0
Your cart

Your cart is empty

Browse All Departments
Price
  • R0 - R50 (1)
  • R50 - R100 (2)
  • R100 - R250 (177)
  • R250 - R500 (903)
  • R500+ (5,819)
  • -
Status
Format
Author / Contributor
Publisher

Books > Music > Theory of music & musicology

Dark Side of the Tune: Popular Music and Violence (Hardcover): Martin Cloonan Dark Side of the Tune: Popular Music and Violence (Hardcover)
Martin Cloonan
R4,469 Discovery Miles 44 690 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Written against the academically dominant but simplistic romanticization of popular music as a positive force, this book focuses on the 'dark side' of the subject. It is a pioneering examination of the ways in which popular music has been deployed in association with violence, ranging from what appears to be an incidental relationship, to one in which music is explicitly applied as an instrument of violence. A preliminary overview of the physiological and cognitive foundations of sounding/hearing which are distinctive within the sensorium, discloses in particular their potential for organic and psychic violence. The study then elaborates working definitions of key terms (including the vexed idea of the 'popular') for the purposes of this investigation, and provides a historical survey of examples of the nexus between music and violence, from (pre)Biblical times to the late nineteenth century. The second half of the book concentrates on the modern era, marked in this case by the emergence of technologies by which music can be electronically augmented, generated, and disseminated, beginning with the advent of sound recording from the 1870s, and proceeding to audio-internet and other contemporary audio-technologies. Johnson and Cloonan argue that these technologies have transformed the potential of music to mediate cultural confrontations from the local to the global, particularly through violence. The authors present a taxonomy of case histories in the connection between popular music and violence, through increasingly intense forms of that relationship, culminating in the topical examples of music and torture, including those in Bosnia, Darfur, and by US forces in Iraq and GuantA!namo Bay. This, however, is not simply a succession of data, but an argumentative synthesis. Thus, the final section debates the implications of this nexus both for popular music studies itself, and also in cultural policy and regulation, the ethics of citizenship, and arguments about human rights.

Brahms and Bruckner as Artistic Antipodes - Studies in Musical Semantics (Hardcover, New edition): Ernest Bernhardt-Kabisch Brahms and Bruckner as Artistic Antipodes - Studies in Musical Semantics (Hardcover, New edition)
Ernest Bernhardt-Kabisch; Constantin Floros
R1,811 Discovery Miles 18 110 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

In the last third of the 19th century Brahms and Bruckner were regarded as antipodes. Is this perception really true to the historical reality or had their contemporaries overestimated the "dimension of their distance", as argued later? Both wrote autonomously conceived music, both held on to traditional forms, and both rejected program music. To find an answer to this question, part I tries to elucidate Brahms' relation to Bruckner in its biographic, historical, artistic and art-theoretical aspects. At the center of the second part, whose subject is Brahms' early work, is the question whether Brahms was indeed an autonomously working composer. The topic of the third part is a taboo of Bruckner research: Bruckner's relation to program music. "The second and third part of the study achieve new insights. With a consistent analysis of biographic data and, simultaneously, a careful scrutiny of musical facts (increased experience in assessing the music of the 19th century), Floros gains convincing interpretations." (Friedrich Heller about the German edition of the book) "The book is the result of Floros's intensive study of Mahler, during which he found hitherto undiscovered clues to the interpretation of Brahms's and Bruckner's work. Most of the borrowings discussed confirm differences between the two composers in both ideologies and musical heritage. Long thought to be 'absolute' music, Bruckner's compositions carry significant semantic meaning when the composer desired." (Musical Borrowing)

Music, Experiment and Mathematics in England, 1653-1705 (Hardcover, New Ed): Benjamin Wardhaugh Music, Experiment and Mathematics in England, 1653-1705 (Hardcover, New Ed)
Benjamin Wardhaugh
R4,928 Discovery Miles 49 280 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

