This innovative and multi-layered study of the music and culture of Renaissance instrumentalists spans the early institutionalization of instrumental music from c.1420 to the rise of the basso continuo and newer roles for instrumentalists around 1600. Employing a broad cultural narrative interwoven with detailed case studies, close readings of eighteen essential musical sources, and analysis of musical images, Victor Coelho and Keith Polk show that instrumental music formed a vital and dynamic element in the artistic landscape, from rote function to creative fantasy. Instrumentalists occupied a central role in courtly ceremonies and private social rituals during the Renaissance, and banquets, dances, processions, religious celebrations and weddings all required their participation, regardless of social class. Instrumental genres were highly diverse artistic creations, from polyphonic repertories revealing knowledge of notated styles, to improvisation and flexible practices. Understanding the contributions of instrumentalists is essential for any accurate assessment of Renaissance culture.

Duke Ellington (1899-1974) is widely considered the jazz tradition's most celebrated composer. This engaging yet scholarly volume explores his long career and his rich cultural legacy from a broad range of in-depth perspectives, from the musical and historical to the political and international. World-renowned scholars and musicians examine Ellington's influence on jazz music, its criticism, and its historiography. The chronological structure of the volume allows a clear understanding of the development of key themes, with chapters surveying his work and his reception in America and abroad. By both expanding and reconsidering the contexts in which Ellington, his orchestra, and his music are discussed, Duke Ellington Studies reflects a wealth of new directions that have emerged in jazz studies, including focuses on music in media, class hierarchy discourse, globalization, cross-cultural reception, and the role of marketing, as well as manuscript score studies and performance studies.

This is the first book to combine museum-based conservation techniques with practical instructions on the maintenance, repair, adjustment, and tuning of virtually every type of historical musical instrument. As one of the world's leading conservators of musical instruments, Stewart Pollens gives practical advice on the handling, storage, display and use of historic musical instruments in museums and other settings, and provides technical information on such wide-ranging subjects as acoustics, cleaning, climate control, corrosion, disinfestation, conservation ethics, historic stringing practice, measurement and historic metrology, retouching, tuning historic temperaments, varnish and writing reports. There are informative essays on the conservation of each of the major musical instrument groups, the treatment of paper, textiles, wood and metal, as well as historic techniques of wood and metalworking as they apply to musical instrument making and repair. This is a practical guide that includes equations, formulas, tables and step-by-step instructions.

Techniques on how to gain greater fluidity of movement while playing to improve the quality of the experience are offered in this manual for serious piano players. This book encourages musicians to develop a broader understanding of the involvement of the entire body in playing -- and the strains playing places on the body -- by focusing on body mapping to increase awareness of the body's function, size, and structure. Ways in which piano, organ, harpsichord, clavichord, and digital keyboard players can eliminate or prevent carpal tunnel syndrome and other debilitating conditions without traditional medical treatments are also explored.

This new gathering of the world's greatest classical themes follows Bergerac's highly successful "My First Book of Classical Music." Here are ever-popular themes from the symphonies, concertos, and operas of such masters as Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Mozart, Haydn, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, and many others. For children and beginners of any age. Dover Original.

The volume contains all the works for piano (solo, piano duet, two pianos), and works for organ and guitar. It includes an introduction, textual notes, and facsimiles

This is a translation of the second (1858) edition of Berlioz's landmark treatise by Mary Cowden Clarke, daughter of music publisher Vincent Novello. The book was quick to establish itself as a standard work, reflecting Berlioz's keen understanding of the orchestra as both composer and conductor. It is intended as a textbook on the craft of orchestration and to promote better understanding of the essential character of each instrument. Technical details and sonorities are discussed and illustrated with musical examples from composers Berlioz admired, including Gluck and Beethoven, and from his own compositions. This edition includes a section on new instruments, such as the saxophone and concertina, and on the orchestra, and a discussion on the art of conducting. Today the treatise is an important source of information on musical practices of the time and provides us with valuable insight into Berlioz's imaginative and original thinking as a musician.

