Composer and broadcaster Jack Pepper introduces the world of classical music - and its colorful characters - as you've never seen it before... LET'S ROCK!

Take a tour of musical history, and learn your timbre from your tempo, your tuba from your cello and your symphony from your concerto. Rub shoulders with 20 great composers - including child prodigy Mozart, pioneering musician Florence Price and film score composer Hans Zimmer - and find out what it really takes to write a timeless classical hit!

Listen as you read, using the playlist inside, with over 40 classical pieces covering 1,000 years of music. The story doesn't stop here, as Classical continues to influence music today and future sounds.

Informal, funny and written with infectious enthusiasm, this book is sure to inspire the budding composer in every reader and open up this dazzling world of music to new fans.

Virtuality has entered our lives making anything we desire possible. We are, as Gorillaz once sang, in an exciting age where ‘the digital won’t let [us] go…’ Technology has revolutionized music, especially in the 21st century where the traditional rules and conventions of music creation, consumption, distribution, promotion, and performance have been erased and substituted with unthinkable and exciting methods in which absolutely anyone can explore, enjoy, and participate in creating and listening to music. Virtual Music explores the interactive relationship of sound, music, and image, and its users (creators/musicians/performers/audience/consumers). Areas involving the historical, technological, and creative practices of virtual music are surveyed including its connection with creators, musicians, performers, audience, and consumers. Shara Rambarran looks at the fascination and innovations surrounding virtual music, and illustrates key artists (such as Grace Jones, The Weeknd), creators (such as King Tubby, Kraftwerk, MadVillain, Danger Mouse), audiovisuals in video games and performances (such as Cuphead and Gorillaz), audiences, and consumers that contribute in making this musical experience a phenomenon. Whether it is interrogating the (un)realness of performers, modified identities of artists, technological manipulation of the Internet, music industry and music production, or accessible opportunities in creativity, the book offers a fresh understanding of virtual music and appeals to readers who have an interest in this digital revolution.

The emergence of social media in the early 21st century promised to facilitate new "DIY" cultural approaches, emphasizing participation and democratization. However, in recent years these platforms have been criticized as domineering and exploitative. For DIY musicians in scenes with lengthy histories of cultural resistance, is social media a powerful emancipatory and democratizing tool, or a new corporate antagonist to be resisted? DIY Music explores the significant challenges faced by artists navigating this fraught cultural landscape. How do anti-commercial musicians operate in the competitive, attention-seeking world of social media? How do they deal with a new abundance of data and metrics? How do they present their activity as "cultural resistance"? This book shows that a platform-enabled DIY approach is now the norm for a wide array of cultural practitioners; this "DIY-as-default" landscape threatens to depoliticize the call to "do-it-yourself."

Singing together is a tried and true method of establishing and maintaining a group's identity. Identity, Intertextuality, and Performance in Early Modern Song Culture for the first time explores comparatively the dynamic process of group formation through the production and appropriation of songs in various European countries and regions. Drawing on oral, handwritten and printed sources, with examples ranging from 1450 to 1850, the authors investigate intertextual patterns, borrowing of melodies, and performance practices as these manifested themselves in a broad spectrum of genres including ballads, popular songs, hymns and political songs. The volume intends to be a point of departure for further comparative studies in European song culture. Contributors are: Ingrid Akesson, Mary-Ann Constantine, Patricia Fumerton, Louis Peter Grijp, Eva Guillorel, Franz-Josef Holznagel, Tine de Koninck, Christopher Marsh, Hubert Meeus, Nelleke Moser, Dieuwke van der Poel, Sophie Reinders, David Robb, Clara Strijbosch, and Anne Marieke van der Wal.

This book discusses WWI-era music in a historical context, explaining music's importance at home and abroad during WWI as well as examining what music was being sung, played, and danced to during the years prior to America's involvement in the Great War. Why was music so important to soldiers abroad during World War I? What role did music-ranging from classical to theater music, rags, and early jazz-play on the American homefront? Music of the First World War explores the tremendous importance of music during the years of the Great War-when communication technologies were extremely limited and music often took the place of connecting directly with loved ones or reminiscing via recorded images. The book's chapters cover music's contribution to the war effort; the variety of war-related songs, popular hits, and top recording artists of the war years; the music of Broadway shows and other theater productions; and important composers and lyricists. The author also explores the development of the fledgling recording industry at this time. Provides an excellent resource for students investigating music during the First World War as well as for adults interested in WWI-era history or music of the pre-twenties Documents the variety of reasons songs were sung by soldiers in wartime-to cheer themselves up, boost courage, poke fun at or stimulate hatred of their enemies, or express grievances or protest against the war or against authority Covers stage music of the WWI era, including music hall (British), vaudeville, revues, operettas, and musicals

Footprints of the Dance - An Early Seventeenth-Century Dance Master's Notebook by Jennifer Nevile provides new, fascinating and detailed information on the life of an early-seventeenth-century dance master in Brussels. The dance master's handwritten notebook contains unique material: a canon of dance figures and instructions for an exhibition with a pike; as well as signatures and general descriptions of his students, ballet plots and music associated with dancing. Reproduced for the first time are facsimile images of all the dance-related material, with transcriptions and translations of the ballet plots and instructions for the pike exhibition. The dance master is revealed as an active choreographer and performer, with strong ties to the French court musical establishment, and interested in fireworks and alchemy.

