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Books > Music > Theory of music & musicology
Marvelous Rise of Superheroes in Cinema: Evolution of the Genre
from Sequels to Universes addresses the superhero movie genre's
transformation between 1978 and 2019. To emphasize and illustrate
the conceptual and thematic transformation, the main conventions of
the genre are scanned through several periods, focusing on the
developmental age of the genre, including the dominant period of DC
Comics-based superhero movies (1978-1997) and the Marvel "boom"
(2000-2007), and the contemporary age. For this purpose, the book
traces the fundamentals of superheroes from the first appearance of
Superman in Action Comics #1 (1938) to the final installment of the
MCU's Phase 3, Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019). The transformation
has two significant points. First, the genre's main conventions
have been in a change. Second, the genre's focus has changed from
sequel filmmaking to the universe concept. The study investigates
the Marvel Cinematic Universe's dominant, leading, and major role
in the genre's evolutionary process. Besides, the future of the
superhero movie genre is questioned through the multiverse concept
to broaden an understanding of the genre's following directions.
Antonin Dvorak was a clever and highly communicative humorist and
musical dramatist. His masterful compositional strategies
underscore, heighten, and construct sonic humor in his six (!!)
comic operas. He crafts musical slapstick, satire, parody, and
merriment using sudden breaks in rhythmic patterns, explosive
harmonic shifts, excessive repetition, and startling pauses, as
well as incongruous tempi, dynamics, range, and instrumentation.
Dvorak also gives the orchestra its own "voice," breaking the
metaphorical "fourth wall" to reveal humor outside of the
characters' awareness. Narrative description and comprehensive
music examples guide the reader through all six of Dvorak's works
in this genre, revealing a significantly under-appreciated side of
the composer's immense creative skills.
Jewish Contiguities and the Soundtrack of Israeli History
revolutionizes the study of modern Israeli art music by tracking
the surprising itineraries of Jewish art music in the move from
Europe to Mandatory Palestine and Israel. Leaving behind cliches
about East and West, Arab and Jew, this book provocatively exposes
the legacies of European antisemitism and religious Judaism in the
making of Israeli art music.
Shelleg introduces the reader to various aesthetic dilemmas
involved in the emergence of modern Jewish art music, ranging from
auto-exoticism through the hues of self-hatred to the
disarticulation of Jewish musical markers. He then considers part
of this musics' translocation to Mandatory Palestine, studying its
discourse with Hebrew culture, and composers' grappling with modern
and Zionist images of the self. Unlike previous efforts in the
field, Shelleg unearths the mechanism of what he calls "Zionist
musical onomatopoeias," but more importantly their dilution by the
non-western Arab Jewish oral musical traditions (the same
traditions Hebrew culture sought to westernize and secularize).
And what had begun with composers' movement towards the musical
properties of non-western Jewish musical traditions grew in the 60s
and 70s to a dialectical return to exilic Jewish cultures. In the
aftermath of the Six-Day War, which reaffirmed Zionism's redemptive
and expansionist messages, Israeli composers (re)embraced precisely
the exilic Jewish music that emphasized Judaism's syncretic
qualities rather than its territorial characteristics. In the 70s,
therefore, while religious Zionist circles translated theology into
politics and territorial maximalism, Israeli composers
deterritorialized the national discourse by a growing return to the
spaces shared by Jews and non-Jews, devoid of Zionist
appropriations."
Over the past 30 years, musicologists have produced a remarkable
new body of research literature focusing on the lives and careers
of women composers in their socio-historical contexts. But detailed
analysis and discussion of the works created by these composers are
still extremely rare. This is particularly true in the domain of
music theory, where scholarly work continues to focus almost
exclusively on male composers. Moreover, while the number of
performances, broadcasts, and recordings of women's compositions
has unquestionably grown, they remain significantly
underrepresented in comparison to music by male composers.
Addressing these deficits is not simply a matter of rectifying a
scholarly gender imbalance: the lack of knowledge surrounding the
music of women composers means that scholars, performers, and the
general public remain unfamiliar with a large body of exciting
repertoire. Analytical Essays on Music by Women Composers: Concert
Music from 1960-2000 is the first to appear in an exciting a four
volume series devoted to the work of women composers across Western
art music history. Each chapter, many by leading music theorists,
opens with a brief biographical sketch of the composer before
presenting an in-depth critical-analytic exploration of a single
representative composition, linking analytical observations with
questions of meaning and sociohistorical context. Chapters are
grouped thematically by analytical approach into three sections,
each of which places the analytical methods used in the essays that
follow into the context of late twentieth-century ideas and trends.
Featuring rich analyses and detailed study by the most reputed
music theorists in the field, along with brief biographical
sketches for each composer, this collection brings to the fore the
essential repertoire of a range of important composers, many of
whom otherwise stand outside the standard canon.