How, in 1705, was Thomas Salmon, a parson from Bedfordshire, able to persuade the Royal Society that a musical performance could constitute a scientific experiment? Or that the judgement of a musical audience could provide evidence for a mathematically precise theory of musical tuning? This book presents answers to these questions. It constitutes a general history of quantitative music theory in the late seventeenth century as well as a detailed study of one part of that history: namely the applications of mathematical and mechanical methods of understanding to music that were produced in England between 1653 and 1705, beginning with the responses to Descartes's 1650 Compendium musicA|, and ending with the Philosophical Transactions' account of the appearance of Thomas Salmon at the Royal Society in 1705. The book is organized around four key questions. Do musical pitches form a small set or a continuous spectrum? Is there a single faculty of hearing which can account for musical sensation, or is more than one faculty at work? What is the role of harmony in the mechanical world, and where can its effects be found? And what is the relationship between musical theory and musical practice? These are questions which are raised and discussed in the sources themselves, and they have wide significance for early modern theories of knowledge and sensation more generally, as well as providing a fascinating side light onto the world of the scientific revolution.

The Substance of Things Heard - Writings about Music (Hardcover): Paul Griffiths The Substance of Things Heard - Writings about Music (Hardcover)
Paul Griffiths
R4,574 Discovery Miles 45 740 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

A choice selection of essays, reviews and interviews providing insights into musical performance, composition in the late 20th century and very early 21st, and the nature of opera. Paul Griffiths offers his own personal selection of some of his most substantial and imaginative articles and concert reviews from over three decades of indefatigable concertgoing around the world. He reports on premieres and other important performances of works by such composers as Elliott Carter, Sofia Gubaidulina, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Steve Reich, as well as Harrison Birtwistle and other important British figures. Griffiths vividly conveys the vision, aura, and idiosyncrasies of prominent pianists, singers, and conductors [such as Herbert von Karajan], and debates changing styles of performing Monteverdi and Purcell. A particular delight is his response to the worldof opera, including Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande [six contrasting productions], Pavarotti and Domingo in Verdi at New York's Metropolitan Opera, Schoenberg's Moses and Aaron, and two wildly different Jonathan Miller versions of Mozart's Don Giovanni. From the author's preface: "We cannot say what music is. Yet we are verbal creatures, and strive with words to cast a net around it, knowing most of this immaterial stuff will evadecapture. The stories that follow cover a wide range of events over a period of great change. Yet the net's aim was always the same, to catch the substance of things heard. "Criticism has to work largely by analogy and metaphor. This is no limitation. It is largely through such verbal ties that music is linked to other sorts of experience, not least the natural world and the orchestra of our feelings." Paul Griffiths's reviews and articleshave appeared extensively in both Britain [Times, Financial Times, Times Literary Supplement] and the United States [New Yorker, New York Times]. He has written numerous books on Bartok, Cage, Messiaen, Boulez, Maxwell Davies, twentieth-century music, opera, and the string quartet, and is the author of the recent Penguin Companion to Classical Music. He is also author of The Sea on Fire: Jean Barraque.

Bolognese Instrumental Music, 1660-1710 - Spiritual Comfort, Courtly Delight, and Commercial Triumph (Hardcover, New Ed):... Bolognese Instrumental Music, 1660-1710 - Spiritual Comfort, Courtly Delight, and Commercial Triumph (Hardcover, New Ed)
Gregory Barnett
R4,619 Discovery Miles 46 190 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

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.

Satie the Bohemian - From Cabaret to Concert Hall (Hardcover): Steven Moore Whiting Satie the Bohemian - From Cabaret to Concert Hall (Hardcover)
Steven Moore Whiting
R7,308 Discovery Miles 73 080 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

The composer Erik Satie (1866-1925) came of age in the bohemian sub-culture of Montmartre, with its artists' cabarets and cafés-concerts. These colourful milieux decisively shaped his aesthetic priorities and compositional strategies, from the esoteric Gymnopédies of the 1880s to the avant-garde ballets of the 1920s. This radical transvaluation of received artistic values makes far better sense once placed in this fascinating context.

