To reach the highest standards of instrumental performance, several years of sustained and focused learning are required. This requires perseverance, commitment and opportunities to learn and practise, often in a collective musical environment. This book brings together a wide range of enlightening current psychological and educational research to offer deeper insights into the mosaic of factors and related experiences that combine to nurture (and sometimes hinder) advanced musical performance. Each of the book's four sections focus on one aspect of music performance and learning: musics in higher education and beyond; musical journeys and educational reflections; performance learning; and developing expertise and professionalism. Although each chapter within its home section offers a particular focus, there is an underlying conception across all the book's contents of the achievability of advanced musical performance and of the important nurturing role that higher education can play, particularly if policy and practice are evidence-based and draw on the latest international research findings. The narrative offers an insight into the world of advanced musicians, detailing their learning journeys and the processes involved in their quest for the development of expertise and professionalism. It is the first book of its kind to consider performance learning in higher education across a variety of musical genres, including classical, jazz, popular and folk musics. The editors have invited an international community of leading scholars and performance practitioners to contribute to this publication, which draws on meticulous research and critical practice. This collection is an essential resource for all musicians, educators, researchers and policy makers who share our interest in promoting the development of advanced performance skills and professionalism.

(Ukulele). Ukulele for Kids is a fun, easy course that teaches children to play ukulele faster than ever before. Popular songs such as "Yellow Submarine," "The Hokey Pokey," "This Land Is Your Land," "Rock Around the Clock," "You Are My Sunshine" and "Barbara Ann" keep kids motivated, and the clean, simple page layouts ensure their attention remains focused on one concept at a time. The method can be used in combination with a teacher or parent. The accompanying CD contains tracks for demonstration and play-along. Lessons include: selecting your uke; parts of the uke; holding the uke; hand position; reading music notation and counting; notes on the strings; C, F, C7, Am, G, B-flat, and Gm chords; strumming and picking; and more

Based on primary sources, many of which have never been published or examined in detail, this book examines the music of the late seventeenth-century composers, Biber, Schmeltzer and Muffat, and the compositions preserved in the extensive Moravian archives in Kromeriz. These works have never before been fully examined in the cultural and conceptual contexts of their time. Charles E. Brewer sets these composers and their music within a framework that first examines the basic Baroque concepts of instrumental style, and then provides a context for the specific works. The dances of Schmeltzer, for example, functioned both as incidental music in Viennese operas and as music for elaborate court pantomimes and balls. These same cultural practices also account for some of Biber's most programmatic music, which accompanied similar entertainments in Kromeriz and Salzburg. The many sonatas by these composers have also been misunderstood by not being placed in a context where it was normal to be entertained in church and edified in court. Many of the works discussed here remain unpublished but have, in recent years, been recorded. This book enhances our understanding and appreciation of these recordings by providing an analysis of the context in which the works were first performed.

This book presents figured harmony as a form of aural training. It seeks to make the student more keenly aware of chord-relationships as actual sound. It will increase the student's power to form an inward realization of what a page of music is going to sound like without having actually heard it.

The symphony retained its primacy as the most prestigious large-scale orchestral form throughout the first half of the twentieth century, particularly in Britain, Russia and the United States. Likewise, Australian composers produced a steady stream of symphonies throughout the period from Federation (1901) through to the end of the 1950s. Stylistically, these works ranged from essays in late nineteenth-century romanticism, twentieth-century nationalism, neo-classicism and near-atonality. Australian symphonies were most prolific during the 1950s, with 36 local entries in the 1951 Commonwealth Jubilee Symphony competition. This extensive repertoire was overshadowed by the emergence of a new generation of composers and critics during the 1960s who tended to regard older Australian music as old-fashioned and derivative. The Australian Symphony from Federation to 1960 is the first study of this neglected genre and has four aims: firstly, to show the development of symphonic composition in Australia from Federation to 1960; secondly, to highlight the achievement of the main composers who wrote symphonies; thirdly, to advocate the restoration and revival of this repertory; and, lastly, to take a step towards a recasting of the narrative of Australian concert music from Federation to the present. In particular, symphonies by Marshall-Hall, Hart, Bainton, Hughes, Le Gallienne and Morgan emerge as works of particular note.

