|
Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Musical instruments & instrumental ensembles
A thorough examination of Shostakovich's string quartets is long
overdue. Although they can justifiably lay claim to being the most
significant and frequently performed twentieth-century oeuvre for
that ensemble, there has been no systematic English-language study
of the entire cycle. Judith Kuhn's book begins such a study,
undertaken with the belief that, despite a growing awareness of the
universality of Shostakovich's music, much remains to be learned
from the historical context and an examination of the music's
language. Much of the controversy about Shostakovich's music has
been related to questions of meaning. The conflicting
interpretations put forth by scholars during the musicological
'Shostakovich wars' have shown the impossibility of fixing a single
meaning in the composer's music. Commentators have often heard the
quartets as political in nature, although there have been
contradictory views as to whether Shostakovich was a loyal
communist or a dissident. The works are also often described as
vivid narratives, perhaps a confessional autobiography or a
chronicle of the composer's times. The cycle has also been heard to
examine major philosophical issues posed by the composer's life and
times, including war, death, love, the conflict of good and evil,
the nature of subjectivity, the power of creativity and the place
of the individual - and particularly the artist - in society.
Soviet commentaries on the quartets typically describe the works
through the lens of Socialist-Realist mythological master
narratives. Recent Western commentaries see Shostakovich's quartets
as expressions of broader twentieth-century subjectivity, filled
with ruptures and uncertainty. What musical features enable these
diverse interpretations? Kuhn examines each quartet in turn,
looking first at its historical and biographical context, with
special attention to the cultural questions being discussed at the
time of its writing. She then surveys the work's reception history,
and follows with a critical discussion of the quartet's
architectural and harmonic features. Using the new tools of Sonata
Theory, Kuhn provides a fresh analytical approach to Shostakovich's
music, giving valuable and detailed insights into the quartets,
showing how the composer's mastery of form has enabled these works
to be heard as active participants in the Soviet and Western
cultural discourses of their time, while remaining compelling and
relevant to twenty-first-century listeners.
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.
(Faber Piano Adventures ). Book C of the Fabers' young beginner
method continues the staff-reading adventure with the introduction
of skips (3rds). Students first explore skips aurally and
kinesthetically across the full range of the keyboard. A delightful
variety of songs follow which carefully and comfortably guide the
child toward line-line and space-space staff recognition. The new
CD for Book C offers a unique listening experience with outstanding
orchestrations and vocals. The recordings demonstrate a key
principle of the course: when children listen, sing, tap, and move
to their piano music, they play more musically.
Chamber Music: A Research and Information Guide is a reference
tool for anyone interested in chamber music. It is not a history or
an encyclopedia but a guide to where to find answers to questions
about chamber music. The third edition adds nearly 600 new entries
to cover new research since publication of the previous edition in
2002. Most of the literature is books, articles in journals and
magazines, dissertations and theses, and essays or chapters in
Festschriften, treatises, and biographies. In addition to the core
literature obscure citations are also included when they are the
only studies in a particular field. In addition to being printed,
this volume is also for the first time available online. The online
environment allows for information to be updated as new research is
introduced. This database of information is a "live" resource,
fully searchable, and with active links. Users will have unlimited
access, annual revisions will be made and a limited number of pages
can be downloaded for printing.
Sonata form is fundamentally a dramatic structure that creates,
manipulates, and ultimately satisfies expectation. It engages its
audience by inviting prediction, association, and interpretation.
That sonata form was the chief vehicle of dramatic instrumental
music for nearly 200 years is due to the power, the universality,
and the tonal and stylistic adaptability of its conception. This
book presents nine studies whose central focus is sonata form.
Their diversity attests both to the manifold analytical approaches
to which the form responds, and to the vast range of musical
possibility within the form's exemplars. At the same time, common
compositional issues, analytical methods, and overarching
perspectives on the essential nature of the form weave their way
through the volume. Several of the essays approach the musical
structure directly as drama, casting the work as an expression of
its composer's engagement with an idea or principle that is dynamic
and at times intensely difficult. Others concentrate their
attention on a composer's use of "motive," which typically takes
the form of a simple melodic span that shapes the musical
architecture through an interdependent series of structural levels.