Thresholds: Rethinking Spirituality Through Music (Hardcover, illustrated edition): Marcel Cobussen Thresholds: Rethinking Spirituality Through Music (Hardcover, illustrated edition)
Marcel Cobussen
R4,473 Discovery Miles 44 730 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

In Thresholds Marcel Cobussen rethinks the relationship between music and spirituality. The point of departure is the current movement within contemporary classical music known as New Spiritual Music, with as its main representatives Arvo PArt, John Tavener, and Giya Kancheli. In almost all respects, the musical principles of the new spiritual music seem to be diametrically opposed to those of modernism: repetition and rest versus development and progress, tradition and familiarity versus innovation and experiment, communication versus individualism and conceptualism, tonality versus atonality, and so on. As such, this movement is often considered as part of the much larger complex called postmodernism. Joining in with ideas on spirituality as presented by Michel de Certeau and Mark C. Taylor, Cobussen deconstructs the classification of the 'spiritual dimensions' of music as described above. Thresholds presents an idea of spirituality in and through music that counters strategies of exclusion and mastering of alterity and connects it to wandering, erring, and roving. Using the philosophy of Martin Heidegger, Georges Bataille, Jean-FranAois Lyotard, Jacques Derrida and others, and analysing the music of John Coltrane, the mythical Sirens, Arvo PArt, and The Eagles (to mention a few), Cobussen regards spirituality as a (non)concept that escapes categorization, classification, and linguistic descriptions. Spirituality is a-topological, non-discursive and a manifestation of 'otherness'. And it is precisely music (or better: listening to music) that induces these thoughts: by carefully encountering, analysing, and evaluating certain examples from classical, jazz, pop and world music it is possible to detach spirituality from concepts of otherworldliness and transcendentalism. Thresholds opens a space in which spirituality can be connected to music that is not commonly considered in this light, thereby enriching the ways of approaching and discussing music. In order to achieve this, it is necessary to show that spirituality is not an attribute of music, not a simple adjective providing extra information or used to categorize certain types of music. Instead, the spiritual can happen through listening to music, in a more or less personalized relationship with it. This relationship might be characterized as susceptible instead of controlling, open instead of excluding, groping instead of rigid.

A History of the Handel Choir of Baltimore (1935-2013) - Music, Spread Thy Voice Around (Hardcover): Carl B. Schmidt A History of the Handel Choir of Baltimore (1935-2013) - Music, Spread Thy Voice Around (Hardcover)
Carl B. Schmidt
R2,616 Discovery Miles 26 160 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

A History of the Handel Choir of Baltimore (1935-2013): Music, Spread Thy Voice Around chronicles the history of one of America's longstanding volunteer choral organizations, one that has followed in the footsteps of venerable ensembles such as the Handel and Haydn Society (Boston), the Bethlehem Bach Choir, and the Handel Society of Dartmouth College. It begins by considering music in the city of Baltimore, and establishing the reasons surrounding the choir's formation. Substantial coverage is given to the influence of Katharine M. Lucke, one of Baltimore's grandes dames-as a composer, mover, and shaker-and a vital force in Baltimore's National Music Week from her position on the faculty of the Peabody Conservatory of Music. Subsequently the book focuses on the contributions of each of the ten conductor/music directors, the vicissitudes of funding a volunteer choir, the choir's contributions to music education in the greater Baltimore metropolitan area, and the choir's repertoire. The book contains extensive appendices describing the choir's repertoire, its presidents, and its unbroken string of Messiah performances. Throughout more than seventy-five years, the Handel Choir of Baltimore has remained true to its original charter as an amateur choral organization that aspires to the highest standards of artistic excellence. A History of the Handel Choir of Baltimore is an invaluable resource to those interested in choral music studies, the running of an amateur, volunteer choir, and other disciplines of music studies.

A Concise History of American Music Education (Paperback): Michael Mark A Concise History of American Music Education (Paperback)
Michael Mark
R1,040 Discovery Miles 10 400 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Co-published by MENC: The National Association for Music Education. A History of American Music Education covers the history of American music education, from its roots in Biblical times through recent historical events and trends. It describes the educational, philosophical, and sociological aspects of the subject, always putting it in the context of the history of the United States. It offers complete information on professional organizations, materials, techniques, and personalities in music education.