Breaking is the first and most widely practiced hip-hop dance in
the world today, with an estimated one million participants taking
part in this dynamic, multifaceted artform. Yet, despite its global
reach and over 40 years of existence, historical treatments of the
dance have largely neglected the African Americans who founded it.
Dancer and scholar Serouj "Midus" Aprahamian offers, for the first
time, a detailed look into the African American beginnings of
breaking in the Bronx, New York, during the 1970s. Given the
pivotal impact the dance had on hip-hop's formation, this book also
challenges numerous myths and misconceptions that have permeated
studies of hip-hop culture's emergence. Aprahamian draws on
untapped archival material, primary interviews, and detailed
descriptions of early breaking to bring this buried history to
life, with a particular focus on the early aesthetic development of
the dance, the institutional settings in which hip-hop was
conceived, and the movement's impact on sociocultural conditions in
New York throughout the 1970s. By featuring the overlooked
first-hand accounts of over 50 founding b-boys and b-girls, this
book also shows how indebted breaking is to African American
culture and interrogates the disturbing factors behind its
historical erasure.
The state of contemporary music is dizzyingly diverse in terms of
style, media, traditions, and techniques. How have trends in music
developed over the past decades? Music Composition in the 21st
Century is a guide for composers and students that helps them
navigate the often daunting complexity and abundance of resources
and influences that confront them as they work to achieve a
personal expression. From pop to classical, the book speaks to the
creative ways that new composers mix and synthesize music, creating
a music that exists along a more continuous spectrum rather than in
a series of siloed practices. It pays special attention to a series
of critical issues that have surfaced in recent years, including
harmony, the influence of minimalism, the impact of technology,
strategies of "openness," sound art, collaboration, and
improvisation. Robert Carl identifies an emerging common practice
that allows creators to make more informed aesthetic and technical
decisions and also fosters an inherently positive approach to new
methods.
Ludic Dreaming uses (sometimes fictional) dreams as a method for
examining sound and contemporary technoculture's esoteric
exchanges, refusing both the strictures of visually dominated logic
and the celebratory tone that so often characterizes the "sonic
turn." Instead, through a series of eight quasi-analytical essays
on the condition of listening, the book forwards a robust
engagement with sounds (human and nonhuman alike) that leverages
particularity in its full, radical singularity: what is a dream,
after all, if not an incipient physics that isn't held to the
scientific demand for repeatability? Thus, these studies declare
their challenge to the conventions of argumentation and situate
themselves at a threshold between theory and fiction, one that
encourages reader and writer alike to make lateral connections
between otherwise wildly incongruent subjects and states of
affairs. Put differently, Ludic Dreaming is a how-to book for
listening away from the seeming fatality of contemporary
technologies, which is to say, away from the seeming inevitability
of late capitalistic nihilism.
Proceedings of international conference at NUI Maynooth on Goethe's
contribution to music. Goethe was interested in, and acutely aware
of, the place of music in human experience generally - and of its
particular role in modern culture. Moreover, his own literary work
- especially the poetry and Faust - inspired some of the major
composers of the European tradition to produce some of their finest
works.' (Martin Swales) [Subject: Music Studies, Goethe]
Discovering Music Theory is a suite of workbooks and corresponding
answer books that offers all-round preparation for the updated
ABRSM Music Theory exams from 2020, including the new online
papers. This full-colour workbook will equip students of all ages
with the skills, knowledge and understanding required for the ABRSM
Grade 5 Music Theory exam. Written to make theory engaging and
relevant to developing musicians of all ages, it offers: -
straightforward explanations of all new concepts - progressive
exercises to build skills and understanding, step by step -
challenge questions to extend learning and develop music-writing
skills - helpful tips for how to approach specific exercises -
ideas for linking theory to music listening, performing and
instrumental/singing lessons - clear signposting and progress
reviews throughout - a sample practice exam paper showing you what
to expect in the new style of exams from 2020 As well as fully
supporting the ABRSM theory syllabus, Discovering Music Theory
provides an excellent resource for anyone wishing to develop their
music literacy skills, including GCSE and A-Level candidates, and
adult learners.
In Eleanor Smith's Hull House Songs: The Music of Protest and Hope
in Jane Addams's Chicago, the authors republish Hull House Songs
(1916), together with critical commentary. Hull-House Songs
contains five politically engaged compositions written by the
Hull-House music educator, Eleanor Smith. The commentary that
accompanies the folio includes an examination of Smith's poetic
sources and musical influences; a study of Jane Addams's aesthetic
theories; and a complete history of the arts at Hull-House. Through
this focus upon aesthetic and cultural programs at Hull-House, the
authors identify the external, and internalized, forces of
domination (class position, racial identity, patriarchal
disenfranchisement) that limited the work of the Hull-House women,
while also recovering the sometimes hidden emancipatory
possibilities of their legacy. With an afterword by Jocelyn
Zelasko.
