Get Started in Classical Music is a clear, concise yet comprehensive introduction to the world of classical music for the newcomer. It takes your listening experience as the starting point and fills in factual details along the way. New topics are introduced step by step and are always presented from the listener's point of view. These topics include: - Listening to music: developing skills - What is classical music? - The architecture of music: forms and structures - Historical background: different periods and different styles - The instruments of the orchestra - Starting a collection of recorded music Examples from well-known pieces are examined in a clear and non-technical way. Whether you dip into Get Started in Classical Music from time to time or read it straight through, you will feel that your musical horizons have been broadened and that you have gained the knowledge and confidence to extend your musical experiences further.

A fascinating poetic journey into the mind and heart of a musical genius, from the author of the best-selling Darwin: A Life in Poems

Ruth Padel's new sequence of poems, in four movements, is a personal voyage through the life and legend of one of the world's greatest composers. She uncovers the man behind the music, charting his private thoughts and feelings through letters, diaries, sketchbooks, and the conversation books he used as his hearing declined. She gives us Beethoven as a battered four-year-old, weeping at the clavier; the young virtuoso pianist agonized by his encroaching deafness; the passionate, heartbroken lover; the clumsy eccentric making coffee with exactly sixty beans. Padel's quest takes her into the heart of Europe and back to her own musical childhood: Her great-grandfather, who studied in Leipzig with a pupil of Beethoven's, became a concert pianist before migrating to Britain; her parents met making music; and Padel grew up playing the viola, Beethoven's instrument as a child. Her book is a poet and string player's intimate connection across the centuries with an artist who, though increasingly isolated, ended even his most harrowing works on a note of hope.

Expression and truth are traditional opposites in Western thought: expression supposedly refers to states of mind, truth to states of affairs. "Expression and Truth" rejects this opposition and proposes fluid new models of expression, truth, and knowledge with broad application to the humanities. These models derive from five theses that connect expression to description, cognition, the presence and absence of speech, and the conjunction of address and reply. The theses are linked by a concentration on musical expression, regarded as the ideal case of expression in general, and by fresh readings of Ludwig WittgensteinOCOs scattered but important remarks about music. The result is a new conception of expression as a primary means of knowing, acting on, and forming the world.Recent years have seen the return of the claim that musicOCOs power resides in its ineffability. In "Expression and Truth," Lawrence Kramer presents his most elaborate response to this claim. Drawing on philosophers such as Wittgenstein and on close analyses of nineteenth-century compositions, Kramer demonstrates how music operates as a medium for articulating cultural meanings and that music matters too profoundly to be cordoned off from the kinds of critical readings typically brought to the other arts. A tour-de-force by one of musicologyOCOs most influential thinkers.OCoSusan McClary, "Desire and Pleasure in Seventeenth-Century Music."

MAKE A SOUND INVESTMENT IN CLASSICAL MUSIC
Who are the ten most important classical composers? Who in the world was Palestrina? Why did Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" cause a riot? Which five of each important composer's works should you buy? What is a concerto and how does it differ from a sonata?
Maybe you don't know the answers to these questions; author Phil Goulding certainly didn't. When Goulding first tried to learn about classical music, he found himself buried in an avalanche of technical terms and complicated jargon--so he decided to write the book he couldn't find.
The result is a complete classical music education in one volume. Comprehensive, discriminating, and delightfully irreverent, Classical Music provides such essential information as:
* Rankings of the top 50 composers (Bach is #1. Borodin is #50)
* A detailed and anecdotal look at each composer's life and work
* The five primary works of each composer and specific recommended CDs for each.
* Further great works of each composer--if you really like him
* Concise explanations of musical terminology, forms, and periods
* A guide to the parts and history of the symphony orchestra
"This book uses every conceivable gimmick to immerse readers in the richness of classical music: lists, rankings, sidebars devoted to lively anecdotes, and catchy leads."
--The Washington Post
"One terrific music appreciation book...The information is surprisingly detailed but concisely presented. Goulding's writing style is breezy yet mature....[He] has raised music appreciation from a racket to a service."
--The Arizona Daily Star