Buyers Beware - Insurgency and Consumption in Caribbean Popular Culture (Paperback): Patricia Joan Saunders Buyers Beware - Insurgency and Consumption in Caribbean Popular Culture (Paperback)
Patricia Joan Saunders
R939 Discovery Miles 9 390 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Buyers Beware offers a new perspective for critical inquiries about the practices of consumption in (and of) Caribbean popular culture. The book revisits commonly accepted representations of the Caribbean from "less respectable" segments of popular culture such as dancehall culture and 'sistah lit' that proudly jettison any aspirations toward middle-class respectability. Treating these pop cultural texts and phenomena with the same critical attention as dominant mass cultural representations of the region allows Patricia Joan Saunders to read them against the grain and consider whether and how their "pulp" preoccupation with contemporary fashion, music, sex, fast food, and television, is instructive for how race, class, gender, sexuality and national politics are constructed, performed, interpreted, disseminated and consumed from within the Caribbean.

Modulation and Related Harmonic Questions (Hardcover, New edition): Arthur William Foote Modulation and Related Harmonic Questions (Hardcover, New edition)
Arthur William Foote
R2,191 Discovery Miles 21 910 Ships in 10 - 15 working days

The author has endeavored to set forth a statement of the various means of modulation found in music, from Bach to the 20th century.

John Gunn: Musician Scholar in Enlightenment Britain (Hardcover): George Kennaway John Gunn: Musician Scholar in Enlightenment Britain (Hardcover)
George Kennaway
R2,779 R2,490 Discovery Miles 24 900 Save R289 (10%) Ships in 12 - 19 working days

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.

Musicological Identities - Essays in Honor of Susan McClary (Hardcover, Festschrift): Jacqueline Warwick Musicological Identities - Essays in Honor of Susan McClary (Hardcover, Festschrift)
Jacqueline Warwick
R4,619 Discovery Miles 46 190 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

No music scholar has made as profound an impact on contemporary thought as Susan McClary, a central figure in what has been termed the 'new musicology'. In this volume seventeen distinguished scholars pay tribute to her work, with essays addressing three approaches to music that have characterized her own writings: reassessing music's role in identity formation, particularly regarding gender, sexuality, and race; exploring music's capacity to define and regulate perceptions and experiences of time; and advancing new modes of analysis more appropriate to those aspects and modes of musicking ignored by traditional methods. Contributors include, in overlapping categories, many fellow pioneers, current colleagues, and former students, and their essays, like McClary's own work, address a wide range of repertories ranging from the established canon to a variety of popular genres. The collection represents the generational arrival of the 'new' musicology into full maturity, dividing fairly evenly between pre-eminent scholars of music and a group of younger scholars who have already made their mark in significant ways. But the collection is also, and fundamentally, interdisciplinary in nature, in active conversation with such fields as history, anthropology, philosophy, aesthetics, media studies, film music studies, dramatic criticism, women's studies, and cultural studies.

