(Yorktown). A progression of melodic pieces and studies teaching the basics step by step. A fresh, unhurried and sound approach to piano study. It offers a veritable treasure of delightfully melodic, inventive repertoire to illustrate and correlate technique, theory, and musicianship.

The composer and pianist Michael Finnissy (b. 1946) is an unmistakeable presence in the British and international new music scene, both for his immeasurable generosity as prolific composer for many different types of musicians, major advocate for the works of others, and performer and conductor who has also been a driving force behind ensembles; he was also President of the International Society for Contemporary Music from 1990 to 1996. His vast and enormously varied output confounds those who seek easy categorisations: once associated strongly with the 'new complexity', Finnissy is equally known as composer regularly engaged with many different folk musics, for working with amateur and community musicians, for a long-term engagement with sacred music, or as an advocate of Anglo-American 'experimental' music. Twenty years ago, a large-scale volume entitled Uncommon Ground: The Music of Michael Finnissy gave the first major overview of the output of any 'complex' composer. This new volume brings a greater plurality of perspectives and critical sensibility to bear upon an output which is almost twice as large as it was when the earlier book was published. A range of leading contributors - musicologists, composers, performers and others - each grapple with particular questions relating to Finnissy's music, often in ways which raise questions relating more widely to new music, and provide theoretical foundations for further of study both of Finnissy and other composers.

This book takes as its historical point of departure the radical appearance in 1779 of technically difficult keyboard music in a set of six sonatas (Op. 2) by Muzio Clementi. The difficult passages contained in this opus are unique amongst keyboard music published for a market that was understood at the time to consist almost entirely of female amateur keyboardists. Previously actively discouraged from practicing or improving their skills due to the restrictive ideologies in place, Clementi's music increasingly affords female pianists a new kind of musical expression. Clementi and the woman at the piano: Virtuosity and the market for music in eighteenth-century London maps the social, musical, and gendered implications of technically difficult music and helps to underline important changes in Enlightenment culture and keyboard practice. Clementi's activities initiated the now familiar and modern concepts of repetitive musical practice, the work-concept, virtuosity itself, and the division between amateur and professional. Additionally, Clementi promotes a radical new mode of expression for female pianists that is at first highly controversial but slowly gains acceptance due to a widespread promotion of his music, instruments, and methods. Clementi's career is in many respects a perfect case study for the tensions between Enlightenment thinking and new Romantic ideologies.

Isolde Ahlgrimm (1914-1995) was an important pioneer in the revival of Baroque and Classical keyboard instruments in her native city, Vienna, and later, throughout Europe and the United States. She trained as a pianist at the Musikakademie in Vienna under the instruction of Viktor Ebenstein, Emil von Sauer and Franz Schmidt. In 1934 she met the musical instrument collector, Dr Erich Fiala, whom she married in 1938. His activities opened up the world of early instruments to her. Using a 1790 fortepiano by Michael Rosenberger, Isolde Ahlgrimm began her career as a specialist on early keyboard instruments with the first in her notable series of Concerte fA1/4r Kenner und Liebhaber, given in Vienna's Palais Palffy in February 1937. Ahlgrimm's career as a harpsichordist also began in 1937, when a new instrument was commissioned from the Ammer brothers in Eisenberg, Germany. In 1943 Ahlgrimm performed her first all-harpsichord programme, which consisted of the Goldberg Variations by J.S. Bach. From 1949 to 1956, she devoted herself to performing and recording nearly all of Bach's harpsichord music for the newly-founded Dutch label, Philips, presenting her new approach to the harpsichord to a wider audience. Ahlgrimm's performances of Baroque music represented a radical departure from the distinctly twentieth-century interpretations by the much more famous Wanda Landowska and her followers. Most obviously, Ahlgrimm's harpsichord performances eliminated frequent registration changes (her instrument had hand stops rather than pedals to change registers), and largely eschewed the massive ritardandi and other anachronistic performance practices that were hallmarks of Landowska's essentially Romantic style. Ahlgrimm researched and emphasized rhetorical traditions on which the music was based. This became more pronounced throughout the course of her later performing, writing and teaching career, and it was the beginning of an approach to the performance of eighteenth-century music which was later further developed by Gustav Leonhardt, Nikolaus Harnoncourt and their students. Peter Watchorn provides an engaging study of this pioneer, and argues that Isolde Ahlgrimm's contribution to the harpsichord and fortepiano revival was pivotal, and that her use of period instruments and the inspiration she instilled in younger musicians, including Nikolaus Harnoncourt and Gustav Leonhardt, has been almost entirely overlooked by the wider musical world.