Applied Practice: Evidence and Impact in Theatre, Music and Art engages with a diversity of contexts, locations and arts forms - including theatre, music and fine art - and brings together theoretical, political and practice-based perspectives on the question of 'evidence' in relation to participatory arts practice in social contexts. This collection is a unique contribution to the field, focusing on one of the vital concerns for a growing and developing set of arts and research practices. It asks us to consider evidence not only in terms of methodology but also in the light of the ideological, political and pragmatic implications of that methodology. In Part One, Matthew Reason and Nick Rowe reflect on evidence and impact in the participatory arts in relation to recurring conceptual and methodological motifs. These include issues of purpose and obliquity; the relationship between evidence and knowledge; intrinsic and instrumental impacts, and the value of participatory research. Part Two explores the diversity of perspectives, contexts and methodologies in examining what it is possible to know, say and evidence about the often complex and intimate impact of participatory arts. Part Three brings together case studies in which practitioners and practice-based researchers consider the frustrations, opportunities and successes they face in addressing the challenge to produce evidence for the impact of their practice.

Crossover Stardom: Popular Male Stars in American Cinema focuses on male music stars who have attempted to achieve film stardom. Crossover stardom can describe stars who cross from one medium to another. Although 'crossover' has become a popular term to describe many modern stars who appear in various mediums, crossover stardom has a long history, going back to the beginning of the cinema. Lobalzo Wright begins with Bing Crosby, a significant Hollywood star in the studio era; moving to Elvis Presley in the 1950s and 1960s, as the studio system collapsed; to Kris Kristofferson in the New Hollywood period of the 1970s; and ending with Will Smith and Justin Timberlake, in the contemporary era, when corporate conglomerates dominate Hollywood. Thus, the study not only explores music stardom (and music genres) in various eras, and masculinity within these periods, it also surveys the history of American cinema from industrial and cultural perspectives, from the 1930s to today.

Medieval Arab Music and Musicians offers complete, annotated English translations of three of the most important medieval Arabic texts on music and musicians: the biography of the musician Ibrahim al-Mawsili from al-Isbahani's Kitab al-Aghani (10th c), the biography of the musician Ziryab from Ibn Hayyan's Kitab al-Muqtabis (11th c), and the earliest treatise on the muwashshah Andalusi song genre, Dar al-Tiraz, by the Egyptian scholar Ibn Sana' al-Mulk (13th c). Al-Mawsili, the most famous musician of his era, was also the teacher of the legendary Ziryab, who traveled from Baghdad to al-Andalus and is often said to have laid the foundations of Andalusi music. The third text is crucial to any understanding of the medieval muwashshah and its possible relations to the Troubadours, the Cantigas de Santa Maria, and the Andalusi musical traditions of the modern Middle East.

This volume focusses on a rarely discussed method of meaning production, namely via the absence, rather than presence, of signifiers. It does so from an interdisciplinary, transmedial perspective, which covers systematic, media-comparative and historical aspects, and reveals various forms and functions of missing signifiers across arts and media. The meaningful silences, blanks, lacunae, pauses, etc., treated by the ten contributors are taken from language and literature, film, comics, opera and instrumental music, architecture, and the visual arts. Contributors are: Nassim Balestrini, Walter Bernhart, Olga Fischer, Saskia Jaszoltowski, Henry Keazor, Peter Revers, Klaus Rieser, Daniel Stein, Anselm Wagner, Werner Wolf

An anthology of essays on the new syncretic, or 'fusion', styles of music of the indigenous peoples of the Pacific region, who have adopted forms of popular music as an expression of their cultural identity. Its strength lies in the layering up of a sense of community of inquiry, and the fostering of an intertextual head of steam, grounded in a set of empirical, rather than theoretical, concerns. It considers the interrelation between music, popular culture, politics and (national) identity, but also looks at the business aspect of producing and distributing music in the Pacific region.

A collection of true stories, gossip and details of 500 of the singles that failed to dent the Top 10, but which are still worthy of inclusion in a volume such as this. This book demonstrates just how much a melting pot of talent, creativity and energy the decade really was. It s not just in the groove, but between the grooves that you'll find the magic. Nuggets of information and connections between the artists, producers and songwriters offer a unique insight into the careers and development of key (and not so key) performers. The idea behind this book is simple to gather together a fantastic selection of 60s pop releases that are not nearly as well-known as they deserve to be. Packed full of beautiful glossy pictures of each and every disc featured, it is a colourful and quirky guide to records that you may never have heard of, but you will certainly want to listen to when you've finished.

This book is a brief, factual, historical walk through very interesting time in history. A walk through war and peace as well as sadness and happiness.The international walk of a fabulous female, occasionally in the spotlight-too often in the shadows, until now. A phenomenal singer; pianist, lyricist, composer; storyteller; glamourous entertainer, woman of the world, friend, and last, but certainly not least, my Mum (aka Ruth Allen). I am so proud of Mum and what she stands for. She has weathered every storm thrown her way and come out singing and swinging each time as she amazingly tackles a healthy 84 years young this year. I remain in awe of her beautiful smile and hopeful, youthful look, and outlook, throughout a life that's been anything but a walk in the park.