A group of resourceful kids start "solution-seekers.com," a website where "cybervisitors" can get answers to questions that trouble them. But when one questioner asks the true meaning of Christmas, the kids seek to unravel the mystery by journeying back through the prophecies of the Old Testament. What they find is a series of "S" words that reveal a "spectacular story " With creative characters, humorous dialogue and great music, The "S" Files is a children's Christmas musical your kids will love performing.

(String). This classic method is combined into one convenient and value-priced edition.

(BH Piano). Feel the beat and energy of Christopher Norton's set of original piano miniatures. Microrock introduces the beginner to the high spirits of rock musical styles: twenty pieces capturing the characteristic qualities of this stimulating and effervescent music but with only modest technical challenges. Play along to the backing CD or listen to the composer's own vibrant performances.

(Criterion). 35 classics arranged for the intermediate player, including: Blue Danube Waltz (Strauss) * Canon in D (Pachelbel) * The Entertainer (Joplin) * March Militaire (Schubert) * Moonlight Sonata (Beethoven) * Romeo and Juliet (Tchaikovsky) * Toreador Song (Bizet) * Skaters' Waltz (Waldteufel) * and more.

The Classical Film Collection brings together famous classic pieces from the movies, such as Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake (from Black Swan), Mozart's Clarinet Concerto (Out of Africa), Allegri's Miserere (Chariots of Fire) and, for the first time in print, House of Woodcock by Jonny Greenwood from Phantom Thread. All pieces have been arranged for the intermediate pianist.

Available for the first time in one volume, this collection includes the opera and ballet arrangements made with violinist Samuel Dushkin, a piece for unaccompanied violin, and Stravinsky's one original work for violin and piano, Duo concertante. Contents: Ballad * Chanson russe * Danse russe * Divertimento * Duo concertante * Elegie * Suite after themes, fragments and pieces by Giambattista Pergolesi * Suite italienne * Variation d'Apollon.

The British composer, conductor, and pianist Thomas Ades has achieved a level of recognition and celebrity within the world of classical music today that is almost unmatched. Once seen as the heir to Benjamin Britten, both in his importance to British music and his reputation as the enfant terrible of the concert world, Ades is a fascinating figure of contemporary composition. Reaching for the music behind the celebrity, author Drew Massey deftly tackles the challenges of writing about a living figure with such far-reaching impact by focusing on representative moments in his compositional career and critical reception. In this series of five interlocking essays, Massey provides an illuminating look at the formal characteristics of Ades's music, considers his work from the perspective of a contemporary listener, and places it within the larger context of developments in twentieth-century British music. He not only traces the diverse historical forms and traditions that Ades taps into but also reflects on where he is steering the future of composition and performance. An analysis of the key transitions in the artist's critical reception completes this book as the most comprehensive study of this pivotal figure of contemporary classical music in the English language to this day.

Irony, one of the most basic, pervasive, and variegated of rhetorical tropes, is as fundamental to musical thought as it is to poetry, prose, and spoken language. In this wide-ranging study of musical irony, Michael Cherlin draws upon the rich history of irony as developed by rhetoricians, philosophers, literary scholars, poets, and novelists. With occasional reflections on film music and other contemporary works, the principal focus of the book is classical music, both instrumental and vocal, ranging from Mozart to Mahler. The result is a surprising array of approaches toward the making and interpretation of irony in music. Including nearly ninety musical examples, the book is clearly structured and engagingly written. This interdisciplinary volume will appeal to those interested in the relationship between music and literature as well as to scholars of musical composition, technique, and style.

In this book Steven Vande Moortele offers a comprehensive account of operatic and concert overtures in continental Europe between 1815 and 1850. Discussing a broad range of works by German, French, and Italian composers, it is at once an investigation of the Romantic overture within the context of mid-nineteenth century musical culture and an analytical study that focuses on aspects of large-scale formal organization in the overture genre. While the book draws extensively upon the recent achievements of the 'new Formenlehre', it does not use the overture merely as a vehicle for a theory of romantic form, but rather takes an analytical approach that engages with individual works in their generic context.

Written by fourteen leading experts in the field, this Companion covers almost every aspect of the harpsichord - the history of the instrument, tuning systems, the role of the harpsichord in ensemble, its use in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and includes separate chapters devoted to Domenico Scarlatti, J. S. Bach and Handel. Chapters featuring almost every national style are written by authors with close connections to the countries about which they are writing, including England, The Netherlands, Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain, as well as the less extensive harpsichord traditions of Russia, the Nordic and Baltic countries, and colonial Spanish and Portuguese America. With musical examples, illustrations, a timeline of the harpsichord, and an appendix of composers, reliable editions and original sources, this book is for all who love the harpsichord, or want to learn more about it.

This volume is a multi-disciplinary study of the Neapolitan tradition of nineteenth-century song or "Canzona napoletana." It is based on primary (original music manuscripts) and secondary (correspondence, diaries, and varied historical materials) sources recovered from Neapolitan archives, libraries, and private collections. The book takes as its focus the figure of Guillaume Cottrau (1797-1847), a musician and publisher who left a significant breadth of original songs and arrangements issued in the song collection and series entitled Passatempi musicali. Cottrau was a cultural auteur, who integrated his diverse activities as editor, folklorist, and patron of salon music and musicians (including the commissioning of original works and adaptations) to establish a tradition of Neapolitan song. This repertory was disseminated throughout Europe and ultimately the United States to great acclaim through the publication of the Passatempi musicali. The songs presented in the Passatempi musicali remain within the international repertory affiliated with Neapolitan song, including "Fenesta vascia," "Lo guarracino," "Cannetella," and many others. They are, moreover, closely linked to the historical, cultural and linguistic identity of Naples and the Neapolitan diaspora. This volume is the first of its kind in the English language and offers original, unpublished research about the endeavors of Cottrau, the contemporary cultural environs, the artists and their music that established the international fame of the Neapolitan canzona.