In this book, Julian Hellaby presents a detailed study of English piano playing and career management as it was in the middle years of the twentieth century. Making regular comparisons with early twenty-first-century practice, the author examines career-launching mechanisms, such as auditions and competitions, and investigates available means of career sustenance, including artist management, publicity outlets, recital and concerto work, broadcasts, recordings and media reviews. Additionally, Hellaby considers whether a mid-twentieth-century school of English piano playing may be identified and, if so, whether it has lasted into the early decades of the twenty-first century. The author concludes with an appraisal of the state of English pianism in recent years and raises questions about its future. Drawing on extensive research from a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, this book is structured around case-studies of six pianists who were commencing and then developing their careers between approximately 1935 and 1970. The professional lives and playing styles of Malcolm Binns, Peter Katin, Moura Lympany, Denis Matthews, Valerie Tryon and David Wilde are examined, and telling comparisons are made between the state of affairs then and that of more recent times. Engagingly written, the book is likely to appeal to professional and amateur pianists, piano teachers, undergraduate and postgraduate music students, academics and anyone with an interest in the history of pianists, piano performance and music performance history in general.

Improve your sight-reading! Piano Grade 6 (Late Intermediate) is part of the best-selling series by Paul Harris, guaranteed to improve your sight-reading! This workbook helps the player overcome problems by building up a complete picture of each piece, through rhythmic and melodic exercises related to specific technical issues, then by studying prepared pieces with associated questions, and finally by `going solo' with a series of meticulously graded sight-reading pieces. This edition now includes supporting audio available online for students to check their performances against. The Improve your sight-reading! series will help you improve your reading ability, and with numerous practice tests included, will ensure sight-reading success in graded exams.

for SATB, clarinet, and piano Every Thing That Grows is an meaningful and uplifting setting of Shakespeare's Sonnet 15. Chilcott employs captivating vocal lines, a flowing piano part, and expressive clarinet interludes to reflect on the text's theme of mortality, with a profound closing section calling the listener to reflect upon the immortalising couplet 'And all in war with Time for love of you, As he takes from you, I engraft you new'.

(Faber Piano Adventures ). Level 1 students can have lots of fun while developing strong sightreading skills. This inventive course uses sets of exercises based on melodic and rhythmic patterns from the Level 1 Lesson Book. Students play one exercise a day, while enjoying the entertaining musical art that guides their sightreading progress.

Jazz Guitar Styles is an instruction book designed for the guitarist who already knows the fundamentals but wishes to explore the "classic" style of swing-era guitar. It offers a clear, concise introduction to the basics of jazz guitar, built on the student's basic knowledge of forming chords and basic picking patterns. Jazz Guitar Styles opens this world to any guitarist who has a basic knowledge of guitar technique and willingness to learn.

This beautifully illustrated reference is a guide to the history of music, instruments of the orchestra and the most influential classical composers. All sections of the orchestra are covered: strings, woodwind and brass, percussion, keyboards and the voice, as well as historical, rare and non-Western instruments. An authoritative guide to over 100 of the most famous classic composers then follows. From Bach to Xenakis all styles of compositions from medieval times to the present day are included. The fascinating lives of the great composers are detailed, the places where they lived and worked, scenes from their ballets or operas, and examples of original scripts. This comprehensively updated new edition is illustrated with over 1000 photographs and illustrations.

Instruments of the violin family are well known to be exceptionally valuable if they are the work of an Italian master such as Stradivari or Guarneri. Unfortunately, in common with many other antique articles of value, the forger, the defrauder, and the thief operate in the world of the violin in a very conspicuous way. With varying degrees of skill labels are altered, certificates of origin are spuriously created, instruments are even made from new but disguised to look old and and reproduced the features of an old master. Buyers, dealers, and even auction houses can easily make distressing and very expensive mistakes. Many people who own instruments, or who are interested in buying them, want to know more about the dangers, the pitfalls, and the case histories of previous disasters. The law itself is widely misunderstood and its wide ambit not appreciated. Those who contravene the law risk actions for civil damages as well as criminal prosecution, primarily by the ever more vigilant Trading Standards Department of local authorities. It is the intention of this book to detect the background to this fraudulent activity and to explain how the law applies to it. Much of what is said

This is the first book to develop both the theory and the practice of synthesizing musical sounds using computers. Each chapter starts with a theoretical description of one technique or problem area and ends with a series of working examples (over 100 in all), covering a wide range of applications. A unifying approach is taken throughout; chapter two, for example, treats both sampling and wavetable synthesis as special cases of one underlying technique. Although the theory is presented quantitatively, the mathematics used goes no further than trigonometry and complex numbers. The examples and supported software -- along with a machine-readable version of the text -- are available on the web and maintained by a large online community. The Theory and Techniques of Electronic Music is valuable both as a textbook and as professional reading for electronic musicians and computer music researchers.

(Bass Method). Special spiral bound edition containing Books 1, 2, & 3 of the Second Edition Hal Leonard Bass Method.