While the history of musical instruments is nearly as old as civilisation itself, the science of acoustics is quite recent. By understanding the physical basis of how instruments are used to make music, one hopes ultimately to be able to give physical criteria to distinguish a fine instrument from a mediocre one. At that point science may be able to come to the aid of art in improving the design and performance of musical instruments. As yet, many of the subtleties in musical sounds of which instrument makers and musicians are aware remain beyond the reach of modern acoustic measurements. This book describes the results of such acoustical investigations - fascinating intellectual and practical exercises. Addressed to readers with a reasonable grasp of physics who are not put off by a little mathematics, this book discusses most of the traditional instruments currently in use in Western music. A guide for all who have an interest in music and how it is produced, as well as serving as a comprehensive reference for those undertaking research in the field.

By Carmine Appice, legendary drummer with Vanilla Fudge "Knack Drums for Everyone" is a self-instruction book for beginners to intermediates, fully illustrated with 350 full-color photographs and more than fifty exercises in musical notation. Written by legendary rock drummer Carmine Appice, it covers everything one needs to know about the drum set itself--the parts, different kinds of drums, and how to care for drums--and then provides the basics of reading drum music and playing. Lessons are geared toward achievable results, and sidebars address various styles and techniques. Plus, there are more than 140 play-along audio tracks featuring Carmine Appice available at knackbooks.com/drums.

Learning to play an instrument can be fund and, at times, frustrating. This lively, accessible book helps young people cope with the difficulties involved in learning a new instrument and remaining dedicated to playing and practicing. Teens from renowned music programs - including the Juilliard School's Pre-College Program and Boston University's Tanglewood Institute - join pro musicians such as Wynton Marsalis, Paula Robison, and James Galway in offering practical answers to questions from what instrument to play to where the musical road may lead.
In this revised and expanded edition, Amy Nathan has updated the book to address today's more technologically-minded young musician. Expanded sections cover the various ways students can use technology to assist in mastering an instrument and in making practice time more productive, from using the Internet to download pieces to be learned and playing along with downloaded tunes to practicing with computer-based practice programs, CDs, and videos/DVDs of musical performances. She also addresses concerns of young composers and conductors, two groups not mentioned in the original edition. The book's updated Resource Guide suggests where to get additional help, both online and off.

Musica getutscht (Basel, 1511) is the earliest printed treatise on musical instruments in the West. Written by a priest and chapel singer named Sebastian Virdung, it provided rudimentary instruction on playing three instruments: the clavichord, the lute and the recorder. This early 'do-it-yourself' manual of instruction not only tells us about music-making in that era, it also illumines other aspects of society in the years just before the Reformation. Its author communicates in a popular style, choosing a mixture of media: a written text in the guise of an informal conversation, coupled with woodcut illustrations and visual aids. Enthusiasts of early music and its performance as well as historians of art, society and the German language will welcome Beth Bullard's substantial introduction and annotations, which help explain the text of this important work and its place in intellectual history.

"Tony Allen" is the autobiography of legendary Nigerian drummer Tony Allen, the rhythmic engine of Fela Kuti's Afrobeat. Conversational, inviting, and packed with telling anecdotes, Allen's memoir is based on hundreds of hours of interviews with the musician and scholar Michael E. Veal. It spans Allen's early years and career playing highlife music in Lagos; his fifteen years with Fela, from 1964 until 1979; his struggles to form his own bands in Nigeria; and his emigration to France.

Allen embraced the drum set, rather than African handheld drums, early in his career, when drum kits were relatively rare in Africa. His story conveys a love of his craft along with the specifics of his practice. It also provides invaluable firsthand accounts of the explosive creativity in postcolonial African music, and the personal and artistic dynamics in Fela's Koola Lobitos and Africa 70, two of the greatest bands to ever play African music.

This year marks the golden anniversary of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, the flagship band of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. Formed in 1966 and flourishing until 2010, the Art Ensemble distinguished itself by its unique performance practices--members played hundreds of instruments on stage, recited poetry, performed theatrical sketches, and wore face paint, masks, lab coats, and traditional African and Asian dress. The group, which built a global audience and toured across six continents, presented their work as experimental performance art, in opposition to the jazz industry's traditionalist aesthetics. In Message to Our Folks, Paul Steinbeck combines musical analysis and historical inquiry to give us the definitive study of the Art Ensemble. In the book, he proposes a new theory of group improvisation that explains how the band members were able to improvise together in so many different styles while also drawing on an extensive repertoire of notated compositions. Steinbeck examines the multimedia dimensions of the Art Ensemble's performances and the ways in which their distinctive model of social relations kept the group performing together for four decades. Message to Our Folks is a striking and valuable contribution to our understanding of one of the world's premier musical groups.

