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Books > Music > Musical instruments & instrumental ensembles > General
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.
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.
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.
George Lawrence Stone's Stick Control is the bible of drumming. In
1993, Modern Drummer magazine named the book one of the top 25
books of all-time. In the words of the author, it is the ideal book
for improving: control, speed, flexibility, touch, rhythm,
lightness, delicacy, power, endurance, preciseness of execution and
muscular coordination, with extra attention given to the
development of the weak hand. This indispensable book for drummers
of all types includes hundreds of basic to advanced-level rhythms,
moving through categories of single-beat combinations, triplets,
short roll combinations, flam beats, flam triplets and dotted
notes, and short roll progressions.
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' 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. In
this 1997 book, 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, the author 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.
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.
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Brahms
- Symphony No. 1
(Book)
David Lee Brodbeck; Edited by (general) Julian Rushton
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R435
R401
Discovery Miles 4 010
Save R34 (8%)
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Ships in 18 - 22 working days
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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.
Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony is in many ways his most startlingly original. It has a programmatic content, it is in five movements, and its mood is quite different from the usual barnstorming image of the composer. Why did he want to compose such a work? Why did it take him five years to realize his vision? What was he hoping to communicate? How did he achieve it? Finally, how was the work received? David Wyn Jones addresses all these vital questions in a fascinating account of this popular work and the context in which it was written.
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