In Opera at the Bandstand: Then and Now, George W. Martin surveys the role of concert bands during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in making contemporary opera popular. He also chronicles how in part they lost their audience in the second half of the twentieth century by abandoning operatic repertory. Martin begins with the Dodworth bands in New York City from the 1850s and moves to the American tour of French conductor and composer Louis Antoine Jullien, bandmaster Patrick S. Gilmore's jubilee festivals, the era of John Philip Sousa from 1892 to 1932, performances of the Goldman Band of New York City from 1920 to 2005, and finally the wind ensembles sparked by Frederick Fennell. He illustrates the degree to which operatic material comprised these bands' overall repertory and provides detailed programs in the appendixes. Opera at the Bandstand describes how the technological advancements sweeping the country, such as radio, automobiles, recordings, television, and air conditioning, along with changes in demographics, affected the country's musical life. It will appeal to bandmasters and their players, as well as those with an interest in American history, music, popular culture, and opera.

What does it mean to talk about musical coherence at the end of a century characterised by fragmentation and discontinuity? How can the diverse influences which stand behind the works of many late twentieth-century composers be reconciled with the singular immediacy of the experiences that they can create? How might an awareness of the distinctive ways in which these experiences are generated and controlled affect the way we listen to, reflect upon and write about this music? Mark Hutchinson outlines a novel concept of coherence within Western art music from the 1980s to the turn of the millennium as a means of understanding the work of a number of contemporary composers, including Thomas Ades, Kaija Saariaho, Toru Takemitsu and Gyoergy Kurtag, whose music cannot be fitted easily into a particular compositional school or analytical framework. Coherence is understood as a multi-layered phenomenon experienced, above all, in the act of listening, but reliant upon a variety of other aspects of musical experience, including compositional statements, analysis, and connections of aesthetic, as well as listeners' own, imaginative conceptualisations. Accordingly, the approach taken here is similarly multi-faceted: close analytical readings of a number of specific works are combined with insights drawn from philosophy and aesthetics, music perception, and critical theory, with a particular openness to novel metaphorical presentations of basic musical ideas about form, language and time.

From 1840-57, Heinrich Ernst was one of the most famous and significant European musicians, and performed on stage, often many times, with Berlioz, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Liszt, Wagner, Alkan, Clara Schumann, and Joachim. It is a sign of his importance that, in 1863, Brahms gave two public performances in Vienna of his own and Ernst's music to raise money for the now mortally ill violinist. Berlioz described Ernst as 'one of the artists whom I love the most, and with whose talent I am most sympathetique', while Joachim was in no doubt that Ernst was 'the greatest violinist I ever heard; he towered above the others'. Many felt that he surpassed the expressive and technical achievements of Paganini, but Ernst, unlike his great predecessor, was also a tireless champion of public chamber music, and did more than any other early nineteenth-century violinist to make Beethoven's late quartets widely known and appreciated. Ernst was not only a great virtuoso but also an accomplished composer. He wrote two of the most popular pieces of the nineteenth century - the Elegy and the Carnival of Venice - and he is best known today for two solo pieces which represent the ne plus ultra of technical difficulty: the transcription of Schubert's Erlking, and the sixth of his Polyphonic Studies, the variations on The Last Rose of Summer. Perhaps he made his greatest contribution to music through his influence on Liszt's outstanding masterpiece, the B minor piano sonata. In 1849, Liszt conducted Ernst playing his own Concerto Pathetique, a substantial single-movement work, in altered sonata form, using thematic transformation. Soon after this performance, Liszt wrote his Grosses Konzertsolo (1849-50), his first extended single-movement work, using altered sonata form, and thematic transformation. This is now universally acknowledged to be the immediate forerunner of the sonata, which refines and develops all these techniques. Liszt made his debt clear when, three years after completi

This work provides orchestra teachers with techniques for conducting, choosing repertoire, program development, recruiting, playing styles, and preparing for competitions. This is the latest in MENC's popular Spotlight series, comprising articles that have appeared in state MEA journals.

Longtime collectors of video recordings (VHS) of piano, both solo and with orchestra desire nothing more than a catalog listing only piano performances. This catalog provides the means whereby music professionals, average piano students, and piano aficionados can study piano performance in both its audio and video aspects. Part I provides information on nearly 200 piano performance videos that where personally heard by the authors. There is a brief evaluation of each video, the authors thoughts as well as the opinions of highly regarded critics in the music performance field. Part II lists supplemental video recordings containing performances by more than one pianist, as in collections, competitions, and documentaries. Part III cross-references the catalog by composer. Each composition relates to a piano performance listed in Part I or Part II. In some instances, the pianist plays only excerpts of compositions, but these musical fragments are included because they are the only VHS performances the authors could find by that particular pianist or simply because they are so representative of the pianist's style. The video recording provides an evocative look at the pianist, how he produces his particular sound, what hand position he prefers when playing a concerto, and his rapport with both orchestra and conductor. A useful tool for piano music enthusiasts, for those looking to hear piano performance, and for skilled pianists looking for new insights.

