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Books > Music > Theory of music & musicology > General
Composing with Constraints: 100 Practical Exercises in Music
Composition provides an innovative approach to the instruction of
the craft of music composition based on tailored exercises to help
students develop their creativity. When composition is condensed to
a series of logical steps, it can then be taught and learned more
efficiently. With this approach in mind, Jorge Variego offers a
variety of practical exercises to help student composers and
instructors to create tangible work plans with high expectations
and successful outcomes. Each chapter starts with a brief note on
terminology and general recommendations for the instructor. The
first five chapters offer a variety of exercises that range from
analysis and style imitation to the use of probabilities. The
chapter about pre-compositional approaches offers original
techniques that a student composer can implement in order to start
a new work. Based on lateral thinking, the last section of the book
fosters creative connections with other disciplines such as math,
visual arts, and architectural acoustics. The one hundred exercises
contain a unique set of guidelines and constraints that place
students in a specific compositional framework. These compositional
boundaries encourage students to produce creative work within a
given structure. Using the methodologies in this book, students
will be able to create their own outlines for their compositions,
making intelligent and educated compositional choices that balance
reasoning with intuition.
Listen to Soul! Exploring a Musical Genre provides an overview of
soul music for fans of the genre, with a focus on 50 must-hear
singers, songs, and albums that define it. Listen to Soul!
Exploring a Musical Genre provides both an overview and a critical
analysis of what makes soul music in the United States. A list of
50 songs, albums, and musicians includes many of the best-known
hits of the past and present as well as several important popular
successes that are not necessarily on the "best-of" lists in other
books. Like the other books in this series, this volume includes a
background chapter followed by a chapter that contains 50 critical
essays on must-hear albums, songs, and singers, approximately 1,500
words each. Chapters on the impact of soul music on popular culture
and the legacy of the genre further explain the impact of these
seminal compositions and musicians. This volume additionally
includes a greater focus on soul music as a genre, making it a
stand-out title on the topic for high school and college readers.
Allows readers to quickly get a sense of the history of soul music
in a broad overview Delves into critical analysis of 50 songs,
albums, and musicians that define the genre Broadens the definition
of what is considered soul music Discusses the impact on popular
culture and legacy of soul music
Percival Kirby was one of the greatest South African musicologists and ethnomusicologists. Born in Scotland in 1887, after completing his studies at the Royal College of Music in London he came out to South Africa as the Music Organiser to the Natal Education Department. In 1920 he moved to Johannesburg as acting Professor of Music at the then University College. He was soon appointed Professor of Music and stayed at the University of the Witwatersrand for 30 years. Kirby was a conductor, timpanist, flautist, composer, teacher, musicologist, scientist and artist. As well as researching and writing on African music, he wrote the definitive book on the wreck of the Grosvenor.
Kirby was concerned about the demise of traditional cultural practices of African people. Whilst at Wits, he was encouraged by his colleagues, people like Raymond Dart and Louis Maingard, to make a comprehensive study of the musical practices of the indigenous peoples of southern Africa. Between 1923 and 1933, supported by several study grants, he travelled thousands of miles, undertook more than nine special expeditions as well as many shorter excursions in his ancient Model T Ford to places like Pietersburg and Potgietersrus, to the area then known as Sekhukhuneland, Transvaal, and to Swaziland and Botswana. He was hosted by local chiefs and taught to play the instruments he encountered. He managed to purchase many of them, and this collection is now known as the Kirby Collection and is housed at the South African College of Music, University of Cape Town.
The book Musical Instruments of the Native Races of South Africa, first published in 1934, was the culmination of these research trips. It has become the standard reference on indigenous South African musical instruments, but has been out of print for many years. This third edition, with a revised title, contains an introduction by Mike Nixon, Head of the Ethnomusicology and African Music programme at the South African College of Music, and new reproductions of the valuable historic photographs by Paff and others, but leaves Kirby’s original text unchanged.