Integrating these motivic threads within the musical fabric often
warrants departures from formal norms in other areas. Analyses that
seek to understand works with anomalous formal qualities-whether
engendered by a motivic component or not-have a prominent place in
the volume. Among these, accounts of idiosyncratic tonal discourse
that threatens to undermine the unfolding of form-defining
qualities or events are central.
Piano Pedagogy: A Research and Information Guide provides a
detailed outline of resources available for research and/or
training in piano pedagogy. Like its companion volumes in the
Routledge Music Bibliographies series, it serves beginning and
advanced students and scholars as a basic guide to current research
in the field. The book will includes bibliographies, research
guides, encyclopedias, works from other disciplines that are
related to piano pedagogy, current sources spanning all formats,
including books, journals, audio and video recordings, and
electronic sources.
First published in 1999, this biography from David Tunley draws on
newly researched documentary evidence to chart Campoli's early
success and his later struggle for recognition as a serious artist.
Campoli's early success and his later struggle for recognition as a
serious artist. Campoli's career emerges as one particularly shaped
and directed by the great economic and social forces of the first
half of the century, and the story here is as much that of his
times, as of his life. Described by Szigeti as 'one of the last
great individualists among violinists', Alfredo Campoli was a
household name in the field of British light music prior to the
Second World War. Having made his debut at the Wigmore Hall in 1923
Campoli toured with Melba and Butt, then turned to light music
during the Depression. He became one of Decca's early recording
artists and broadcast frequently for the BBC with his light music
ensembles and pursued a long, successful career as a distinguished
international performer.
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.
(Music Sales America). Noel 2 is an exciting collection of Advent,
Christmas and Epiphany music for mixed voice choirs, from the easy
to learn to the more challenging and unconventional. The contents
range from the Renaissance to the present: from Bach and Sweelinck,
familiar settings of traditional and lesser known carols through
the ages to Howells and Leighton and works by today's composers
include Richard Rodney Bennett, Eric Whitacre, John Tavener, Tarik
O'Regan and Richard Allain. Among the 43 anthems, mixed voice
choirs of all levels will find new arrangements of favorite carols,
hymns with new descants, as well as stimulating original works for
the Christmas season. Songs include; Angelus Ad Virginem * Coventry
Carol * E'en So, Lord Jesus, Quickly Come (Manz) * Gloria, Dei Sir
Gesungen (Bach) * Hark! The Herald Angels Sing (Mendelssohn) *
Lullay My Liking (Holst) * Once in Royal David's City * Of a Rose
(McDowall) * Resonet in Laudibus (Praetorius) * Rocking (Tavener) *
Threshold of Night (O'Regan) * Torches (Joubert) * What Sweeter
Music (Allain) * and more.
As the first compendium of musical instruments in the Bible, this
volume is both a reference book and a piece of serious scholarly
research based on historical facts, comparative linguistic
analysis, and careful musical study. In researching the musical
instruments in the Bible, the sources drawn on include the main
translations of the Bible both ancient and modern, the works of
rabbinic teachers, Church Fathers, medieval exegetes and
contemporary scholars. The Compendium contains a historical survey
and 34 specific entries. The survey outlines the background of
Hebrew instrumental music, its origin and links with neighbouring
cultures, the role of instruments in the religious, social, public
and private life of ancient Israel, and the system of musical
education. It also traces the development of Hebrew musical
instruments in post-biblical times, showing their new symbolic
significance in the writings of the Church Fathers, in the comments
of the Medieval and Renaissance exegetes, and culturally based
interpretations of the terms for the instruments in translations of
the Bible into different languages both ancient and modern. The
specific entries include the whole range of instrumental
terminology, including ambiguous terms that may have instrumental
meaning. The Compendium also contains indices, a glossary of
Biblical and Talmudic terms, a bibliography, a list of all the
references to musical instruments in the Bible, a table of
instrumental ensembles and a summary table of their names as found
in different Bible versions. The Compendium is intended for
specialists in various disciplines: theologians, historians,
philologists and Bible translators, as well as for all who would
like to have a deeper understanding of the Book of Books.
(Willis). A comprehensive step-by-step course specifically designed
to suit the needs of all children beginning the piano. Includes:
characters and illustrations * writing exercises * sight reading
drills * review work * accompaniments * and more.