Music theory is often seen as independent from - even antithetical to - performance. While music theory is an intellectual enterprise, performance requires an intuitive response to the music. But this binary opposition is a false one, which serves neither the theorist nor the performer. In Interpreting Chopin Alison Hood brings her experience as a performer to bear on contemporary analytical models. She combines significant aspects of current analytical approaches and applies that unique synthetic method to selected works by Chopin, casting new light on the composer's preludes, nocturnes and barcarolle. An extension of Schenkerian analysis, the specific combination of five aspects distinguishes Hood's method from previous analytical approaches. These five methods are: attention to the rhythms created by pitch events on all structural levels; a detailed accounting of the musical surface; 'strict use' of analytical notation, following guidelines offered by Steve Larson; a continual concern with what have been called 'strategies' or 'premises'; and an exploration of how recorded performances might be viewed in terms of analytical decisions, or might even shape those decisions. Building on the work of such authors as William Rothstein, Carl Schachter and John Rink, Hood's approach to Chopin's oeuvre raises interpretive questions of central interest to performers.

How do we develop musical creativity? How is musical creativity nurtured in collaborative improvisation? How is it used as a communicative tool in music therapy? This comprehensive volume offers new research on these questions by an international team of experts from the fields of music education, music psychology and music therapy. The book celebrates the rich diversity of ways in which learners of all ages develop and use musical creativity. Contributions focus broadly on the composition/improvisation process, considering its conceptualization and practices in a number of contexts. The authors examine how musical creativity can be fostered in formal settings, drawing examples from primary and secondary schools, studio, conservatoire and university settings, as well as specialist music schools and music therapy sessions. These essays will inspire readers to think deeply about musical creativity and its development. The book will be of crucial interest to music educators, policy makers, researchers and students, as it draws on applied research from across the globe, promoting coherent and symbiotic links between education, music and psychology research.

In The New Guitarscape, Kevin Dawe argues for a re-assessment of guitar studies in the light of more recent musical, social, cultural and technological developments that have taken place around the instrument. The author considers that a detailed study of the guitar in both contemporary and cross-cultural perspectives is now absolutely essential and that such a study must also include discussion of a wide range of theoretical issues, literature, musical cultures and technologies as they come to bear upon the instrument. Dawe presents a synthesis of previous work on the guitar, but also expands the terms by which the guitar might be studied. Moreover, in order to understand the properties and potential of the guitar as an agent of music, culture and society, the author draws from studies in science and technology, design theory, material culture, cognition, sensual culture, gender and sexuality, power and agency, ethnography (real and virtual) and globalization. Dawe presents the guitar as an instrument of scientific investigation and part of the technology of globalization, created and disseminated through corporate culture and cottage industry, held close to the body but taken away from the body in cyberspace, and involved in an enormous variety of cultural interactions and political exchanges in many different contexts around the world. In an effort to understand the significance and meaning of the guitar in the lives of those who may be seen to be closest to it, as well as providing a critically-informed discussion of various approaches to guitar performance, technologies and techniques, the book includes discussion of the work of a wide range of guitarists, including Robert Fripp, Kamala Shankar, Newton Faulkner, Lionel Loueke, Sharon Isbin, Steve Vai, Bob Brozman, Kaki King, Fred Frith, John 5, Jennifer Batten, Guthrie Govan, Dominic Frasca, I Wayan Balawan, Vicki Genfan and Hasan Cihat A-rter.

In Studio-Based Instrumental Learning, Kim Burwell investigates the nature of lesson interactions in instrumental teaching and learning. Studio lesson activity is represented as a private interaction, dealing with skill acquisition and reflecting a tradition based in apprenticeship, as well as the personal attributes and intentions of participants. The varied and particular nature of such interaction does not always lend itself well to observation or - when observed - to easy interpretation. This presents particular problems for practitioners wishing to share aspects of professional knowledge, and for researchers seeking to explain the practice. Focusing on a single case study of two clarinet lessons, Burwell uses video observations and interviews to analyse collaborative lesson activity, through the 'rich transcription' of performance, verbal and nonverbal behaviours. The foregrounded lesson interactions are also contextualised by the background consideration of social, cultural and institutional frameworks. The research is aimed a helping to create a framework that can support reflection among practitioners as they continually develop their work, not only experientially - through the tradition of 'vertical transmission' from one musician to another - but collaboratively, through the 'horizontal' sharing of good practice.