Today and Tomorrow Volume 24 Music and Drama - Terpander or Music and the Future  Timotheus: the Future of the Theatre ... Today and Tomorrow Volume 24 Music and Drama - Terpander or Music and the Future Timotheus: the Future of the Theatre Iconoclastes or the Future of Shakespeare Eurydice or the Nature of Opera Orpheus or the Music of the Future (Hardcover, New)
Dent Dobree Griffith Hussey Turner
R2,085 Discovery Miles 20 850 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Terpander Or Music and the Future E J Dent Originally published in 1927 "Remarkably able and stimulating." Times Literary Supplement "...a skilful review of the development of music." Musical News With reference to the works of Bach, Beethoven, Byrd, Cimarosa, Elgar, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Purcell, Rameau, Scriabin, Strauss and Tchaikovsky this volume examines the challenges facing the appreciation of music in the early twentieth century. Discussing emotional and psychological analysis of music, the author argues that modern music should be taken as music and nothing else, intelligible as music alone. He argues that music must be recognized as an art and intellectual faculties must be applied to understand it, much as one would apply oneself to learning a foreign language. 126pp Timotheus The Future of the Theatre Bonamy Dobree Originally published in 1925. "A witty, mischievous book to be read with delight." Times Literary Supplement "In a subtly satirical vein he visualizes kinds of theatres in two hundred years time." Nation This volume traces the possible developments of the theatre, not only along mechanical lines, but upon those which playwrights, actors and psychologists might achieve given the scope. 72p **************** Iconoclastes Or The Future of Shakespeare Hubert Griffith Originally published in 1927. "To my disappointment I found myself in complete agreement with nearly all its author's arguments. There is much that is vital and arresting in what he has to say." Nigel Playfair, in the Evening Standard. Taking as the text recent productions of classical plays in modern dress, the author suggests that this is the proper way of reviving Shakespeare and other great dramatists of the past and that their successful revival in modern dress may perhaps be taken as an indication of their value. 90pp Eurydice Or The Nature of Opera Dyneley Hussey Originally published in 1929 "He is to be congratulated." Saturday Review "Shows immense skill..." Everyman Surveying the practice of operatic composers from the sixteenth century down to the early twentieth century the author combats the accepted notion that opera is a hybrid form of art, an unsatisfactory combination of music and drama. He argues that on the contrary, opera is an independent form, subject to its own peculiar laws. 86pp Orpheus Or The Music of the Future W J Turner Originally published in 1926 "A book on music that we can read not merely once, but two or three times. Mr Turner has given us some of the finest thinking upon Beethoven that I have ever met with." Sunday Times Contents include: Definition of Music The General Idea of Progress The Idea of Progress in Music Emotional Significance 90pp

Upper-Voice Structures and Compositional Process in the Ars Nova Motet - Process in the Ars nova Motet (Paperback): Anna... Upper-Voice Structures and Compositional Process in the Ars Nova Motet - Process in the Ars nova Motet (Paperback)
Anna Zayaruznaya
R1,271 Discovery Miles 12 710 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

In the motets of Philippe de Vitry, Guillaume de Machaut, and their contemporaries, tenors have often been characterized as the primary shaping forces, prior in conception as well as in construction to the upper voices. Tenors are shaped by the interaction of talea and color, medieval terms now used to refer to the independent repetition of rhythms and pitches, respectively. The presence in the upper voices of the periodically repeating rhythmic patterns, often referred to as "isorhythm," has been characterized as an amplification of tenor structure. But a fresh look at the medieval treatises suggests a revised analytical vocabulary: for many fourteenth- and fifteenth-century writers, both color and talea involved rhythmic repetition, the latter in the upper voices specifically. And attention to upper-voice taleae independently of tenor structures brings renewed emphasis to the significant portion of the repertory in which upper voices evince formal schemes that differ from those in the tenors. These structures in turn suggest a revision of the presumed compositional process for motets, implying that in some cases upper-voice text and forms may have preceded the selection and organization of tenors. Such revisions have implications for hermeneutic endeavors, since not only the forms of motet voices but the meanings of their texts change, depending on whether analysis proceeds from the tenor up, or from the top down. Where the presumed compositional and structural primacy afforded to tenors has encouraged a strand of interpretation that reads the upper-voice poetry as conforming to, and amplifying, the tenor text snippets and their liturgical contexts, a "bottom-down" view casts tenors in a supporting role and reveals the poetic impulse of the upper voices as the organizing principle of motets.

The Gei of Geisha: Music, Identity and Meaning (Hardcover, New Ed): Kelly M. Foreman The Gei of Geisha: Music, Identity and Meaning (Hardcover, New Ed)
Kelly M. Foreman
R4,615 Discovery Miles 46 150 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

The Japanese geisha is an international icon, known almost universally as a symbol of traditional Japan. Numerous books exist on the topic, yet this is the first to focus on the 'gei' of geisha - the art that constitutes their title (gei translates as fine art, sha refers to person). Kelly M. Foreman brings together ethnomusicological field research, including studying and performing the shamisen among geisha in Tokyo, with historical research. The book elaborates how musical art is an essential part of the identity of the Japanese geisha rather than a secondary feature, and locates current practice within a tradition of two and half centuries. The book opens by deconstructing the idea of 'geisha' as it functions in Western societies in order to understand why gei has been, and continues to be, neglected in geisha studies. Subsequent chapters detail the myriad musical genres and traditions with which geisha have been involved during their artistic history, as well as their position within the traditional arts society. Considering the current situation more closely, the final chapters explore actual dedication to art today by geisha, and analyse how they create impromptu performances at evening banquets. An important issue here is geisha-patron artistic collaboration, which leads to consideration of what Foreman argues to be the unique and essential nexus of identity, eroticism and aesthetics within the geisha world.

