In Irving Berlin: The Formative Years, Charles Hamm traces the early years (1907-1914) of this most famous and distinctive American songwriter - author of such classics as `Always', `Cheek to Cheek', and `White Christmas'. The book shows how Berlin progressed from the kind of ethnic and vaudeville songs that reflected his immigrant background to being a writer of Broadway musical shows. Hamm brilliantly describes how Berlin emerged from the vital and complex social and cultural scene of New York to begin his rise as America's foremost songwriter.

This book is a celebration of the generation of popular singers which emerged during and after the war: singers such as Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, and Sarah Vaughan. Universally praised as intuitive performers, Gene Lees's expert analysis also shows them to be intelligent, skilful artists, didicated to their work. Sinatra is singled out for special praise: Lees describes him as 'our Poet Laureate, and best singer we've ever heard', and points out his technical virtuosity and his unique style of phrasing. The book also looks at some of the composers and lyricists whose material was finely tuned to suit the abilities of these new popular stars. A lyricist himself, Lees gives us an illuminating account of the language used by writers such as Johnny Mercer, their choice of subject matter, and their extraordinary gifts for rhyme and rhythm.

Can music be a curse? Here is an alternate history of online politics and new technology from the perspective of listening, typing, composing, and shared hearing. Emile Frankel presents a rigorous account of a world felt to be in crisis. The aesthetic and tonal ramifications for such feelings are twisted within the oppressive online structures mediating new music. The legacies of Silicon Valley digitalism, 4chan, Less Wrong, and Chaos Magic are compared to the magical thinking which underlies stochastic composition, and the aesthetics of deconstructed club music. Despite a pessimistic account of Accelerationism and reactionary philosophy, Frankel's spirited writing is full of hope. Hearing the Cloud considers the communal online conversations we engage in daily as profound acts of defiance. Sweet, lithe, oily, and honest music is shown to be an important source of togetherness.

As interest in popular music has increased, so the need for better ways of studying it has become more urgent. It is the author's contention that popular music can be properly understood only through an interdisciplinary method, and this book aims to demonstrate this through a critical analysis of issues and approaches in a variety of areas, ranging from the political economy of popular music through its history and ethnography to its semiology, aesthetics and ideology. The focus of the book is on Anglo-American popular music of the last two hundred years, more especially of the 20th century. In Part One the author outlines a "historical map" of this field, offering on the way a constructive critique of existing musical histories, of T.W.Adorno's pessimistic picture of music in 20th century "mass culture", and of various theories of musical production and reproduction in contemporary capitalist societies. Part Two turns to the analysis of popular music, looking in turn at approaches drawn from musicology, from folkloristics, anthropology and cultural studies, from structuralism and semiology, and from aesthetics, ideological analysis and psychoanalysis. Throughout the book the char

"Music for the Movies is the one book that should be in the library of anyone interested in learning about this art of the twentieth century". -- Elmer Bernstein

"A fascinating read for the film music lover". -- Jerry Goldsmith

"Music for the Movies is the best overview of the history of the art I've so far come across". -- David Newman

Film music fans have eagerly awaited this updated and greatly expanded edition of Tony Thomas' popular history of Hollywood film music (from the '30s through the '90s) as viewed through portraits of many of its foremost practitioners.

Includes discussions of the lives, works and influence of
-- Alfred Newman
-- Victor Young
-- Dimitri Tiomkin
-- Franz Waxman
-- Miklos Rosza
-- Max Steiner
-- Erich Wolfgang Korngold
-- Bernard Herrmann
-- Hugo Friedhofer
-- David Raksin
-- Aaron Copland
-- Alex North
-- Elmer Bernstein
-- Henry Mancini
-- Leonard Rosenman
-- Jerry Goldsmith
-- Lalo Schifrin
-- David Shire
-- Bruce Broughton
-- Basil Poledouris ... and others.

Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect. Cultural liberation and musical innovation. Pyrotechnics, bottle service, bass drops, and molly. Electronic dance music has been a vital force for more than three decades now, and has undergone transformation upon transformation as it has taken over the world. In this searching, lyrical account of dance music culture worldwide, Matthew Collin takes stock of its highest highs and lowest lows across its global trajectory. Through firsthand reportage and interviews with clubbers and DJs, Collin documents the itinerant musical form from its underground beginnings in New York, Chicago, and Detroit in the 1980s, to its explosions in Ibiza and Berlin, to today's mainstream music scenes in new frontiers like Las Vegas, Shanghai, and Dubai. Collin shows how its dizzying array of genres--from house, techno, and garage to drum and bass, dubstep, and psytrance--have given voice to locally specific struggles. For so many people in so many different places, electronic dance music has been caught up in the search for free cultural space: forming the soundtrack to liberation for South African youth after Apartheid; inspiring a psychedelic party culture in Israel; offering fleeting escape from--and at times into--corporatization in China; and even undergirding a veritable "independent republic" in a politically contested slice of the former Soviet Union. Full of admiration for the possibilities the music has opened up all over the world, Collin also unflinchingly probes where this utopianism has fallen short, whether the culture maintains its liberating possibilities today, and where it might go in the future.