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This volume contains valuable practice material for candidates preparing for the ABRSM Grade 8 Piano exams. The book is written in attractive and approachable styles and representative of the technical level expected in the exam.

This volume contains valuable practice material for candidates preparing for the ABRSM Grade 2 Piano exams. The book is written in attractive and approachable styles and representative of the technical level expected in the exam.

This volume contains valuable practice material for candidates preparing for the ABRSM Grade 1 Piano exams. The book is written in attractive and approachable styles and representative of the technical level expected in the exam.

First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Developing Expression in Brass Performance and Teaching helps university music teachers, high school band directors, private teachers, and students develop a vibrant and flexible approach to brass teaching and performance that keeps musical expression central to the learning process. Strategies for teaching both group and applied lessons will help instructors develop more expressive use of articulation, flexibility in sound production, and how to play with better intonation. The author shares strategies from today's best brass instrument performers and teachers for developing creativity and making musical expression central to practicing and performing. These concepts presented are taken from over thirty years of experience with musicians like Wynton Marsalis, Barbara Butler, Charles Geyer, Donald Hunsberger, Leonard Candelaria, John Haynie, Bryan Goff, members of the Chicago Symphony and New York Philharmonic and from leading music schools such as the Eastman School of Music, The University of North Texas and The Florida State University. The combination of philosophy, pedagogy, and common sense methods for learning will ignite both musicians and budding musicians to inspired teaching and playing.

TheDouble Bass: How it Works provides information not usually found in traditional instrumental music method books. When used concurrently with any method book, the student's learning experience is expanded beyond "learning how to play" to include all topics relevant to the subject instrument. As the lessons proceed, the students will be able to associate their playing experiences with information on how the subject instrument produces sound, works mechanically, evolves, is made, and how to care for it. This expanded knowledge provides a player with greater insight into that instrument's relationship to others in its family and to those other instruments with which the player will be working. The result of the exposure to this enriched experience is a well-rounded musician in place of one who can just play an instrument.

The piano works of Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) are among the most treasured musical compositions of the twentieth century. In this volume, pianist and Russian music scholar Sofia Moshevich provides detailed interpretive analyses of the ten major piano solo works by Shostakovich, carefully noting important stylistic details and specific ways to overcome the numerous musical and technical challenges presented by the music. Each piece is introduced with a brief historic and structural description, followed by an examination of such interpretive aspects as tempo, phrasing, dynamics, voice balance, pedaling, and fingering. This book will be an invaluable resource for students, pedagogues, and performers of Shostakovich's piano solos.

Developing Expression in Brass Performance and Teaching helps university music teachers, high school band directors, private teachers, and students develop a vibrant and flexible approach to brass teaching and performance that keeps musical expression central to the learning process. Strategies for teaching both group and applied lessons will help instructors develop more expressive use of articulation, flexibility in sound production, and how to play with better intonation. The author shares strategies from today's best brass instrument performers and teachers for developing creativity and making musical expression central to practicing and performing. These concepts presented are taken from over thirty years of experience with musicians like Wynton Marsalis, Barbara Butler, Charles Geyer, Donald Hunsberger, Leonard Candelaria, John Haynie, Bryan Goff, members of the Chicago Symphony and New York Philharmonic and from leading music schools such as the Eastman School of Music, The University of North Texas and The Florida State University. The combination of philosophy, pedagogy, and common sense methods for learning will ignite both musicians and budding musicians to inspired teaching and playing.

Among the major changes that swept through the music industry during the mid-nineteenth century, one that has received little attention is how musical performances were managed and directed. Yet this was arguably the most radical change of all: from a loose control shared between the violin-leader, musical director and maestro al cembalo to a system of tight and unified control under a professional conductor-manager. This process brought with it not only baton conducting in its modern form, but also higher standards of training and discipline, a new orchestral lay-out and a more focused rehearsal regime. The resulting rise in standards of performance was arguably the greatest achievement of English music in the otherwise rather barren mid-Victorian period. The key figure in this process was Michael Costa, who built for himself unprecedented contractual powers and used his awesome personal authority to impose reform on the three main institutions of mid-Victorian music: the opera houses, the Philharmonic and the Sacred Harmonic Society. He was a central figure in the battles between the two rival opera houses, between the Philharmonic and the New Philharmonic, and between the venerable Ancient Concerts and the mass festival events of the Sacred Harmonic Society. Costa's uniquely powerful position in the operatic, symphonic and choral world and the rapidity with which he was forgotten after his death provide a fascinating insight into the politics and changing aesthetics of the Victorian musical world.