Music and Mystique in Muscle Shoals (Paperback): Christopher M. Reali Music and Mystique in Muscle Shoals (Paperback)
Christopher M. Reali
R569 Discovery Miles 5 690 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

A No Depression Most Memorable Music Book of 2022 The forceful music that rolled out of Muscle Shoals in the 1960s and 1970s shaped hits by everyone from Wilson Pickett and Aretha Franklin to the Rolling Stones and Paul Simon. Christopher M. Reali's in-depth look at the fabled musical hotbed examines the events and factors that gave the Muscle Shoals sound such a potent cultural power. Many artists trekked to FAME Studios and Muscle Shoals Sound in search of the sound of authentic southern Black music-and at times expressed shock at the mostly white studio musicians waiting to play it for them. Others hoped to draw on the hitmaking production process that defined the scene. Reali also chronicles the overlooked history of Muscle Shoals's impact on country music and describes the region's recent transformation into a tourism destination. Multifaceted and informed, Music and Mystique in Muscle Shoals reveals the people, place, and events behind one of the most legendary recording scenes in American history.

London Voices, 1820-1840 - Vocal Performers, Practices, Histories (Hardcover): Roger Parker, Susan Rutherford London Voices, 1820-1840 - Vocal Performers, Practices, Histories (Hardcover)
Roger Parker, Susan Rutherford
R1,924 Discovery Miles 19 240 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

London, 1820. The British capital is a metropolis that overwhelms dwellers and visitors alike with constant exposure to all kinds of sensory stimulation. Over the next two decades, the city's tumult will reach new heights: as population expansion places different classes in dangerous proximity and ideas of political and social reform linger in the air, London begins to undergo enormous infrastructure change that will alter it forever. It is the London of this period that editors Roger Parker and Susan Rutherford pinpoint in this book, which chooses one broad musical category--voice--and engages with it through essays on music of the streets, theaters, opera houses, and concert halls; on the raising of voices in religious and sociopolitical contexts; and on the perception of voice in literary works and scientific experiments with acoustics. Emphasizing human subjects, this focus on voice allows the authors to explore the multifaceted issues that shaped London, from the anxiety surrounding the city's importance in the musical world at large to the changing vocal imaginations that permeated the epoch. Capturing the breadth of sonic stimulations and cultures available--and sometimes unavoidable--to residents at the time, London Voices, 1820-1840 sheds new light on music in Britain and the richness of London culture during this period.

Composition, Chromaticism and the Developmental Process - A New Theory of Tonality (Hardcover, New Ed): Henry Burnett Composition, Chromaticism and the Developmental Process - A New Theory of Tonality (Hardcover, New Ed)
Henry Burnett
R4,644 Discovery Miles 46 440 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Musicology, having been transmitted as a compilation of disparate events and disciplines, has long necessitated a 'magic bullet', a 'unified field theory' so to speak, that can interpret the steady metamorphosis of Western art music from late medieval modality to twentieth-century atonality within a single theoretical construct. Without that magic bullet, discussions of this kind are increasingly complicated and, to make matters worse, the validity of any transformational models and ideas of the natural evolution of styles is questioned and even frowned upon today as epitomizing a grotesque teleological bigotry. Going against current thinking, Henry Burnett and Roy Nitzberg claim that the teleological approach to observing stylistic change is still valid when considered from the purely compositional perspective. The authors challenge the traditional understanding of development, and advance a new theory of eleven-pitch tonality as it relates to the corpus of Western composition. The book plots the evolution of tonality and its bearing on style and the compositional process itself. The theory is not based on the diatonic aspect of the various tonal systems exploited by composers; rather, the theory is chromatically based - the chromatically inflected octave being the source not only of a highly ingenious developmental dialectic, but also encompassing the moment-to-moment progression of the musical narrative itself. Even the most profound teachings of Schenker, and the often startlingly original and worthwhile speculations of Riemann, Tovey, Dahlhaus and others, still provide no theory of development and so are ultimately unable to unite the various tendrils of the compositional organism into a unified whole. Burnett and Nitzberg move beyond existing theory and analysis to base their theory from the standpoint of chromatic 'pitch fields'. These fields are the specific chromatic pitch choices that a composer uses to inform and design a complete composition, utilizing specific chromatic inflections to control a large-scale working out process that is the very essence of 'development'. In short, the authors claim that a chromatic background that coexists with a diatonic contrapuntal background may define the process of compositional development. These chromatic and diatonic events are the two genus expressions of slowly unfolding tonic octaves.