Following Roy Newsome's highly acclaimed study Brass Roots: One Hundred Years of Brass Bands and their Music, this book takes up the story of bands and their development from the 1930s to the start of the new millennium. Brass band contests continued to play a significant role in the twentieth century, and this new book contains a detailed consideration of both local and regional contests and larger-scale national events such as the British Open and the National Brass Band Championships. As in previous times, the repertoire of bands has been greatly influenced by these contests. Newsome explores competition works, but also the development of an increasing number of concerto-style works intended for concert performance. One of the keys to the continuing popularity and success of the banding movement has been the creation of school and youth brass bands. Sections of the book devoted to younger generations of band players examine the changes that have taken place in such bands. There is also an investigation of the impact of radio, television and commercial recording on the brass band industry. The book also contains a wealth of information about leading bands and band personalities, and concludes with an overview of the spread of interest in British-style banding overseas.

On December 15, 1944, Maj. Alton Glenn Miller, commanding officer of the Army Air Force Band (Special), boarded a plane in England bound for France with Lt. Col. Norman Francis Baessell. Somewhere over the English Channel the plane vanished. No trace of the aircraft or its occupants has ever been found. To this day Miller, Baessell, and the pilot, John Robert Stuart Morgan, are classified as missing in action. Weaving together cultural and military history, Glenn Miller Declassified tells the story of the musical legend Miller and his military career as commanding officer of the Army Air Force Band during World War II. After a brief assignment to the Army Specialist Corps, Miller was assigned to the Army Air Forces Training Command and soon thereafter to Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, in the UK. Later that year Miller and his band were to be transferred to Paris to expand the Allied Expeditionary Forces Programme, but Miller never made it. Miller's disappearance resulted in numerous conspiracy theories, especially since much of the information surrounding his military service had been classified, restricted, or, in some cases, lost. Dennis M. Spragg has gained unprecedented access to the Miller family archives as well as military and government documents to lay such theories to rest and to demonstrate the lasting legacy and importance of Miller's life, career, and service to his country.

Dance Music of the French Baroque brings together information on rhythm from the interrelated fields of music, dance, poetry, rhetoric, and philosophy. Part I is devoted to the various factors involved in dance rhythms, including tempos, rhythmic feet, dance steps, declamation of lyrics, instrumental articulation, and performance of ornaments.

Part II describes in alphabetic order the fifteen most frequently encountered dances of the period and identifies the most typical performance of each in relation to the factors discussed in Part I. With reference to numerous illustrations and musical examples, it clearly conveys the manner in which the allemandes, bourees, chaconnes, gigues, etc., may be executed. This practical book presents a myriad of information in a form that is easy to use yet as graceful as the dances it describes."

Das Ziel der vorliegenden Studie ist die Untersuchung der Spezifik des Wort-Ton-Verhaltnisses in Ludwig van Beethovens Schaffen sowohl auf struktureller als auch auf semantischer Ebene. Da Beethoven selbst nie eine Abhandlung uber Komposition schrieb, erscheint es naturlich und naheliegend, als hauptsachlichen Bezugspunkt die musiktheoretischen Schriften aus dem 18. Jahrhundert heranzuziehen, um die musikasthetische Landschaft seiner Epoche zu rekonstruieren. Die durchgefuhrte Analyse von Beethovens Vokalmusik aus der Sicht der im 18. Jahrhundert ublichen Konzeption eines "Singstucks" beantwortet einige wesentliche Fragen nach den Prioritaten des Komponisten im Bereich der technischen und asthetischen Aspekte der musikalischen Bearbeitung eines Textes.

Wie gelingt der Tagesablauf eines Kindes so, dass es sowohl fur die schulische Ausbildung als auch fur die Musik genugend Zeit hat? Welche Sale eignen sich fur Konzerte am besten - und warum? Wie sieht Musikdidaktik in der Praxis aus? Fur dies und vieles mehr - etwa fur das Verhaltnis von Begabung und padagogischem Einfluss - zeigte Friedrich Wieck (1785-1873) leidenschaftliches Interesse. Der Vater und einzige Lehrer Clara Schumanns wirkt mit seinem kunstlerischen und padagogischen Sendungsbewusstsein ansteckend. In einem einfuhrenden Essay und in zahlreichen ausfuhrlichen Anmerkungen wird Wieck als eine mannigfaltig interessierte, lesefreudige und fachubergreifend denkende Persoenlichkeit portraitiert. Erstmalig finden sich auch schwer zugangliche Schriften Wiecks berucksichtigt.