This book describes instrumental music and its context in German society of the late middle ages - from about 1350 to 1520. Players at that time improvised, much like jazz musicians of our day, but because they did not use notated music, only scant remnants of their activity have survived in written sources, and much has been left obscure. This book attempts to reconstruct an image of their music, discussing the instruments, ensembles, and performance practices of the time. What emerges from this study is a fundamental reappraisal of late medieval culture. A musical life is reconstructed which was not only extraordinary in its own time, but which also laid the foundations of an artistic culture that later produced such giants as Schutz, Bach, Mozart and Beethoven.

Characteristic symphonies have texts associating them with literature, politics, religion, and other aspects of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century European culture. Examining both the music and its aesthetic and social contexts, this first full-length study of the genre demonstrates how symphonies constructed individual and collective identities through their subjects, representing emotion, human bodily movement, and the passage of time. Examples discussed include the Pastoral and Eroica symphonies of Beethoven and works by Haydn, Dittersdorf, and other composers of the era. An Appendix provides a thematic index of the entire repertory.

The work of French musicologist, ethnologist, curator, and critic Andre Schaeffner (1895 - 1980) grew naturally out of his first organological studies of the history of Western classical instruments in the late 1920s and came to be encapsulated in his monumental and wide-ranging Origine des instruments de musique, the fruit of labour in Paris and in the field between 1931 and 1936. Almost 80 years after its first publication, the scientific relevance and influence of Schaeffner's primary hypothesis - that the origins of music can be traced to the human body through gesture, dance, and the movements involved in the use of musical instruments and their ancestor tools - remains pertinent in fields which have returned to informed speculative and empirical research on the origins of music. This first English edition is accompanied by editorial footnotes and introductory texts, and the influence of Schaeffner's thought on several generations of musicologists makes his work an essential piece of reading for ethnomusicologists, music psychologists, organologists and musicologists interested in the history of their field. Schaeffner's text is an intellectual link between the studies of Hornbostel and Sachs and the contrasting research of later generations, notably figures with which he had direct contact, such as John Blacking and Simha Arom. More than a simple field guide and system of classification, the Origin of Musical Instruments is also a profound reflection on the nature and origins of music and musical activity, as well as the place of that activity in human society.

In The Symphony, renowned critic Michael Steinberg offers music lovers a monumental guide to this most celebrated of musical forms, with perceptive commentaries on some 118 works by 36 major composers.

The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, a popular women's jazz band of the 1940s, has earned a reputation as the 'best all-women's swing band ever to perform.' This revised and updated edition provides fascinating reading for jazz enthusiasts and students of American history, music, and women's history. It is the most comprehensive and objective history of the band to date. Handy documents all sides of the band's controversial story and interviews members of the band. She updates the careers of band members who remained in the music business. Accompanied by an extensive bibliography and many photographs.

After the death of Mahler in 1911 the great Austro-German symphonic line was carried on mainly in England, America, Scandinavia and Russia. The Fifth Symphony of Carl Nielsen, Denmark's greatest composer, was composed in 1921-22 and is not only his masterpiece but one of the finest of all twentieth-century symphonies, representing a powerful renewal of the Beethovenian tradition. David Fanning's detailed and absorbing guide blends detailed analytical commentary with less formal summaries of the music's character. It is the only non-Danish publication on Nielsen to take full account of Danish scholarship and criticism.

After the death of Mahler in 1911 the great Austro-German symphonic line was carried on mainly in England, America, Scandinavia and Russia. The Fifth Symphony of Carl Nielsen, Denmark's greatest composer, was composed in 1921-22 and is not only his masterpiece but one of the finest of all twentieth-century symphonies, representing a powerful renewal of the Beethovenian tradition. David Fanning's detailed and absorbing guide blends detailed analytical commentary with less formal summaries of the music's character. It is the only non-Danish publication on Nielsen to take full account of Danish scholarship and criticism.

Brahms's First Symphony has been hailed as Beethoven's Tenth. Its controversial status and relationship in the Beethovenian tradition is considered alongside other important issues in the early reception history of this key work in the symphonic repertory. David Brodbeck begins with an account of the lengthy genesis and complicated background to the writing of the symphony, before providing a thorough critical reading of the work, movement by movement. In particular, Professor Brodbeck reveals a dense web of extra-compositional allusions--references in the music to works by J. S. Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, and Robert Schumann--in which, the author argues, much meaning resides.