CLASSICAL COOKS: A GASTROHISTORY OF WESTERN MUSIC by Ira Braus The
expression, "Classical music is an acquired taste" takes on new
meaning in Ira Braus's Classical Cooks: A Gastrohistory of Western
Music. Unlike most classical music guides, Classical Cooks links
music and food synaesthetically. Synaesthesia means experiencing
one sense modality by stimulating another, such as "hearing"
colors. Music and food, as my book shows, are close enough
aesthetically, so that we can enjoy them synaesthetically. The book
correlates the respective musical and culinary talents of composers
living between 1350 and 2000; it also suggests ways for listeners
to distinguish composers' styles by way of gastro-musical
association. Classical Cooks complements a recent line of books
dealing with food and culture, e.g., The Toulouse Lautrec Cookbook,
Keats's Porridge, and Jazz Cooks. To be sure, American orchestras,
like the Boston Symphony and New York Philharmonic, have published
recipes contributed by their players. But no substantial anthology
of composer recipes has thus far appeared. Classical Cooks has
Three Courses, plus Dessert. Course 1, "Why Musicians Love to Talk
Shop in the Kitchen," matches food categories with musical ones.
Take fat. Musicians associate fat with lush, full-bodied
orchestration as we hear in, say, Hollywood scores of the 1950s.
These composers learned their craft from lipid composers like
Puccini and Debussy. Puccini's "fat," mellifluous as it is, may be
compared to olive oil - clear, fruity, digestible, while Debussy's
is voluptuous, like butter - filmy, artery-clogging, and
delectable. Course 2, "A Gastrohistory of Music in Documents"
offers accounts of composers as gastro-nomes. Beethoven's culinary
disasters are juxtaposed with Rossini's haute cuisine, so haute in
fact, that one of his recipes ("Tournedos Rossini") appears in
Larousse Gastronomique. One also reads stories of Liszt's
food-fights with his pupils and of his chiding the American
pianist, Amy Fay, for "making an omelette" when playing
wrist-bending passages in his piano music. Course 3, "You Eat What
you Compose, or, Will the Real Mozart Please Stand Up?" addresses
riddles of music history: how knowledge of Mozart's favorite foods
-- liver dumplings and sauerkraut -- might revise his popular image
as a composer of "sweet" music, e.g. Eine kleine Nachtmusik; how a
gastronomic kinship between J.S. Bach and Brahms -- their love of
herring -- might reflect their dense musical expression, as well as
Brahms's composing minuets and sarabandes during the mid-1800s; and
how knowing Ravel's preference for "hot" food helps us to
distinguish the sound of his music from the more understated style
of Debussy. Dessert comprises "The Well-Tempered Cuisinier:
Twenty-four Pastries and Foods from the Classical Cooks." Readers
will find here a combination of recipes and menus suitable for
diverse musical occasions (concert receptions, composer birthdays,
opera caf entres).
Professor Michael Edgeworth McIntyre is an eminent scientist who
has also had a part-time career as a musician. From a lifetime's
thinking, he offers this extraordinary synthesis exposing the
deepest connections between science, music, and mathematics, while
avoiding equations and technical jargon. He begins with perception
psychology and the dichotomization instinct and then takes us
through biological evolution, human language, and acausality
illusions all the way to the climate crisis and the weaponization
of the social media, and beyond that into the deepest parts of
theoretical physics - demonstrating our unconscious mathematical
abilities.He also has an important message of hope for the future.
Contrary to popular belief, biological evolution has given us not
only the nastiest, but also the most compassionate and cooperative
parts of human nature. This insight comes from recognizing that
biological evolution is more than a simple competition between
selfish genes. Rather, he suggests, in some ways it is more like
turbulent fluid flow, a complex process spanning a vast range of
timescales.Professor McIntyre is a Fellow of the Royal Society of
London (FRS) and has worked on problems as diverse as the Sun's
magnetic interior, the Antarctic ozone hole, jet streams in the
atmosphere, and the psychophysics of violin sound. He has long been
interested in how different branches of science can better
communicate with each other and with the public, harnessing aspects
of neuroscience and psychology that point toward the deep 'lucidity
principles' that underlie skilful communication.
Professor Michael Edgeworth McIntyre is an eminent scientist who
has also had a part-time career as a musician. From a lifetime's
thinking, he offers this extraordinary synthesis exposing the
deepest connections between science, music, and mathematics, while
avoiding equations and technical jargon. He begins with perception
psychology and the dichotomization instinct and then takes us
through biological evolution, human language, and acausality
illusions all the way to the climate crisis and the weaponization
of the social media, and beyond that into the deepest parts of
theoretical physics - demonstrating our unconscious mathematical
abilities.He also has an important message of hope for the future.