In May 1968, France teetered on the brink of revolution as a series of student protests spiraled into the largest general strike the country has ever known. In the forty years since, May '68 has come to occupy a singular place in the modern political imagination, not just in France but across the world. Eric Drott examines the social, political, and cultural effects of May '68 on a wide variety of music in France, from the initial shock of 1968 through the "long" 1970s and the election of Mitterrand and the socialists in 1981. Drott's detailed account of how diverse music communities developed in response to 1968 and his pathbreaking reflections on the nature and significance of musical genre come together to provide insights into the relationships that link music, identity, and politics.

Unlike so many of his symphonies, Bruckner's "Te Deum" was an unqualified success from the very first. The compser even referred to the piece as "the pride of my life." The vocal score prepared by Bruckner's friend Josef Schalk and first published by C.F. Peters is offered here in a digitally enhanced reprint featuring measure numbers, contents, instrumentation. Compatible with the widely available public domain orchestral from Kalmus, Luck's and elsewhere.

Today's most famous cellists as well as up-and-coming talents are subjects of this extraordinary photographic reportage book. For years, Uta Ssse-Krause took pictures at festivals, workshops, competitions, rehearsals and concerts of performing cellists, newly discovered and established leading musicians. Her photographs capture the individuality of each cellist; all the photographs were taken live without any posing. This collection was taken from her own photo archives, and these were selected for their absolute authenticity ? portraying faces as the mirror of musical sentiment. As different as each cellist's state of mind may be, they all have one thing in common: unconditional dedication to their play.

Printed music and writing about music involve the use of complex systems of notation and a wealth of technical terms in several languages. The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Musical Terms provides clear, succinct, definitions of a comprehensive range of the musical terms, in English and other European languages, that are likely to be encountered in Western music. Over 2,500 A-Z entries range across a spectrum of subjects, among them: rhythm, metre, forms, genres, pitch, scales, chords, harmony and counterpoint, notational systems, composition and analysis, performance practice, tempo, expression, musical periods, artistic movements, computer applications, acoustics, and many more. Entries provide etymologies, and are fully cross-referenced. Some are illustrated with music examples and tables. An appendix lists all composers mentioned in the Dictionary, with their dates. It is an ideal book for students and teachers of music - it covers all the terms required in the SMAB musical theory exams - as well as for professional musicians, those learning to play musical instruments, and members of choirs, and musical groups. It will also be a useful quick reference book for concert-goers, CD-collectors, and radio listeners.

Nostalgia for the Future is the first collection in English of the writings and interviews of Luigi Nono (1924-1990). One of the most prominent figures in the development of new music after World War II, he is renowned for both his compositions and his utopian views. His many essays and lectures reveal an artist at the center of the analytical, theoretical, critical, and political debates of the time. This selection of Nono's most significant essays, articles, and interviews covers his entire career (1948-1989), faithfully mirroring the interests, orientations, continuities, and fractures of a complex and unique personality. His writings illuminate his intensive involvements with theatre, painting, literature, politics, science, and even mysticism. Nono's words make vividly evident his restless quest for the transformative possibilities of a radical musical experience, one that is at the same time profoundly engaged with its performers and spaces, its audiences, and its human and social motivations and ramifications.