This book, the first of its kind, is a study of Bolognese
instrumental music during the height of the city's musical activity
in the late seventeenth century. The period"marked by a rapid
expansion of the cappella musicale of the principal city church,
San Petronio, by the founding of the Accademia Filarmonica, and by
increasingly lavish patronage of musical events"witnessed the
proliferation of repertory for instrumental ensembles. This music
not only reveals crucial stages in the development of the sonata
and concerto but also recalls the elaborate church rituals and the
opulent public and private celebrations in which they figured
prominently. Moreover, the late seventeenth century saw the heyday
of Bolognese music publishing, whose output of sonatas and related
instrumental genres easily surpassed that of the once-dominating
Venetian presses. The approach taken here departs from composer-
and genre-centered monographs on Italian instrumental music in
order to illuminate an array of topics that center on the Bolognese
repertory: the social condition of instrumentalist-composers; the
acumen of music publishers in the creation of the repertory; the
diverse contexts of the instrumental dances; the influence of
liturgical traditions on sonata topoi; the impact of psalmodic
practice on tonal style; and the innovative climate that led to
experiments with scoring and form in the earliest instrumental
concertos. In sum, this book not only illustrates the historically
significant and defining features of the music, but also links the
surviving repertory to the flourishing musical culture in which it
was created.
The easy way to get keyed up on the keyboard Where Piano For
Dummies helps budding musicians to master the black-and-white
musical keyboard, Keyboard For Dummies helps them understand the
possibilities that unfold when those black-and-whites are connected
to state-of-the-art music technology. Keyboard For Dummies explains
the ins-and-outs of modern keyboards and helps you get the most out
of their capabilities. Key content coverage includes: an overview
of the types of keyboards available today and how they differ from
acoustic pianos; expert advice on choosing the right keyboard for
your wants/needs and how to shop and compare the various models; a
close look at the types of sounds an electronic keyboard offers and
how to achieve them; step-by-step instruction on how to use
keyboards anywhere using external speakers, amps, home stereos,
computers, and tablets; guidance on how to use keyboard software
and applications to get the most out of keyboard technology; and
much more. * A multimedia component for this title will be hosted
at Dummies.com and includes companion audio tracks that demonstrate
techniques and sounds found in the book * Step-by-step instructions
make learning keyboard easy and fun * Introduces you to the musical
possibilities of the keyboard If you're new to the keyboard or
looking to take your skills to the next level, Keyboard For Dummies
is a thorough guide to the ins and outs of this popular instrument.
After decades of stagnation during the reign of his father, the
'Barracks King', the performing arts began to flourish in Berlin
under Frederick the Great. Even before his coronation in 1740, the
crown prince commenced recruitment of a group of musician-composers
who were to form the basis of a brilliant court ensemble. Several
composers, including C.P.E. Bach and the Graun brothers, wrote
music for the viola da gamba, an instrument which was already
becoming obsolete elsewhere. They were encouraged in this endeavour
by the presence in the orchestra from 1741 of Ludwig Christian
Hesse, one of the last gamba virtuosi, who was described in 1766 as
'unquestionably the finest gambist in Europe'. This study shows how
the unique situation in Berlin produced the last major corpus of
music written for the viola da gamba, and how the more virtuosic
works were probably the result of close collaboration between Hesse
and the Berlin School composers. The reader is also introduced to
the more approachable pieces which were written and arranged for
amateur viol players, including the king's nephew and ultimate
successor, Frederick William II. O'Loghlin argues that the
aesthetic circumstances which prevailed in Berlin brought forth a
specific style that is reflected not only in the music for viola da
gamba. Characteristics of this Berlin style are identified with
reference to a broad selection of original written sources, many of
which are hardly accessible to English-speaking readers. There is
also a discussion of the rather contradictory reception history of
the Berlin School and some of its composers. The book concludes
with a complete thematic catalogue of the Berlin gamba music, with
a listing of original manuscript sources and modern publications.
The book will appeal to professional and amateur viola da gamba
players as well as to scholars of eighteenth-century German music.
