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Books > Music > Western music, periods & styles > General
The Classical Film Collection brings together famous classic pieces
from the movies, such as Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake (from Black Swan),
Mozart's Clarinet Concerto (Out of Africa), Allegri's Miserere
(Chariots of Fire) and, for the first time in print, House of
Woodcock by Jonny Greenwood from Phantom Thread. All pieces have
been arranged for the intermediate pianist.
(Guitar Method). A modern method ideal for all beginning
guitarists, studying individually or in a class. Technique and
reading skills are developed through two-, three- and four-part
ensemble arrangements of traditional and newly composed music. Also
includes an introduction to chord playing. Also available: Phase 2
Book 50449470 $7.95
Why do so many of us listen to classical music, and how can you get
the most from listening to it? In this unpretentious and
instructive book, internationally celebrated conductor and teacher
John Mauceri brings to bear his lifetime of experience and profound
knowledge. A protege of Leonard Bernstein and an artist who has
performed and recorded all over the world, Mauceri is the guide par
excellence to the joys of classical music. Mauceri illuminates our
understanding of what it is we hear when we listen; how each piece
bears the traces of its history; and how the concert experience
allows us constantly to discover music anew. 'Wonderful' Marilyn
Horne 'This delightful book is not so much the opening of a door as
an affectionate hand on the arm, guiding the reader with enthusiasm
and intelligence into a world of beauty' Stephen Hough
Both a defence of research aiming to recover how music sounded in
the past and an argument for the application of such historical
research to performance. The legitimacy of applying historical
research to musical performance has been much argued about in
recent years. Those advocating historical authenticity have been
attacked on philosophical, aesthetic, and even practical
grounds.This book both defends the practical value of trying to
determine how music sounded in the past and develops an
intellectual and musical justification for relating historical
research to performance. From the outset Peter Walls stresses the
need for research driven by curiosity rather than by the desire to
justify a particular approach. Arguing that a performance
determined entirely by historical rules is an impossibility, he
asserts that the imaginationis inevitably involved. His book
envisages a relationship between historical knowledge and
imagination that is dynamic and stimulating. Case studies range
from printing formats and performance in seventeenth-century violin
music,to tracking composer intention through the rehearsal and
production phases of nineteenth and twentieth century operas. PETER
WALLS is professor of music at Victoria University of Wellington,
and chief executive of the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra.
This comprehensive guide is a must-have for the legions of fans of
the beloved and perennially popular music known as soul and rhythm
& blues. The latest in the definitive All Music Guide series,
the All Music Guide to Soul offers entertaining and informative
reviews that lead readers to the best recordings by their favorite
artists and help them find new music to explore. Informative
biographies, essays, and "music maps" trace R&B's growth from
its roots in blues and gospel and its flowering in Memphis and
Motown, to its many branches today. Complete discographies note
bootlegs, important out-of-print albums, and import-only releases.
The Castrato is a nuanced exploration of why innumerable boys were
castrated for singing between the mid-sixteenth and late-nineteenth
centuries. It shows that the entire foundation of Western classical
singing, culminating in bel canto, was birthed from an unlikely and
historically unique set of desires, public and private, aesthetic,
economic, and political. In Italy, castration for singing was
understood through the lens of Catholic blood sacrifice as
expressed in idioms of offering and renunciation and,
paradoxically, in satire, verbal abuse, and even the symbolism of
the castrato's comic cousin Pulcinella. Sacrifice in turn was
inseparable from the system of patriarchy - involving teachers,
patrons, colleagues, and relatives - whereby castrated males were
produced not as nonmen, as often thought nowadays, but as idealized
males. Yet what captivated audiences and composers - from Cavalli
and Pergolesi to Handel, Mozart, and Rossini - were the
extraordinary capacities of castrato voices, a phenomenon
ultimately unsettled by Enlightenment morality. Although the
castrati failed to survive, their musicality and vocality have
persisted long past their literal demise.
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."
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