Of all the things we can know about J. S. Bach's Mass in B Minor and Christmas Oratorio, the most profound come from things we can hear. Listening to Bach explores musical style as it was understood in the early eighteenth century. It encourages ways of listening that that take eighteenth-century musical sensibilities into account and that recognize our place as inheritors of a long tradition of performance and interpretation. Daniel R. Melamed shows how to recognize old and new styles in sacred music of Bach's time, and how movements in these styles are constructed. This opens the possibility of listening to the Mass in B Minor as Bach's demonstration of the possibilities of contrasting, combining, and reconciling old and new styles. It also shows how to listen for elements that would have been heard as most significant in the early eighteenth century, including markers of sleep arias, love duets, secular choral arias, and other movement types. This offers a musical starting point for listening for the ways Bach put these types to use in the Mass in B Minor and the Christmas Oratorio. The book also offers ways to listen to and think about works created by parody, the re-use of music for new words and a new purpose, like almost all of the Mass in B Minor and Christmas Oratorio. And it shows that modern performances of these works are stamped with audible consequences of our place in the twenty-first century. The ideological choices we make in performing the Mass and Oratorio, part of the legacy of their performance and interpretation, affect the way the work is understood and heard today. All these topics are illustrated with copious audio examples on a companion Web site, offering new ways of listening to some of Bach's greatest music.

This book undoes 50 years of mythmaking about Stravinsky's life in music. During his spectacular career, Igor Stravinsky underplayed his Russian past in favor of a European cosmopolitanism. Richard Taruskin has refused to take the composer at his word. In this long-awaited study, he defines Stravinsky's relationship to the musical and artistic traditions of his native land and gives us a dramatically new picture of one of the major figures in the history of music. Taruskin draws directly on newly accessible archives and on a wealth of Russian documents. In Volume One, he sets the historical scene: the St. Petersburg musical press, the arts journals, and the writings of anthropologists, folklorists, philosophers, and poets. Volume Two addresses the masterpieces of Stravinsky's early maturity-Petrushka, The Rite of Spring, and Les Noces. Taruskin investigates the composer's collaborations with Diaghilev to illuminate the relationship between folklore and modernity. He elucidates the Silver Age ideal of "neonationalism"-the professional appropriation of motifs and style characteristics from folk art-and how Stravinsky realized this ideal in his music. Taruskin demonstrates how Stravinsky achieved his modernist technique by combining what was most characteristically Russian in his musical training with stylistic elements abstracted from Russian folklore. The stylistic synthesis thus achieved formed Stravinsky as a composer for life, whatever the aesthetic allegiances he later professed. Written with Taruskin's characteristic mixture of in-depth research and stylistic verve, this book will be mandatory reading for all those seriously interested in the life and work of Stravinsky.

Recordings are now the primary way we hear classical music, especially the more abstract styles of "absolute" instrumental music. In this original, provocative book, Arved Ashby argues that recording technology has transformed our understanding of art music. Contesting the laments of nostalgic critics, Ashby sees recordings as socially progressive and instruments of a musical vernacular, but also finds that recording and absolute music actually involve similar notions of removing sound from context. He takes stock of technology's impact on classical music, addressing the questions at the heart of the issue. This erudite yet concise study reveals how mechanical reproduction has transformed classical musical culture and the very act of listening, breaking down aesthetic and generational barriers and mixing classical music into the soundtrack of everyday life.

The complete dramatic toolbox for the opera singer - a step-by-step guide detailing how to create character, from auditions through to rehearsal and performance and formulate a successful career. Drawing upon the innovative approach to the training of young opera singers developed by Martin Constantine, Co-Director of ENO Opera Works, The Opera Singer's Acting Toolkit leads the singer through the process of bringing the libretto and score to life in order to create character. It draws on the work of practitioners such as Stanislavski, Lecoq, Laban and Cicely Berry to introduce the singer to the tools needed to create an interior and physical life for character. The book draws on operatic repertoire from Handel through Mozart to Britten to present practical techniques and exercises to help the singer develop their own individual dramatic toolbox. The Opera Singer's Acting Toolkit features interviews with leading conductors, directors, singers and casting agents to offer invaluable insights into the professional operatic world, and advice on how to remain focused on the importance of the work itself.