In the late 1920s, Dmitry Shostakovich emerged as one of the first
Soviet film composers. With his first score for the silent film the
New Babylon (1929) and the many sound scores that followed, he was
positioned to observe and participate in the changing politics of
the film industry and negotiate the role of the film composer. In
The Early Film Music of Dmitry Shostakovich, Joan Titus examines
the scores of six of Shostakovich's films, from 1928 through 1936.
Instead of investigating Shostakovich as a composer, a rebel, a
communist, or a dissident, as innumerable studies do, Titus
approaches him as a concept in itself-as an idea-and asks why and
how listeners understand him as they do. Through Shostakovich's
scores, Titus engages with the construct of Soviet intelligibility,
the filmmaking and scoring processes, and the cultural politics of
scoring Soviet film music, asking why and how listeners understand
the composer the way they do. The discussions of the scores are
enriched by the composer's own writing on film music, along with
archival materials and recently discovered musical manuscripts that
illuminate the collaborative processes of the film teams, studios,
and composer. The Early Film Music of Dmitry Shostakovich
commingles film studies, musicology, and Russian studies with
original scholarship, and is sure to be of interest to a wide
audience including musicologists, film scholars, historians of
Russia and the Soviet Union, and Slavicists.
Designed for Music Theory courses, Music Theory Through
Improvisation presents a unique approach to basic theory and
musicianship training that examines the study of traditional theory
through the art of improvisation. The book follows the same general
progression of diatonic to non-diatonic harmony in conventional
approaches, but integrates improvisation, composition, keyboard
harmony, analysis, and rhythm. Conventional approaches to basic
musicianship have largely been oriented toward study of common
practice harmony from the Euroclassical tradition, with a heavy
emphasis in four-part chorale writing. The author's entirely new
pathway places the study of harmony within improvisation and
composition in stylistically diverse format, with jazz and popular
music serving as important stylistic sources. Supplemental
materials include a play-along audio in the downloadable resources
for improvisation and a companion website with resources for
students and instructors.
More than 50 years after their breakup, the Beatles are still
attracting fans from various generations, all while retaining their
original fan base from the 1960s. Why have those first-generation
fans continued following the Beatles and are now introducing their
grandchildren to the group? Why are current teens affected by the
band's music? And perhaps most importantly, how and why do the
Beatles continue to resonate with successive generations? Unlike
other bands of their era, the Beatles seem permanently frozen in
time, having never descended into "nostalgia act" territory.
Instead, even after the announcement of the band's breakup in 1970,
the group has maintained its cultural and musical relevance. Their
timeless quality appeals to younger generations while maintaining
the loyalty of older fans. While the Beatles indeed represent a
specific time period, their music and words address issues as
meaningful today as they were during the Summer of Love: politics,
war, sex, drugs, art, and creative liberation. As the first
anthology to assess the nature of fan response and the band's
enduring appeal, Fandom and the Beatles: The Act You've Known for
All These Years defines and explores these unique qualities and the
key ways in which this particular pop fusion has inspired such
loyalty and multigenerational popularity.
This book celebrates Madvillainy as a representation of two genius
musical minds melding to form one revered supervillain. A product
of circumstance, the album came together soon after MF DOOM's
resurgence and Madlib's reluctant return from avant-garde jazz to
hip-hop. Written from the alternating perspectives of three fake
music journalist superheroes-featuring interviews with Wildchild,
M.E.D., Walasia, Daedalus, Stones Throw execs, and many other real
individuals involved with the album's creation-this book blends
fiction and non-fiction to celebrate Madvillainy not just as an
album, but as a folkloric artifact. It is one specific retelling of
a story which, like Madvillain's music, continues to spawn infinite
legends.
Theology as Performance breaks new ground in the growing
conversation between modern theology and philosophical aesthetics.
