Arguments about musical aesthetics often degenerate into "shouting matches" that end in stalemate. In Breaking the Sound Barrier, John Winsor clears the air by presenting evidence that some works are, in fact, objectively better than others. This is a particularly timely issue because a great deal of bad music is being performed in American concert halls right now and a great deal of good music isn't. If you believe that qualitative judgment in the arts is purely subjective, this book should persuade you to rethink your position. If, on the other hand, you think there is a genuine qualitative difference between one musical work and another, this book will provide you with relevant ammunition. Winsor defines music, presents some empirical evidence from the field of music psychology, relates that evidence to events in Western music history, and explains what works and what doesn't - and why. He demonstrates that from the advent of notation to the present, music has, in fact, progressed and not merely changed. He then exposes some major errors in modernist and postmodernist writing that have disrupted music's progress and recommends remedial action for restoring the mainstream literary tradition.

Johann Sebastian Bach's works are often classified as either sacred or secular. While this distinction is fraught, it seems to provide a useful way to distinguish between Bach's vocal works for the liturgy and those he wrote to honor courts and members of the nobility. But even so, the lines cannot be drawn clearly. The political and social systems of the time relied on religion as an ideological foundation, and public displays of political power almost always included religious rituals and thus required some form of sacred music. Social constructs, such as class and gender, were also embedded in religious frameworks. In Bach in the World, author Markus Rathey offers a new exploration of how Bach's music functioned as an agent of affective communication within rituals, such as the installation of the town council, and as a place where socio-political norms were perpetuated and sometimes even challenged. The book does so by analyzing public manifestations of the social order during Bach's time in large-scale celebrations, processions, public performances, and visual displays.

This major work, the result of years of careful study and analysis, places Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's life and music in the context of the intellectual, political and artistic currents of eighteenth-century Europe. The result is a fresh interpretation of Mozart's genius, as Robert Gutman shows the great composer in a new light. With an informed and sensitive handling, Mozart emerges as an affectionate and generous man with family and friends, self-deprecating, witty, and winsome but also an austere moralist, incisive and purposeful. The major genres in which Mozart worked-chamber music, liturgical, theater and keyboard compositions, concertos, operas, symphonies, and oratorios-are unfolded to reveal a man of luminous intellect. Mozart is an extraordinary portrait of a man and his times and a brilliant distillation of musical thought.

Designed for courses in beginning and advanced counterpoint, this established text introduces the contrapuntal style of 17th and 18th century music through analysis and writing. While a limited understanding of contrapuntal elements may be gained through analysis alone, these elements are grasped in a more intimate way through the actual writing of contrapuntal examples. Also, by linking the study of counterpoint to music of a specific period, the text provides a clear model for students to emulate and a definite basis for the criticism of student work.

Would you like a text that gives students a command of writing contrapuntal examples and is well organized to insure clarity of presentation?

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.

Hannah Smith (1849-1939) was a composer for children and an educator. In 1903 she published the popular Founders of Music, a series of biographical sketches of composers written for children. Written in 1898, when Wagner had been dead for only fifteen years, this is a concise history of music and instruments, aimed at the enthusiast. Covering broad subjects rather than concentrating on a few composers, Smith discusses not just the development of musical styles but also how musical notation developed, how the ear functions and how musical instruments produce the sounds they do. The tastes of the time are evident, particularly in the surprisingly detailed discussion of the Oratorio: however, the book allows us to see how music and its progress were regarded at the turn of the twentieth century, before composers such as Stravinsky and Schoenberg shook the musical establishment.

When the Nicholas Brothers danced, uptown at the Cotton Club, downtown at the Roxy, in segregated movie theatres in the South, and dance halls across the country, audiences cheered, clapped, stomped their feet, and shouted out uncontrollably. Their exuberant style of American theatrical dance-a melding of jazz, tap, acrobatics, black vernacular dance, and witty repartee-was dazzling. Though daredevil flips, slides, and hair-raising splits made them show-stoppers, the Nicholas Brothers were also highly sophisticated dancers who refined a centuries-old tradition of percussive dance into the rhythmic brilliance of jazz tap. In Brotherhood in Rhythm, author Constance Valis Hill interweaves an intimate portrait of these great performers with a richly detailed history of jazz music and jazz dance, both bringing their act to life and explaining their significance through a colourful analysis of their eloquent footwork, their full-bodied expressiveness, and their changing style. Hill vividly captures their soaring careers, from the Cotton Club appearances with Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, and Jimmy Lunceford, to film-stealing big-screen performances with Chick Webb, Tommy Dorsey, and Glenn Miller. Drawing on a deep well of research and endless hours of interviews with the Nicholas brothers themselves, she also documents their struggles against the nets of racism and segregation that constantly enmeshed their careers and denied them the recognition they deserved. More than a biography of two immensely talented but underappreciated performers, Brotherhood in Rhythm offers a profound understanding of this distinctively American art and its intricate links to the history of jazz.