(Fake Book). A comprehensive reference for all classical music lovers, the second edition of this fake book features 250 pieces added since the last edition. Imagine having one handy volume that includes everything from Renaissance music to Vivaldi to Mozart to Mendelssohn to Debussy to Stravinsky, and you have it here We have included as much of the world's most familiar classical music as possible, assembling more than 850 beloved compositions from ballets, chamber music, choral music, concertos, operas, piano music, waltzes and more. Featuring indexes by composer, title and genre, as well as a timeline of major classical composers, this encyclopedic fake book is great to use for playing and performing, but it's also a terrific resource for concert-goers, music students and music lovers. The chords of the harmony are indicated, and lyrics, in the original language, are included where appropriate.

The early seventeenth century, when the first operas were written and technical advances with far-reaching consequences - such as tonal music - began to develop, is also notable for another shift: the displacement of aristocratic music-makers by a new professional class of performers. In this book, Andrew Dell'Antonio looks at a related phenomenon: the rise of a cultivated audience whose skill involved listening rather than playing or singing. Drawing from contemporaneous discourses and other commentaries on music, the visual arts, and Church doctrine, Dell'Antonio links the new ideas about cultivated listening with other intellectual trends of the period: humanistic learning, contemplative listening (or watching) as an active spiritual practice, and musical mysticism as an ideal promoted by the Church as part of the Catholic Reformation.

A pianist, arranger, and composer, William Pursell is a mainstay of the Nashville music scene. He has played jazz in Nashville's Printer's Alley with Chet Atkins and Harold Bradley, recorded with Johnny Cash and Patsy Cline, performed with the Nashville Symphony, and composed and arranged popular and classical music. Pursell's career, winding like a crooked river between classical and popular genres, encompasses a striking diversity of musical experiences. A series of key choices sent him down different paths, whether it was reenrolling with the Air Force for a second tour of duty, leaving the prestigious Eastman School of Music to tour with an R&B band, or refusing to sign with the Beatles' agent Sid Bernstein. The story of his life as a working musician is unlike any other-he is not a country musician nor a popular musician nor a classical musician but, instead, an artist who refused to be limited by traditional categories. Crooked River City is driven by a series of recollections and personal anecdotes Terry Wait Klefstad assembled over a three-year period of interviews with Pursell. His story is one not only of talent, but of dedication and hard work, and of the ins and outs of a working musician in America. This biography fills a crucial gap in Nashville music history for both scholars and music fans.

The traditions of piano teaching have remained virtually unchanged for generations, beginning with the influential technique of Muzio Clementi (1752-1832), the first composer-pedagogue of the instrument. His was followed by an explosion of sometimes bizarre teaching systems, perhaps most notably Hanon's "The Virtuoso Pianist"-exacting drills of reinforcement by repetition, often to the disillusionment of beginners. Some 150 years later, these methods-considered absurd or abusive by many students-have evolved and persevered as part of music curricula in higher education. Reflecting the author's belief that learning piano is both gratifying and exasperating, this book critically examines two centuries of teaching practices and encourages instructors to seek more efficient and inspiring exercises.

"Rarely does one encounter in a single volume such a masterful and graceful display of intellectual virtuosity. Kerman's skill in illuminating musical texts, interpreting meaning, and fashioning historical insights vindicates his reputation as one of the few genuinely significant figures of our time in the study of music. The authoritative range, clarity, and elegance of the essays in this book make it both indispensable and delightful."--Leon Botstein, Director, American Symphony Orchestra

"Reading through the book is a bit like being invited to dinner with a good number of old friends, some acquaintances good to get to know a bit better, and a few strangers definitely worth meeting for the first time. Above all there is the host, willing to be expansive on what many of the people in the room have meant to him in the course of his varied life. It is invidious to deliver judgment: one simply feels honored to be there."--John Deathridge, co-author of "The New Grove Wagner

"Joseph Kerman has in recent years become a kind of bellwether for musicological writing, one who has offered the discipline various kinds of programmatic challenges and then shown us how to meet them. He presents--in essay after essay--exactly the kind of music criticism he has been urging us all to write. There are so many examples of graceful, insightful, humane, even funny ways to get 'out of analysis' and into understanding musical meaning."--Ruth Solie, editor of "Musicology and Difference