Editing Music in Early Modern Germany (Hardcover, New Ed): Susan Lewis-Hammond Editing Music in Early Modern Germany (Hardcover, New Ed)
Susan Lewis-Hammond
R4,619 Discovery Miles 46 190 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Editing Music in Early Modern Germany argues that editors played a critical role in the transmission and reception of Italian music outside Italy. Like their counterparts in the world of classical learning, Renaissance music editors translated texts and reworked settings from Venetian publications, adapting them to the needs of northern audiences. Their role is most evident in the emergence of the anthology as the primary vehicle for the distribution of madrigals outside Italy. As a publication type that depended upon the judicious selection and presentation of material, the anthology showcased editorial work. Anthologies offer a valuable case study for examining the impact of editorial decision-making on the cultivation of particular styles, genres, authors and audiences. The book suggests that music editors defined the appropriation of Italian music through the same processes of adaptation, transformation and domestication evident in the broader reception of Italy north of the Alps. Through these studies, Susan Lewis Hammond's work reassesses the importance of northern Europe in the history of the madrigal and its printing. This book will be the first comprehensive study of editors as a distinct group within the network of printers, publishers, musicians and composers that brought the madrigal to northern audiences. The field of Renaissance music printing has a long and venerable scholarly tradition among musicologists and music bibliographers. This study will contribute to recent efforts to infuse these studies with new approaches to print culture that address histories of reading and listening, patronage, marketing, transmission, reception, and their cultural and political consequences.

Music Theory, Analysis, and Society - Selected Essays (Paperback): Robert P. Morgan Music Theory, Analysis, and Society - Selected Essays (Paperback)
Robert P. Morgan
R1,396 Discovery Miles 13 960 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Robert P. Morgan is one of a small number of music theorists writing in English who treat music theory, and in particular Schenkerian theory, as part of general intellectual life. Morgan's writings are renowned within the field of music scholarship: he is the author of the well-known Norton volume Twentieth-Century Music, and of additional books relating to Schenkerian and other theory, analysis and society. This volume of Morgan's previously published essays encompasses a broad range of issues, including historical and social issues and is of importance to anyone concerned with modern Western music. His specially written introduction treats his writings as a whole but also provides additional material relating to the articles included in this volume.

Qupai in Chinese Music - Melodic Models in Form and Practice (Paperback): Alan R Thrasher Qupai in Chinese Music - Melodic Models in Form and Practice (Paperback)
Alan R Thrasher
R1,587 Discovery Miles 15 870 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Presenting the latest research in the area, this volume explores the fundamental concept of qupai , melodic models upon which most traditional Chinese instrumental music (and some vocal music) is based. The greater part of the traditional instrumental repertoire has emerged from qupai models by way of well-established 'variation' techniques. These melodies and techniques are alive today and still performed in 'silk-bamboo' types of ensemble music, zheng , pipa and other solo traditions, all opera types, narrative songs, and Buddhist and Daoist ritual music. With a view toward explaining qupai as a musical system, contributors explore the concept from multiple directions, notably its historic development, patterns of structural organization, compositional usage in Kunqu classical opera, influence on the growth of traditional ensemble and solo repertoires, and indeed on 19th-century European music as well. Related essays examine the use of shan'ge folksongs as qupai models in one local opera tradition and the controversial relationship between qupai forms and the metrically-organized banqiang forms of organization in Beijing opera. The final three essays are focused upon traditional suite forms in which qupai and non-qupai tunes are mixed, examples drawn from the Minnan nanguan repertoire, Jiangnan 'silk-bamboo' tradition and the ritual music of North China.This is the first Western-language study on the nature and background of the qupai tradition, and the methods by which model melodies have been varied in creation of repertoire. The volume is essential reading for East Asian music specialists and contributes to the fields of ethnomusicology, musicology, music theory, music composition, and Chinese music and performing arts.

