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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Western music, periods & styles > General
In "Strong on Music" Vera Brodsky Lawrence uses the diaries of
lawyer and music lover George Templeton Strong as a jumping-off
point from which to explore every aspect of New York City's musical
life in the mid-nineteenth century. This third and final volume
ranges across opera, orchestral and chamber music, blackface
minstrels, military bands, church choirs, and even concert
saloons.Among the many striking scenes vividly portrayed in
"Repercussions" are the rapturous reception of Verdi's "Ballo in
maschera" in 1861; the impact of the Civil War on New York's music
scene, from theaters closing as their musicians enlisted to the
performance of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at every possible
occasion; and open-air concerts in the developing Central Park.
The next step for students who have completed the advanced level
method for their instrument. The full-page etudes in this series,
key-centered and supported by scale and arpeggio exercises, take
the student to that next level of performance wherein their
accumulated skills allow them to play full-length performance
pieces with a high level of musicianship and competence. As such,
many states include these pieces in their all-state audition lists.
WE SANG BETTER consists of two volumes of very clear advice about
singing from great singers of the past. Volume 1 (ISBN
978-84-940477-8-7) is entitled How we sang and contains 250 tips on
how to sing from singers 1800 to 1960. This volume is 490 pages
long, and contains 130 illustrations. Tamagno never scooped his
notes - so said star soprano Amelita Galli-Curci of the famous
tenor. In the two volumes of We Sang Better, 200 of the greatest
singers explain their art in over 70,000 of their own words. In
Volume 1 the singers show you their approach, their ideals, and how
they learnt to sing. Anderson arranges their evidence coherently,
in easily followed tips. Their advice was uniform - work patiently
on developing your own natural voice, with no forcing. The singers
then provide the details by which you grow your voice and acquire a
firm but flexible technique. Finally you will have a singing voice
that is: personal beautiful easy accurate true on the note, and
carries well in a large hall with clear diction & the ability
to move your audience. As Verdi said, any art worthy of the name
must be natural, spontaneous and simple. These singers explain how
they kept to this ideal, staying clear of scientific 'discoveries',
over-muscularity, and teachers with set 'methods'. These singers
worked with Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Auber, Meyerbeer, Weber,
Schubert, Mendelssohn, Liszt, Verdi, Wagner, Brahms, Gounod,
Massenet, Debussy, Puccini, Strauss, Elgar, etc & kept to
nearly all the recommendations that came from the castrati in the
previous two centuries. James Anderson is a musician who has worked
for the Arts Council of Great Britain and has run major European
Festivals. Regretting the scarcity of supreme singing today, he has
spent the last 30 years researching and collating this advice. He
now helps young singers through the Singers Legacy website. For
your information, the second volume (ISBN 978-84-940477-9-4) is
entitled Why it was better and contains further evidence &
reasoning from singers 1800 to 1960. Volume 2 is 260 pages long and
has 20 illustrations.
Over the past quarter century, music studies in the academy have
their postmodern credentials by insisting that our scholarly
engagements start and end by placing music firmly within its
various historical and social contexts. In Music and the Politics
of Negation, James R. Currie sets out to disturb the validity of
this now quite orthodox claim. Alternating dialectically between
analytic and historical investigations into the late 18th century
and the present, he poses a set of uncomfortable questions
regarding the limits and complicities of the values that the
academy keeps in circulation by means of its musical encounters.
His overriding thesis is that the forces that have formed us are
not our fate.
Musicologist Pauline Fairclough explores the evolving role of music
in shaping the cultural identity of the Soviet Union in a
revelatory work that counters certain hitherto accepted views of an
unbending, unchanging state policy of repression, censorship, and
dissonance that existed in all areas of Soviet artistic endeavor.
Newly opened archives from the Leninist and Stalinist eras have
shed new light on Soviet concert life, demonstrating how the music
of the past was used to help mold and deliver cultural policy, how
"undesirable" repertoire was weeded out during the 1920s, and how
Russian and non-Russian composers such as Mozart, Tchaikovsky,
Wagner, Bach, and Rachmaninov were "canonized" during different,
distinct periods in Stalinist culture. Fairclough's fascinating
study of the ever-shifting Soviet musical-political landscape
identifies 1937 as the start of a cultural Cold War, rather than
occurring post-World War Two, as is often maintained, while
documenting the efforts of musicians and bureaucrats during this
period to keep musical channels open between Russia and the West.
Evgeny Kissin's musicality, the depth and poetic quality of his
interpretations, and his extraordinary virtuosity have earned him
the veneration and admiration deserved only by one of the most
gifted classical pianists of his generation. He is internationally
renowned and hugely admired for his interpretations of the works of
the classical and Romantic repertoire of Beethoven, Schubert,
Chopin, Liszt, Schumann, Brahms, Rachmaninov and Prokofiev. He is
in demand the world over, and has appeared with many of the world's
great conductors, as well as all the great orchestras of the world.
In Memoirs and Reflections, the intensity of Kissin's thinking and
of his very being shines through, which displays his astonishing
memory, fondness for his family and teachers, and an exalted sense
of self that is essentially Russian.
The Bolsheviks' 1917 political coup caused a seismic disruption in
Russian culture. Carried by the first wave of emigrants, Russian
culture migrated West, transforming itself as it interacted with
the new cultural environment and clashed with exported Soviet
trends. In this book, Klara Moricz explores the transnational
emigrant space of Russian composers Igor Stravinsky, Vladimir
Dukelsky, Sergey Prokofiev, Nicolas Nabokov, and Arthur Lourie in
interwar Paris. Their music reflected the conflict between a
modernist narrative demanding innovation and a narrative of exile
wedded to the preservation of prerevolutionary Russian culture. The
emigrants' and the Bolsheviks' contrasting visions of Russia and
its past collided frequently in the French capital, where the
Soviets displayed their political and artistic products. Russian
composers in Paris also had to reckon with Stravinsky's
disproportionate influence: if they succumbed to fashions dictated
by their famous compatriot, they risked becoming epigones; if they
kept to their old ways, they quickly became irrelevant. Although
Stravinsky's neoclassicism provided a seemingly neutral middle
ground between innovation and nostalgia, it was also marked by the
exilic experience. Moricz offers this unexplored context for
Stravinsky's neoclassicism, shedding new light on this infinitely
elusive term.
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.
(Guitar Method). A modern method ideal for all beginning
guitarists, studying individually or in a class. Technique and
reading skills are developed through two-, three- and four-part
ensemble arrangements of traditional and newly composed music. Also
includes an introduction to chord playing. Also available: Phase 2
Book 50449470 $7.95
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