Stoltzfus proposes that significant moments in the Western
development of the concept of God, in particular as represented in
the figures of Friedrich Schleiermacher, Karl Barth, and Ludwig
Wittgenstein, have been deeply influenced by concepts and
approaches borrowed from the discipline of musical aesthetics. Each
thinker develops fundamentally different ways of writing about God
that have in significant respects been derived from each one's
reading and writing about music. The aesthetic implications of
Schleiermacher's so-called subjectivist turn, Barth's objectivist
reaction, and Wittgenstein's language-game pragmatism can thus be
fully understood only by attending to the musical culture and
distinctly musicological discourses that gave rise to them.
Stoltzfus constructs two trajectories of thought with which to
trace theological reflection upon music throughout the pre-modern
period: the traditions of Orpheus and Pythagoras. Schleiermacher's
aesthetic approach, then, becomes a modern representative of the
Orpheus trajectory, and Barth's approach a representative of the
Pythagoras trajectory. Stoltzfus interprets Wittgenstein as putting
forward a radical critique of these trajectories and pointing
toward a third, "performative" theological-aesthetic method.
Theology as Performance offers a provocative rethinking of the
aesthetic roots of modern theology.
Holy Brotherhood: Romani Music in a Hungarian Pentecostal Church is a musical ethnography of a religious community. After the end of socialism, different ethnic groups in Hungary harbored antagonism toward one another. In one Pentecostal church in Pecs, Hungary, however, both Hungarians and Roma (Gypsies) worshipped and made music together. Three musical repertoires coexisted, each with a separate historical background and complex social meanings: Romani religious song; nineteenth-century gospel hymns originally from the United States; and contemporary Christian pop from the United States. Church members accommodated cultural and musical differences by developing several distinct performance styles.
Eminently readable despite the complexity of its subject, "Fugal
Composition: A Guide to the Study of Bach's 48" guides the reader
in studying the 48 fugues of the composer's "Well-Tempered
Clavier." Author Joseph Groocock analyzes each of the fugues
individually, both verbally and diagrammatically, and includes such
elements as overall structure, episodes, stretto, subsidiary
subjects, and countersubjects. The appendices and index furnish a
ready reference for the scholar or researcher seeking information
or guidance on specific points.
Meanwhile, the volume's editor supplies comparative analyses
using current and previous scholarship on every fugue-illustrating
where the author supports or challenges other viewpoints. In all,
the analyses contained in" Fugal Composition" establish the
extraordinary diversity of Bach's fugal style, in such a way that
readers gain a new understanding of these significant and beautiful
works of music.
Music is a frequently neglected aspect of Japanese culture. It is
in fact a highly problematic area, as the Japanese actively
introduced Western music into their modern education system in the
Meiji period (1868-1911), creating westernized melodies and
instrumental instruction for Japanese children from kindergarten
upwards. As a result, most Japanese now have a far greater
familiarity with Western (or westernized) music than with
traditional Japanese music. Traditional or classical Japanese music
has become somewhat ghettoized, often known and practised only by
small groups of people in social structures which have survived
since the pre-modern era. Such marginalization of Japanese music is
one of the less recognized costs of Japan's modernization. On the
other hand, music in its westernized and modernized forms has an
extremely important place in Japanese culture and society,
Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, for example, being so widely known and
performed that it is arguably part of contemporary Japanese popular
and mass culture. Japan has become a world leader in the mass
production of Western musical instruments and in innovative
methodologies of music education (Yamaha and Suzuki). More
recently, the Japanese craze of karaoke as a musical entertainment
and as musical hardware has made an impact on the leisure and
popular culture of many countries in Asia, Europe and the Americas.
This is the first book to cover in detail all genres including
court music, Buddhist chant, theatre music, chamber ensemble music
and folk music, as well as contemporary music and the connections
between music and society in various periods. The book is a
collaborative effort, involving both Japanese and English speaking
authors, and was conceived by the editors to form a balanced
approach that comprehensively treats the full range of Japanese
musical culture.
MUSIC IN TEXAS A SURVEY OF ONE ASPECT OF CULTURAL PROGRESS LOTA M.