The American Symphony (Paperback): Neil Butterworth The American Symphony (Paperback)
Neil Butterworth
R1,142 Discovery Miles 11 420 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

First published in 1998, this volume is the first book to focus on the American symphony. Neil Butterworth surveys the development of the symphony in the United States from early European influences in the last century to the present day, and asks why American composers have shown such allegiance to a musical form which their European contemporaries appear to have discarded. An overview of the growth of musical societies in America during the eighteenth century and the establishment of the first professional orchestras during the early part of the nineteenth century is followed by chronological analyses of the works of those composers who have played important parts in the progress of symphony in the United States, from Charles Ives, Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, to contemporary figures such as William Bolcom and John Harbison. Complete with a comprehensive catalogue of symphonies and an extensive discography, this book is an indispensable reference work.

Clementi and the woman at the piano - Virtuosity and the market for music in eighteenth-century London (Paperback): Erin Helyard Clementi and the woman at the piano - Virtuosity and the market for music in eighteenth-century London (Paperback)
Erin Helyard
R3,018 Discovery Miles 30 180 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

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.

Sense and Sadness - Syriac Chant in Aleppo (Hardcover): Tala Jarjour Sense and Sadness - Syriac Chant in Aleppo (Hardcover)
Tala Jarjour
R3,169 Discovery Miles 31 690 Ships in 12 - 19 working days

Sense and Sadness is a study of music modality in relation to human emotion and the aesthetics of perception. It is also a musical story of survival through difficulty and pain. Focusing on chant at St George's Syrian Orthodox Church of Aleppo, author Tala Jarjour puts forward the concept of the emotional economy of aesthetics, which enables a new understanding of modal musicality in general and of Syriac musicality in particular. Jarjour combines insights from musicology and ethnomusicology, sound and religious studies, anthropology, history, East Christian and Middle Eastern studies, and the study of emotion, to seamlessly weave together multiple strands of a narrative which then becomes the very story it tells. At once intimate and analytical, this ethnographic text entwines academic thinking with its subject(s) and subjectivities. Drawing on imagination and metaphor, Jarjour brings to the fore overlapping, at times contradictory, modes of sense and sense-making. And reconciling multiple worlds as well as modes of thinking and belief, Sense and Sadness portrays events, writing, people, and music as they unfold together through ritual commemorations and a devastating, ongoing war.

Free Delivery
Pinterest Twitter Facebook Google+
You may like...
Hori Gamecube Super Smash Bros…
R669 Discovery Miles 6 690
PDP Play And Charge Kit (Xbox Series X)
R585 R383 Discovery Miles 3 830
Thrustmaster T128X Racing Steering Wheel…
R5,999 R5,499 Discovery Miles 54 990
KontrolFreek Grips for PS4
R448 Discovery Miles 4 480
Thrustmaster T248 Racing Steering Wheel…
R9,499 R8,669 Discovery Miles 86 690
Sparkfox Dual Charging Station for PS4…
R291 R244 Discovery Miles 2 440
Microsoft Xbox Series Wireless…
R1,699 R1,589 Discovery Miles 15 890
Syntech - Hard Carrying Case for Switch…
R499 R349 Discovery Miles 3 490
Microsoft Xbox Over-Ear Wired Headset…
R1,499 R1,414 Discovery Miles 14 140
Nintendo Joy-Con Controller Pair (Neon…
R1,549 Discovery Miles 15 490

 

Partners