Since the publication of Solomon Volkov's disputed memoirs of
Dmitri Shostakovich, the composer and his music has been subject to
heated debate concerning how the musical meaning of his works can
be understood in relationship to the composer's life within the
Soviet State. While much ink has been spilled, very little work has
attempted to define how Shostakovich's music has remained so
arresting not only to those within the Soviet culture, but also to
Western audiences - even though such audiences are often largely
ignorant of the compositional context or even the biography of the
composer. This book offers a useful corrective: setting aside
biographically grounded and traditional analytical modes of
explication, Reichardt uncovers and explores the musical
ambiguities of four of the composer's middle string quartets,
especially those ambiguities located in moments of rupture within
the musical structure. The music is constantly collapsing,
reversing, inverting and denying its own structural imperatives.
Reichardt argues that such confrontation of the musical language
with itself, though perhaps interpretable as Shostakovich's own
unique version of double-speak, also poignantly articulates the
fractured state of a more general form of modern subjectivity.
Reichardt employs the framework of Lacanian psychoanalysis to offer
a cogent explanation of this connection between disruptive musical
process and modern subjectivity. The ruptures of Shostakovich's
music become symptoms of the pathologies at the core of modern
subjectivity. These symptoms, in turn, relate to the Lacanian
concept of the real, which is the empty kernel around which the
modern subject constructs reality. This framework proves invaluable
in developing a powerful, original hermeneutic understanding of the
music. Read through the lens of the real, the riddles written into
the quartets reveal the arbitrary and contingent state of the
musical subject's constructed reality, reflecting pathologies ende
Born in 1885 in Porto, Portugal, to a middle-class musical family,
Guilhermina Suggia began playing cello at the age of five. A child
prodigy, she was already a seasoned performer when she won a
scholarship to study with Julius Klengel in Leipzig at the age of
sixteen. Suggia lived in Paris with fellow cellist Pablo Casals for
several years before World War I, in a professional and personal
partnership that was as stormy as it was unconventional. When they
separated Suggia moved to London, where she built a spectacularly
successful solo career. Suggia's virtuosity and musicianship, along
with the magnificent style and stage presence famously captured in
Augustus John's portrait, made her one of the most sought-after
concert artists of her day. In 1927 she married Dr Jose Casimiro
Carteado Mena and settled down to a comfortable life divided
between Portugal and England. Throughout the 1930s, Suggia remained
one of the most respected musicians in Europe. She partnered on
stage with many famous instrumentalists and conductors and
completed numerous BBC broadcasts. The war years kept her at home
in Portugal, where she focused on teaching, but she returned to
England directly after the war and resumed performing. When Suggia
died in 1950, her will provided for the establishment of several
scholarship funds for young cellists, including England's
prestigious Suggia Gift. Mercier's study of Suggia's letters and
other writings reveal an intelligent, warm and generous character;
an artist who was enormously dedicated, knowledgeable and
self-disciplined. Suggia was one of the first women to make a
career of playing the cello at a time when prejudice against women
playing this traditionally 'masculine' instrument was still strong.
A role model for many other musicians, she was herself a fearless
pioneer.
Teach kids how to play the recorder with fun lessons and sheet
music for beginners. The recorder is the most widely taught
instrument in schools. For the majority of children, it is their
first introduction to playing and reading music. This book which is
part of a scheme is designed for teaching new notes - D, F sharp
and high D. Recorder magic is an acclaimed recorder method for
beginners, with fresh new tunes and performance opportunities right
from the start. Perfect resources for whole class teaching of
recorders in the Wider Opportunities classroom. Suitable for both
generalist and specialist teachers.
'A Compendium of Musical Instruments and Instrumental Terminology
in the Bible' draws on extensive historical research, comparative
linguistic analysis and musical study to offer the first
compilation of its kind. The volume examines the entire range of
musical instruments in the Bible - stringed, wind and percussion -
drawing on ancient and modern translations of the Bible and the
works of rabbinic teachers, Church Fathers and medieval,
renaissance and contemporary scholars. The book offers a historical
survey of Hebrew instrumental music - its origins and links with
neighbouring cultures, the role of instruments in the religious,
social, public and private life of ancient Israel, and the system
of musical education - and explores the understanding of Hebrew
musical instruments in post-biblical times. This comprehensive
volume will be invaluable to musicologists, archaeologists,
theologians, historians, philologists and Bible translators, as
well as general readers in the subject.
|
|