SPELL Austin, Texas 1936 Copyright, 1936, by Lota M. Spell All
rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or
parts thereof in, any Jorm. PREFACE THE purpose of this work is to
make available to teachers, club workers, and others interested in
the cultural develop ment of the State of Texas some facts by which
the progress of music may be traced, and also some songs actually
sung through the years, as illustrative material Many of these,
here reproduced from early editions in the possession of the
writer, while in no sense masterpieces of musical art, are
represent ative of the taste of the people at different eras. A
collection of dances and instrumental music will be issued
separately in larger format later The thanks of the writer for
assistance are due to too many to call each by name. Especial
thanks are due Dr. R. C. Ste phenson for the translation of the
Spanish songs and to Dr. Eduard Micek, Dr. Carlos Castaneda, Miss
Hilda Widen and Miss Julia Harris, of Austin Miss Julia Owen of
Navasota Sr. Julio Galindo of Mexico City Miss Jovita Gonzales and
Mr. Oscar Fox of San Antonio Mrs. Selma Metzenthin-Raun ick and Mr.
H. M. Dietel of New Braunfels and Dr. Charles B. Qualia of Lubbock,
for aid in locating materials. Without the interest and insistence
of the officers and members of the State Federation of Music Clubs
the work would never have been completed or issued. The courtesy of
Silver, Burdett and Company in permitting the use of Clang, Clang
Choosing a Flower, and At the Window from the Progressive Music
Series of Oscar Fox and Whitney Montgomery for Corn Silks and
Cotton Blos soms of the AdolfFuchs Memorial Association for the use
of the Fuchs songs and of Dr. H. F. Estill for his adaptation of
the text of Will you come to the Bower is gratefully acknowledged.
To my aunt, Lota Dashiell bom in Texas, 1853, who sang to me, in my
childhood, . the songs of early Texas and to the members o the
State Federation of Music Clubs, whose insistence led to its
preparation this work is dedicated TABLE OF CONTENTS BOOK L THE
PERIOD OF DISSEMINATION CHAPTER PAGE I Music among the Indians 3 II
Music in the Texas Mission 6 III Spanish - Mexican Folk Music H IV
Anglo-American Music 23 V The Early German Contribution 34 BOOK II.
ABSORPTION FROM A WIDER FIELD VI Music of the Mexican War 46 VII
Other Foreign Contributions 52 VIII Echoes of the Old South 61 IX
Some Musical Annals before 1890 69 X Music Education to 1910 80
BOOK III. THE PERIOD OF AMALGAMATION XI Effects of the World War on
Musical Progress .... 89 XII Singing Societies in Texas 92 XIII
Opera in Texas 101 XIV The Symphony Orchestra in Texas 107 XV Music
Education, 19H-1936 113 XVI Other Agencies Contributing to Musical
Progress 119 BOOK IV. THE BEGINNINGS OF CREATIVE WORK XVII Texas
Folk Music 127 XVIII Music Composed by Texans or in Texas 137
APPENDIX. Texas Concert Calendar, 1920-1921 .... 144 INDEX. 1 47
LIST OF SONGS INCLUDED Padre Nuestro 1 An old Alabado - - 1 1
Alabado as sung in Texas today 12 Lullaby of a Spanish Mother 15
Call of the Tamale Vender 16 Music of the Pastores De larga Jornada
1 8 Oh peregrina 19 La Viudita 2 1 Christmas Carol 22 Vill you come
to the Bower 25 The Banks of the Blue Moselle opposite 26 Old
Windham two forms 29, 30 German Folk Song 36 At the Window 39, 40
Song of the Texas Ranger Im Afloat 46, 47The Campbells are Coming
49 The Maid of Monterey 51 Clang Clang Clang 56 Choosing a Flower
57 Come, oh come with me - 59, 60 Lorena 64 Take me home 66 67 The
Vacant Chair 85 Lebewohl by Silcher 95 On Yonder Rock Reclining -
102, 103 Yellow Rose of Texas 128, 129 Down on de rollin Brazos
132, 133 Palomita - 13 5 Corn Silks and Cotton Blossoms 138, 139
Music and Historical Critique provides a definitive collection of
Gary Tomlinson's influential studies on critical musicology, with
the watchword throughout being history. This collection gathers his
most innovative essays and lectures, some of them published here
for the first time, along with an introduction outlining the
context of the contributions and commenting on their aims and
significance. Music and Historical Critique provides a
retrospective view of the author's achievements in bringing to the
heart of musicological discourse both deep-seated experiences of
the past and meditations on the historian's ways of understanding
them.
