includes a large number
of musical illustrations and provides an indispensable guide for
both students and teachers. Hexachords and solmization syllables
formed the foundations of musical language during the sixteenth
century. Yet, owing to changes over time in music education and
style, there no longer exists widespread general knowledge of
hexachords. Without this awareness it is impossible to appreciate
fully the music of the most important composers of the Renaissance
such as Palestrina, Lasso and Monteverdi. This book is the first
attempt to fill such a gap in our understanding of hexachords and
how they were employed in late-Renaissance music. Lionel Pike's
research covers the period from Willaert to Dowland (c. 1530-1600)
and examines the ways in which the uses of hexachords developed in
the hands of different composers. The book concludes with an
investigation of English examples of hexachords in vocal and
instrumental music.
"Racial Uplift and American Music, 1878-1943" traces the career
of racial uplift ideology as a factor in elite African Americans'
embrace of classical music around the turn of the previous century,
from the collapse of Reconstruction to the death of
composer/conductor R. Nathaniel Dett, whose music epitomized
"uplift."
After Reconstruction many black leaders had retreated from
emphasizing "inalienable rights" to a narrower rationale for
equality and inclusion: they now sought to rehabilitate the race's
image by stressing class distinctions, respectable middle-class
behavior, and service to the masses. Musically, the black
intelligentsia resorted to European models as vehicles for cultural
vindication. Their response to racism was to create and promote
morally positive, politically inoffensive art that idealized the
race.
By incorporating black folk elements into the dignified genres
of art song, symphony, and opera, "uplifters" demonstrated
worthiness through high achievement in acknowledged arenas. Their
efforts were variously opposed, tolerated, or supported by a range
of white elites with their own notions about African American
culture. The resulting conversation--more a stew of arguments than
a dialogue--occupied the pages of black newspapers and informed the
work of white philanthropists. Women also played crucial roles.
"Racial Uplift and American Music, 1878-1943" examines the lives
and thought of personalities central to musical uplift--Dett, Sears
CEO Julius Rosenwald, author James Monroe Trotter, sociologist W.
E. B. Du Bois, journalist Nora Douglas Holt, and others--with an
eye to recognizing their contributions and restoring their
stature.
In this pioneering new book, Dr Martin presents a lively and
accessible introduction to the social analysis of music.
Dr Martin argues that musical meaning must be understood as
socially constructed, rather than inherent, and that the notion of
a correspondence between social and musical structures is highly
problematic. An alternative approach, based on the 'social action'
pespective is outlined, and the book concludes with a discussion of
the social situation of music in advanced capitalist society. Along
the way, leading thinkers are introduced: Adorno, Weber and Schntz
as well as, more recently, John Shepherd and the feminist
musicologists. The book draws on studies spanning the whole
spectrum of Western music - rock bands to symphony orchestras,
medieval plainchant to avant-garde jazz and concludes with a
discussion of the social situation of music in advanced capitalist
society.
The Venezuelan youth orchestra program known as "El Sistema" has
attracted much attention internationally, partly via its flagship
orchestra, The Simonn Bolivar Youth Orchestra, headed by Gustavo
Dudamel, and partly through its claims to use classical music
education to rescue vulnerable children. Having been met
overwhelmingly with praise, The System has become an inspiration
for music educators around the globe. Yet, despite its fame,
influence, and size - it is projected to number a million students
in Venezuela and has spread to dozens of countries - it has been
the subject of surprisingly little scrutiny and genuine debate. In
this first full-length critical study of the program, Geoffrey
Baker explores the career of its founder, Jose Antonio Abreu, and
the ideology and organizational dynamics of his institution.
Drawing on a year of fieldwork in Venezuela and interviews with
Venezuelan musicians and cultural figures, Baker examines El
Sistema's program of "social action through music," reassessing
widespread beliefs about the system as a force for positive social
change. Abreu, a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, emerges as a complex
and controversial figure, whose project is shaped by his religious
education, economics training, and political apprenticeship. Claims
for the symphony orchestra as a progressive pedagogical tool and
motor of social justice are questioned, and assertions that the
program prioritizes social over musical goals and promotes civic
values such as democracy, meritocracy, and teamwork are also
challenged. Placing El Sistema in historical and comparative
perspective, Baker reveals that it is far from the revolutionary
social program of contemporary imagination, representing less the
future of classical music than a step backwards into its past. A
controversial and eye-opening account sure to stir debate, El
Sistema is an essential read for anyone curious about this
phenomenon in the worlds of classical music, education, and social
development.
This collection brings the history of music publishing into the
realm of social history, looking beyond the printing process to
examine why and for whom music publishers produced their work. The
book shows how technological limitations and printers' and
publishers' preferences significantly influenced musical tastes in
Europe from medieval times to the modern age. Contributors are
leading scholars from the United States, Canada, Great Britain, and
Italy. The essays examine the history of music publishing from its
inception to the early twentieth century. The Dissemination of
Music provides new insight into the social history of music,
illustrating how certain types of music were made popular because
publishers made them more available, and how the reputations of
composers were made or broken by the whims of publishers. This
important reference work will interest scholars and students in all
areas of music. Readership: Academics and professionals in the
areas of musicology, history of music, history of publishing, as
well as collectors of rare books.
Studies in English Organ Music is a collection of essays by expert
authors that examines key areas of the repertoire in the history of
organ music in England. The essays on repertoire are placed
alongside supporting studies in organ building and liturgical
practice in order to provide a comprehensive contextualization. An
analysis of the symbiotic relationship between the organ, liturgy,
and composers reveals how the repertoire has been shaped by these
complementary areas and developed through history. This volume is
the first collection of specialist studies related to the field of
English organ music.
Choral Conducting: Philosophy and Practice, Second Edition is an
updated resource for conductors and singers alike, a college-level
text for students of choral conducting that considers conducting
and singing from a holistic perspective. This singer-friendly and
voice-healthy approach examines the rehearsal environment alongside
its musical performance counterpart. The author explores what is
involved in leading a choral group, examining theories of learning
and human behavior to understand the impact choral conductors have
on the act of singing. Divided into two main parts-Philosophy and
Practice-the text begins with an historical look at conducting,
exploring questions of why people sing and why they sing together,
and ultimately presents the application of this philosophy, showing
how a conductor's gestures and patterns can influence vocal
outcomes. In addressing how singers learn and respond to choral
music, as well as how conductors communicate with singers in
rehearsal and performance, Choral Conducting turns an eye to
learning how we learn and the role successful choral conductors
play in motivating singers, developing healthy singing habits, and
improving individual and ensemble vocal quality-all with the aims
of enhancing musical understanding. New to this edition: Updated
diagrams, photos, and musical examples Revised sample choral
programs Increased consideration of the orchestral conductor A
renewed focus on the intersections of learning, health and
well-being, and the social perspective, supported by new and recent
research
Combining the International Who's Who in Classical Music and the
International Who's Who in Popular Music, this two-volume set
provides a complete view of the whole of the music world. Within
the International Who's Who in Classical Music, each biographical
entry comprises personal information, principal career details,
repertoire, recordings and compositions, and full contact details
where available. Appendices provide contact details for national
orchestras, opera companies, music festivals, music organizations
and major competitions and awards. The International Who's Who in
Popular Music boasts detailed entries, including full biographical
information, such as principal career details, recordings and
compositions, honours and contact information.
|
|