Paul Brian Heise's The Wound That Will Never Heal is an original allegorical reading of Richard Wagner's epic music drama The Ring of the Nibelung. Heise challenges the standard view that Wagner merely dramatizes the conflict between love and power and demonstrates instead that his greatest work is an allegory exploring humanity's longing for transcendent value and that quest's paradoxical establishment of a science-based secular society. By employing a more extensive analysis of primary evidence than any prior interpretation, The Wound That Will Never Heal is the first interpretation to propose and sustain a global and conceptually coherent account of the entire Ring.

Theory for Today's Musician, Third Edition, recasts the scope of the traditional music theory course to meet the demands of the professional music world, in a style that speaks directly and engagingly to today's music student. It uses classical, folk, popular, and jazz repertoires with clear explanations that link music theory to musical applications. The authors help prepare students by not only exploring how music theory works in art music, but how it functions within modern music, and why this knowledge will help them become better composers, music teachers, performers, and recording engineers. This broadly comprehensive text merges traditional topics such as part writing and harmony (diatonic, chromatic, neo-tonal and atonal), with less traditional topics such as counterpoint and musical process, and includes the non-traditional topics of popular music songwriting, jazz harmony and the blues. The accompanying companion website provides interactive exercises that allow students to practice foundational theory skills. Written by experienced authors, both active classroom teachers for many years, Theory for Today's Musician is the complete and ideal theory text to enable today's student to accomplish their musical goals tomorrow. Updated and corrected throughout, the Third Edition includes: Expanded coverage of atonality and serialism, now separated into two chapters. Broadened treatment of cadences, including examples from popular music. Substantially rewritten chapter on songwriting. Interactive features of the text simplified to two types, "Concept Checks" and "Review and Reinforcement," for greater ease of use. New and updated musical examples added throughout. Charts, illustrations, and musical examples revised for increased clarity. Audio of musical examples now provided through the companion website. The accompanying Workbook offers exercises and assignments to accompany each chapter in the book. A companion website houses online tutorials with drills of basic concepts, as well as audio. The hardback TEXTBOOK is also paired with the corresponding paperback WORKBOOK in a discounted PACKAGE (9780815371731).

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.

Play Piazzolla is a unique collection of 13 tangos by the Argentinian master of tango nuevo arranged for easy solo guitar.