A monumental study of musical practices in 18th century Santiago de
Chile, and the only English-language monograph about Chilean
colonial music, A Sweet Penance of Music offers a comprehensive
view of musicians within the city and their links with other Latin
American urban centers in the wider colonial system. Author
Alejandro Vera, recent winner of the International Casa de las
Americas Musicology Prize for the Spanish edition of his monograph,
provides a fascinating account of the quotidian cultural and social
significance of music in varying physical spheres - from
cathedrals, convents, and monasteries, to private houses and public
spaces. He brings to life a city long neglected in the shadow of
other colonial centers of economic power, asserting the importance
of duality in the period and its music - particularly centering one
nun harpist's conception of music as "sweet penance." Drawing from
historical documents and musical scores of the period, A Sweet
Penance of Music breaks new ground, laying the foundation for a
revisionist approach to the study of music in the colonial
Americas.
From prehistoric bone flutes to pipe organs to digital
synthesizers, instruments have been important to musical cultures
around the world. Yet, how do instruments affect musical
organization? And how might they influence players' bodies and
minds? Music at Hand explores these questions with a distinctive
blend of music theory, psychology, and philosophy. Practicing an
instrument, of course, builds bodily habits and skills. But it also
develops connections between auditory and motor regions in a
player's brain. These multi-sensory links are grounded in
particular instrumental interfaces. They reflect the ways that an
instrument converts action into sound, and the ways that it
coordinates physical and tonal space. Ultimately, these connections
can shape listening, improvisation, or composition. This means that
pianos, guitars, horns, and bells are not simply tools for making
notes. Such technologies, as creative prostheses, also open up
possibilities for musical action, perception, and cognition.
Throughout the book, author Jonathan De Souza examines diverse
musical case studies-from Beethoven to blues harmonica, from Bach
to electronic music-introducing novel methods for the analysis of
body-instrument interaction. A companion website supports these
analytical discussions with audiovisual examples, including
motion-capture videos and performances by the author. Written in
lucid prose, Music at Hand offers substantive insights for music
scholars, while remaining accessible to non-specialist readers.
This wide-ranging book will engage music theorists and historians,
ethnomusicologists, organologists, composers, and performers-but
also psychologists, philosophers, media theorists, and anyone who
is curious about how musical experience is embodied and conditioned
by technology.
With the rise of nationalism in the Republic of Korea, music has
come to play a central role in the discourse of identity. This
volume asks what Koreans consider makes music Korean, and how
meaning is ascribed to musical creation. Keith Howard explores
specific aspects of creativity that are designed to appeal to a new
audience that is increasingly westernized yet proud of its
indigenous heritage - updates of tradition, compositions, and
collaborative fusions. He charts the development of the Korean
music scene over the last 25 years and interprets the debates,
claims and statistics by incorporating the voices of musicians,
composers, scholars and critics. Koreanness is a brand identity
with a discourse founded on heritage, hence Howard focuses on music
that is claimed to link to tradition, and on music compositions
where indigenous identity is consciously incorporated. The volume
opens with SamulNori, a percussion quartet known throughout the
world that was formed in 1978 but is rooted in local and itinerant
bands stretching back many centuries. Parallel developments in
vocal genres, folksongs and p'ansori ('epic storytelling through
song') are considered, then three chapters explore compositions
written both for western instruments and for Korean instruments,
and designed both for Korean and international audiences. Over
time, Howard shows how the two musical worlds - kugak, traditional
music, and yangak, western music - have collided, and how fusions
have emerged. This volume documents how identity has been
negotiated by musicians, composers and audiences. Until recently,
references to tradition were common and, by critics and
musicologists, required. Western music increasingly encroached on
the market for Korean music and doubts were raised about the future
of any music identifiably Korean. Today, Korean musical production
exudes a resurgent confidence as it amalgamates Korean and western
elements, as it arranges and incorporates the old in the new, and
as it creates a music suitable for the contemporary world.