Examines the life and work of Scottish cellist and antiquarian John Gunn (1766-1824) through newly discovered sources. The Scottish cellist and antiquarian John Gunn (1766-1824) is unique among British writers on music in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Learned and practical, at home in classical and modern languages, knowledgeable in a wide range of musical topics and with even wider-ranging interests, and committed to the ideal of progress through rational thought, he typified the Enlightenment. His published output was large and diverse: a cello treatise in two quite different editions; two books on the flute and one on the piano; a treatise on figured bass; a history of the harp in the Highlands; and a translation of a French work of music theory. The list of his unrealised publications is even longer, including a proof of the oriental origins of the Scots. He married Anne Young, a well-known Edinburgh piano teacher, and his letters cast new light on the circumstances and date of her death. Taking account of Gunn's diverse experiences as a musician-scholar in Cambridge, London and Edinburgh, studying his sundry occupations, and exploring his social connections through a recently unearthed cache of his letters, this study moves away from 'treatise archaeology' and offers a broader view than is usually possible with such figures. The book will be of interest to those studying historical performance practice, music education in Enlightenment Britain, and the dissemination of Enlightenment thought.

This directory is the most comprehensive index of music written for orchestra with chorus in print today. Offering performance information about choral works by more than 900 conductors, the more than 3,500 entries include such details as instrumentation, languages, timings, publishers, and composer information in an easy-to-follow reference style. Users can also browse categorized appendices of works, composers, and popular and original titles.

Joel Walker Sweeney was, in essence, the Elvis Presley of the 1840s. A professional banjo player, Sweeney introduced mainstream America to a music (and musical instrument) which had its roots in the transplanted black culture of the southern slave. Sweeney, an Irish-American born midway between Richmond and Lynchburg, Virginia, sampled African American music at a young age. He then added more traditional southern sounds to the music he heard, in essence creating a new musical form. The only avenue available to a professional banjo player was that of traveling minstrelsy shows and it was this route which Sweeney used to bring his music to the attention of the public. Beginning with the banjo's introduction to America and Great Britain, the book provides an overview of early banjo music. The volume then discusses the evolution of American minstrelsy (i.e., black face) and the opportunities it provided for artists such as Sweeney. Correcting previous fallacies and misconceptions (such as Sweeney's supposed development of the five-string banjo), the work discusses Sweeney's roots, his music and his contribution to the physical development of the instrument. An appendix contains a performance chronology. The work is also indexed.

Charles Ives' massive Concord Sonata, his second sonata for piano, named after the town of Concord in Massachusetts, is central to his output and clearly reflects his aesthetic perspective. Geoffrey Block's wide-ranging account of the work thus provides an ideal introduction to this fascinating composer. This handbook discusses the Sonata's reception history and its compositional genesis, as well as providing a detailed account of the work's thematic content, its use of borrowed material, and the degree to which the program is influenced by the Concord Transcendentalists.

Acoustic Blues Guitar Styles is an introduction to fingerstyle acoustic blues guitar, the style made popular by Robert Johnson, Bill Broonzy, and Mance Lipscomb. Following the success of the popular Acoustic Guitar Styles, Larry Sandberg's Acoustic Blues Guitar Styles is an instructional book geared towards the intermediate guitar player, not only to teach fingerstyle blues technique, but also to approach the music creatively and with feeling and rhythm. Part One teaches you the preliminaries, such as reading a chord chart and working out a 12-bar blues in different keys. Part Two teaches you touch, timing, and basic fingerpicking technique. Part Three teaches you how to play stylistically, with lessons on how to incorporate bends, vibrato, alternating bassnotes, and rhythmic variations into your playing. All musical exercises are presented in both standard notation and tablature, and are supported by audio tracks. Customers purchasing the eBook version of this title will be able to download the supporting audio tracks. Instructions on downloading the files can be found on the contents page.

A companion to John Ganapes original "Blues you can use" published in 1995.

This unique text uses a step-by-step approach to guide the reader from fundamental concepts to advanced topics in improvisation. Each subject is broken into easy to understand segments, gradually becoming more complex as improvisational tools are acquired. Designed for the classically trained pianist with little or no experience in improvisation, it uses the readeras previous knowledge of basic theory and technique to help accelerate the learning process. Included are more than 450 music examples and illustrations to reinforce the concepts discussed. These concepts are useful in all improvisational settings and can be applied to any musical style. For pianists interested in jazz, there are three chapters dedicated to introducing jazz improvisation, which can be used as the basis for further study in this idiom. Teachers using this text can go online to www.improvisationatthepiano.com to download lesson plans, ask specific questions about improvisation, and view answers to the most frequently asked questions about this book. 232 pages.

Twelve-tone and serial music were dominant forms of composition following World War II and remained so at least through the mid-1970s. In 1961, Ann Phillips Basart published the pioneering bibliographic work in the field.