(Music Sales America). Carl Nielsen's Fantasy Pieces Op.2 arranged for flute and piano accompaniment. Edited by James Galway and Toke Lund Christiansen.

Johann Sebastian Bach has loomed large in the imagination of scholars, performers, and audiences since the late nineteenth century.This new book, edited by veteran Bach scholar Bettina Varwig, gathers a diverse group of leading and emerging Bach researchers as well as a number of contributors from beyond the core of Bach studies. The book's fourteen chapters engage in active 'rethinking' of different topics connected with Bach; the iconic name which broadly encompasses the historical individual, the sounds and afterlives of his music, as well as all that those four letters came to stand for in the later popular and scholarly imagination. In turn, challenging the fundamental assumptions about the nineteenth-century Bach revival, the rise of the modern work concept, Bach's music as a code, and about editions of his music as monuments. Collectively, these contributions thus take apart, scrutinize, dust off and reassemble some of our most cherished narratives and deeply held beliefs about Bach and his music. In doing so, they open multiple pathways towards exciting future modesof engagement with the composer and his legacy.

"What can be done about the state of classical music?" Lawrence Kramer asks in this elegant, sharply observed, and beautifully written extended essay. Classical music, whose demise has been predicted for at least a decade, has always had its staunch advocates, but in today's media-saturated world there are real concerns about its viability. "Why Classical Music Still Matters" takes a forthright approach by engaging both skeptics and music lovers alike.
In seven highly original chapters, "Why Classical Music Still Matters" affirms the value of classical music--defined as a body of nontheatrical music produced since the eighteenth century with the single aim of being listened to--by revealing what its values are: the specific beliefs, attitudes, and meanings that the music has supported in the past and which, Kramer believes, it can support in the future.
"Why Classical Music Still Matters" also clears the air of old prejudices. Unlike other apologists, whose defense of the music often depends on arguments about the corrupting influence of popular culture, Kramer admits that classical music needs a broader, more up-to-date rationale. He succeeds in engaging the reader by putting into words music's complex relationship with individual human drives and larger social needs. In prose that is fresh, stimulating, and conversational, he explores the nature of subjectivity, the conquest of time and mortality, the harmonization of humanity and technology, the cultivation of attention, and the liberation of human energy.

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.

Originally published in the 1940s, Paul Hindemith's remakable textbooks are still the outstanding works of their kind. In contrast to many musical textbooks written by academic musicians, these were produced by a man who could play every instrument of the orchestra, could compose a satisfying piece for almost every kind of ensemble, and who was one of the most stimulating teachers of his day. It is therefore not surprising that nearly forty years later these books should remain essential reading for the student and the professional musician. Preface * Construction of the Simplest One-Voice Melodic Patterns * Beginning of Two-Voice Setting * Elaborated Melody (Auxiliary or Teturning Tones, Passing Tones) * Elaborated Melody (Continuation) * Principles of Melodic Construction * Elaborated Melody (Conclusion) * Tonal Higher-Units * Tonality of the Melodies * Elaboration of the Melody Model * Free Two-Voice Setting I and II

Richard Taruskin's sweeping collection of essays distills a half century of professional experience, demonstrating an unparalleled insider awareness of relevant debates in all areas of music studies, including historiography and criticism, representation and aesthetics, musical and professional politics, and the sociology of taste. Cursed Questions, invoking a famous catchphrase from Russian intellectual history, grapples with questions that are never finally answered but never go away. The writings gathered here form an intellectual biography that showcases the characteristic wit, provocation, and erudition that readers have come to expect from Taruskin, making it an essential volume for anyone interested in music, politics, and the arts.

The definitive edition (1987) of the piano teaching classic. Includes an introduction by the composer's son Peter Bartok. In 1945 Bela Bartok described Mikrokosmos as a cycle of 153 pieces for piano written for "didactic" purposes, seeing them as a series of pieces in many different styles, representing a small world, or as the "world of the little ones, the children." Stylistically Mikrokosmos reflects the influence of folk music on Bartok's life and the rhythms and harmonies employed create music that is as modern today as when the cycle was written. The 153 pieces making up Mikrokosmos are divided into six volumes arranged according to technical and musical difficulty. Major teaching points highlighted in Mikrokosmos 1: Unison melodies, Question and answer, Imitation and Inversion. Volume with pink covers have text in English, French, German, and Hungarian.

(Guitar Solo). The arrangements in this book are carefully written for intermediate-level guitarists. Each solo combines melody and harmony in one superb fingerpicking arrangement. The book also includes an easy introduction to basic fingerstyle guitar. Songs: Ave Maria * Bouree in E Minor * Can Can * Canon in D * Eine Kleine Nachtmusik * Emperor Waltz * Fur Elise * Habanera * Humoresque * In the Hall of the Mountain King * Minuet in G Major (Bach & Beethoven) * New World Symphony * Pomp and Circumstance * Symphony No. 5 in C Minor, First Movement Excerpt.