Das Nachdenken uber Musik ist seit der Antike eng mit der Mathematik verbunden. Auf seinem interdisziplinaren Streifzug durch die gemeinsame Geschichte dieser beiden Disziplinen beschrankt sich das Buch nicht auf Pythagoras und die platonische Tradition, sondern bezieht Aristoxenos und die aristotelische Tradition gleichberechtigt in die Betrachtung ein. Der Streifzug, der auch ein historisches Gesamtbild vermitteln will, beginnt in der Antike und endet in der Barockzeit mit den Gedanken Werckmeisters zu Stimmung und Temperatur. Mehrere wichtige historische Werke der Musiktheorie werden dabei kritisch untersucht, und zwar besonders in rechnerischer Hinsicht. Dadurch erscheint nicht nur die Musiktheorie, sondern manchmal auch die Geschichte der Mathematik in einem ungewohnten Licht.

Die Autorin untersucht interdisziplinar, ob der britische Komponist Benjamin Britten auch als Musikpadagoge verstanden werden kann. Ausgehend von seiner pazifistischen Grundhaltung analysiert sie ausgewahlte Friedenswerke seines OEuvres: von einer bis dato unveroeffentlichten Kompositionsskizze und seinem "wahren Opus Nr. 1", "Our Hunting Fathers", bis hin zum popularen "War Requiem". Musikalisch-dramatische Analysen legen padagogische Intentionen offen. Hieran anknupfend zeigt die Autorin Perspektiven zur Musikvermittlung fur erwachsene Laien auf. Das hierzu entwickelte didaktische Konzept moechte Einfuhrungsveranstaltungen im Konzertbetrieb bereichern und auch denjenigen Besuchern Brittens Kompositionsprinzipien zuganglich machen, die keine Notenkenntnisse besitzen.

Die Autorin schlagt anhand der Figur des Cherubino einen Bogen von der Komoedienvorlage Beaumarchais uber Da Pontes Libretto und Mozarts Partitur bis hin zum Vergleich von Tonaufnahmen des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts. Im Bereich der Interpretationsforschung besteht die methodische Herausforderung in dem Versuch, die analytische Auswertung schriftlicher und akustischer Musikquellen zusammenzufuhren und so letztlich zum erklingenden Phanomen vorzudringen. Diese Darstellung erganzt die Autorin materialreich mit Oszillogrammen, Tabellen und Notenbeispielen.

Die "Musica" ist in Weltvorstellungen des Mittelalters und der Fruhen Neuzeit oft nicht nur ein Bestandteil des Wissens neben vielen anderen, sondern stellt ein ubergeordnetes Ordnungsprinzip dar. Erstmals untersucht dieses Buch die genaue Stellung von Musik innerhalb der universalen Ordnung der Dinge, wie sie sich in enzyklopadischen Texten auch jenseits des fachdisziplinaren Diskurses darstellt. Anhand zentraler Leitthemen wie Produktivitat, Kombinatorik und Kosmologie fuhrt die Untersuchung von der mittelalterlichen Logik Ramon Llulls uber zahlreiche Stationen bis hin zur Weltkonzeption Athanasius Kirchers. Noch im 17. Jahrhundert, so wird deutlich, kann die Rolle der Musik nur vor dem Hintergrund der anhaltenden Wirksamkeit mystischer, magischer und kosmologischer Denkweisen verstanden werden.

Wie der Erstdruck vermerkt, vertonte Robert Schumann im Jahr 1849 die Ballade "Schoen Hedwig" op. 106 "fur Declamation mit Begleitung des Pianoforte". Unter derselben Besetzungsangabe wurden drei Jahre spater die "Ballade von Haideknaben" und "Die Fluchtlinge" op. 122 publiziert. Die Autorin untersucht die zeitgenoessischen positiven AEusserungen zu Schumanns Werken, die in einem Umfeld der grundsatzlichen Ablehnung des Melodrams markant hervortreten. Sie zeigt, wie vor allem die Konzertmelodramen tiefgreifende Einblicke in seine Musik- und Gattungsasthetik ermoeglichen: Mit dem Melodramatischen als Vertonungsstrategie betrat der Komponist - trotz einer uber siebzigjahrigen Gattungstradition - musikalisch neues Terrain.