A companion to the Classic FM series Francesca Caccini. Barbara Strozzi. Elisabeth Jacquet de la Guerre. Marianna Martines. Fanny Hensel. Clara Schumann. Lili Boulanger. Elizabeth Maconchy. Since the birth of classical music, women who dared compose have faced a bitter struggle to be heard. In spite of this, female composers continued to create, inspire and challenge. Yet even today so much of their work languishes unheard. Anna Beer reveals the highs and lows experienced by eight composers across the centuries, from Renaissance Florence to twentieth-century London, restoring to their rightful place exceptional women whom history has forgotten.

Written by fourteen leading experts in the field, this Companion covers almost every aspect of the harpsichord - the history of the instrument, tuning systems, the role of the harpsichord in ensemble, its use in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, and includes separate chapters devoted to Domenico Scarlatti, J. S. Bach and Handel. Chapters featuring almost every national style are written by authors with close connections to the countries about which they are writing, including England, The Netherlands, Germany, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, France, Italy, Portugal and Spain, as well as the less extensive harpsichord traditions of Russia, the Nordic and Baltic countries, and colonial Spanish and Portuguese America. With musical examples, illustrations, a timeline of the harpsichord, and an appendix of composers, reliable editions and original sources, this book is for all who love the harpsichord, or want to learn more about it.

Developing Musicianship through Aural Skills, Third Edition, is a comprehensive method for learning to hear, sing, understand, and use the foundations of music as part of an integrated curriculum, incorporating both sight singing and ear training in one volume. Under the umbrella of musicianship, this textbook guides students to "hear what they see, and see what they hear," with a trained, discerning ear on both a musical and an aesthetic level. Key features of this new edition include: Revised selection of musical examples, with added new examples including more excerpts from the literature, more part music, and examples at a wider range of levels, from easy to challenging New instructional material on dictation, phrase structure, hearing cadences, and reading lead sheets and Nashville number charts An updated website that now includes a comprehensive Teacher's Guide with sample lesson plans, supplemental assignments, and test banks; instructional videos; and enhanced dictation exercises. The text reinforces both musicianship and theory in a systematic method, and its holistic approach provides students the skills necessary to incorporate professionalism, creativity, confidence, and performance preparation in their music education. Over 1,600 musical examples represent a wide range of musical styles and genres, including classical, jazz, musical theatre, popular, and folk music. The third edition of Developing Musicianship through Aural Skills provides a strong foundation for undergraduate music students and answers the need for combining skills in a more holistic, integrated music theory core.

Featuring all 29 pieces from the album Lang Lang Piano Book, this is a collection of the most significant pieces from Lang Lang's personal musical journey. It is beautifully presented as a high-end cased book, featuring marbled endpapers, page-finder ribbon and sewn binding. It includes exclusive photographs, comments from Lang Lang on every piece and an edition of Fur Elise annotated with Lang Lang's own performance notes. This is a book for all pianists to treasure and revisit again and again.

Bringing together much-loved masterpieces with exciting new works, this accessible and inspiring guide is a celebration of classical music. With pieces ranging from Vaughan Williams's 'The Lark Ascending' and Beethoven's 'Pastoral' Symphony to the scores for Avatar and Assassin's Creed, every entry puts the piece of music into context, providing fascinating insights into the inspirations behind each work and enhancing your listening experience. Organised into occasions and themes, the book features music to accompany you through your day, from getting up and getting dressed to running, reading, walking the dog, cooking, taking a bath, going to sleep and everything in between. You'll also find expert curations of the world's most romantic music and the greatest Christmas works as well as compositions that celebrate the natural world and mark births and marriages. Perfect for classical music enthusiasts as well as anyone looking for an enjoyable introduction to this genre, this is the definitive modern guide to classical music.

This fourth edition of Art Song in the United States, 1759 2011 covers songs for solo voice and piano by American composers from the mid-18th through the early 21st centuries. The book is structured as an annotated bibliography with approximately 2,850 numbered entries listed alphabetically by composer and title and indexed in various ways to help teachers and singers locate the particular song they require for practice or performance. This edition adds eleven years worth of new works, anthologies, and collections (about 450 new entries), reflecting the relatively recent outpouring of song compositions by American composers and a wealth of new song anthologies and collections. This bibliography features information on each song or song cycle or set. Users will find critical data on the poet, publisher and copyright date, key, vocal range, vocal tessitura, meter(s), tempo, length, difficulty of vocal line and piano score, most suitable voice type, mood and subject of the text, and brief description of the vocal line and piano score. It also includes commentary on special difficulties for performers and possible uses of the song in programming. In addition, individual titles of composite works are given, and those that appear in collections are indexed to the list of collections in the front matter. Composer, poet, special characteristics/subject, and title indexes and even discographic lists recordings where available all aid researchers in finding songs. The primary audiences for this bibliography are voice teachers and singers in search of appropriate art songs for their students or themselves, as well as libraries with collecting interests in music and American literature."