The private studioli of Italian rulers are among the most revealing
interior spaces of the Renaissance. In them, ideals of sober
recreation met with leisured reality in the construction of a
private princely identity performed before the eyes of a select
public. The decorative schemes installed in such rooms were
carefully designed to prompt, facilitate and validate the
performances through which that identity was constituted. Echoing
Helicon reconstructs, through the (re)interpretation of painted and
intarsia decoration, the role played by music, musicians and
musical symbolism in those performances. Drawing examples from the
Este dynasty - despotic rulers of Ferrara throughout the
Renaissance who employed such musicians as Pietrobono, Tromboncino
and Willaert, and such artists as Tura, Mantegna and Titian -
author Tim Shephard reaches new conclusions about the integration
of musical and visual arts within the courtly environment of
renaissance Italy, and about the cultural work required of music
and of images by those who paid for them.
Relying on Renaissance-era source material from a wide range of
disciplines as well as new approaches derived from critical and
cultural theory, Shephard provides a fresh look at the music of
this ninety-year period of the Italian Renaissance. While much has
been written about the studiolo by historians of art and
architecture, it has only recently become a growing area of
interest among musicologists. As the first English language
monograph devoted to the music of the studiolo, Echoing Helicon is
a significant contribution to this developing area of research and
essential reading for both musicologists and art historians
specializing in the Italian Renaissance.
The Continuum Aesthetics Series looks at the aesthetic questions
and issues raised by all major art forms. Stimulating, engaging and
accessible, the series offers food for thought not only for
students of aesthetics, but also for anyone with an interest in
philosophy and the arts. Aesthetics and Music is a fresh and often
provocative exploration of the key concepts and arguments in
musical aesthetics. It draws on the rich heritage of the subject,
while proposing distinctive new ways of thinking about music as an
art form. The book looks at: The experience of listening Rhythm and
musical movement What modernism has meant for musical aesthetics
The relation of music to other 'sound arts' Improvisation and
composition as well as more traditional issues in musical
aesthetics such as absolute versus programme music and the question
of musical formalism. Thinkers discussed range from Pythagoras and
Plato to Kant, Nietzsche and Adorno. Areas of music covered include
classical, popular and traditional music, and jazz. Aesthetics and
Music makes an eloquent case for a humanistic, democratic and
genuinely aesthetic conception of music and musical understanding.
Anyone interested in what contemporary philosophy has to say about
music as an art form will find this thought-provoking and highly
enjoyable book required reading.
The practices of singing and teaching singing are inextricable,
joined to each other through the necessity of understanding the
vocal art and craft. Just as singers must understand the physical
functions of voice in order to become musically proficient and
artistically mature, teachers too need to have a similar mastery of
these ideas - and the ability to explain them to their students -
in order to effectively guide their musical and artistic growth.
With this singer-instructor relationship in mind, Richard and Ann
Alderson's A New Handbook for Singers and Teachers presents a
fresh, detailed guide about how to sing and how to teach singing.
It systematically explores all aspects of the vocal technique -
respiration, phonation, resonance, and articulation - with each
chapter containing exercises aimed at applying and teaching these
principles. Beyond basic vocal anatomy and singing fundamentals,
the handbook also covers such understudied topics as the young
voice, the changing voice, and the aging voice, along with helpful
chapters for teachers about how to organize vocal lessons and
training plans. Thoughtfully and comprehensively crafted by two
authors with decades of singing and teaching experience between
them, A New Handbook for Singers and Teachers will prove an
invaluable resource for singers and teachers at all stages of their
vocal and pedagogical careers.
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