Contrary to popular belief, biological evolution has given us not
only the nastiest, but also the most compassionate and cooperative
parts of human nature. This insight comes from recognizing that
biological evolution is more than a simple competition between
selfish genes. Rather, he suggests, in some ways it is more like
turbulent fluid flow, a complex process spanning a vast range of
timescales.Professor McIntyre is a Fellow of the Royal Society of
London (FRS) and has worked on problems as diverse as the Sun's
magnetic interior, the Antarctic ozone hole, jet streams in the
atmosphere, and the psychophysics of violin sound. He has long been
interested in how different branches of science can better
communicate with each other and with the public, harnessing aspects
of neuroscience and psychology that point toward the deep 'lucidity
principles' that underlie skilful communication.
The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical provides a comprehensive
academic survey of British musical theatre offering both a
historical account of the musical's development from 1728 and a
range of in-depth critical analyses of the unique forms and
features of British musicals, which explore the aesthetic values
and sociocultural meanings of a tradition that initially gave rise
to the American musical and later challenged its modern
pre-eminence. After a consideration of how John Gay's The Beggar's
Opera (1728) created a prototype for eighteenth-century ballad
opera, the book focuses on the use of song in early nineteenth
century theatre, followed by a sociocultural analysis of the comic
operas of Gilbert and Sullivan; it then examines Edwardian and
interwar musical comedies and revues as well as the impact of
Rodgers and Hammerstein on the West End, before analysing the new
forms of the postwar British musical from The Boy Friend (1953) to
Oliver! (1960). One section of the book examines the contributions
of key twentieth century figures including Noel Coward, Ivor
Novello, Tim Rice, Andrew Lloyd Webber, director Joan Littlewood
and producer Cameron Macintosh, while a number of essays discuss
both mainstream and alternative musicals of the 1960s and 1970s and
the influence of the pop industry on the creation of concept
recordings such as Jesus Christ Superstar (1970) and Les Miserables
(1980). There is a consideration of "jukebox" musicals such as
Mamma Mia! (1999), while essays on overtly political shows such as
Billy Elliot (2005) are complemented by those on experimental
musicals like Jerry Springer: the Opera (2003) and London Road
(2011) and on the burgeoning of Black and Asian British musicals in
both the West End and subsidized venues. The Oxford Handbook of the
British Musical demonstrates not only the unique qualities of
British musical theatre but also the vitality and variety of
British musicals today.
This is a pioneering study of the phenomenon of vibration and its
history and reception through culture. The study of the senses has
become a rich topic in recent years. "Senses of Vibration" explores
a wide range of sensory experience and makes a decisive new
contribution to this growing field by focussing not simply on the
senses as such, but on the material experience - vibration - that
underpins them. This is the first book to take the theme of
vibration as central, offering an interdisciplinary history of the
phenomenon and its reverberations in the cultural imaginary. It
tracks vibration through the work of a wide range of writers,
including physiologists (who thought vibrations in the nerves
delivered sensations to the brain), physicists (who claimed that
light, heat, electricity and other forms of energy were vibratory),
spiritualists (who figured that spiritual energies also existed in
vibratory form), and poets and novelists from Coleridge to Dickens
and Wells. "Senses of Vibration" is a work of scholarship that cuts
through a range of disciplines and will reverberate for many years
to come.
Brings together in one volume the full text of some 450 letters in
first-time English translation, organized into sections each
prefaced by an introduction. All the letters are fully annotated
and they yield information about Viennese society, culture and
politics of the time. The work of Heinrich Schenker (1868-1935),
widely regarded as the most important music theorist of the
twentieth century, has shaped the teaching of music theory in the
United States profoundly and influenced theorists there, in Europe,
and throughout the world. Living and working in Vienna, Schenker
maintained a vigorous correspondence with a large circle of
professional musicians, writers, music critics, institutions,
administrators, patrons, friends, and pupils. A large part of his
correspondence was preserved after his death: some 7,000 letters,
postcards, telegrams, etc., to and from 400 correspondents. His
diaries record the fabric of his personal life and his activities
asa private music teacher and writer; they also provide a detailed
commentary on historical and political events and offer a window on
to the conditions of life in Vienna. Taken together, these
documents contribute vividly to the picture of cultural life in
Vienna, and elsewhere, from the perspective of a Jewish
intellectual and his circle of musical and artistic friends.
Heinrich Schenker: Selected Correspondence represents a concise
edition ofsome of the theorist's most important and revelatory
letters and diary entries. It offers the full text of some 450
letters in English translation, organized into sections devoted to
various aspects of his professional life: teaching, writing,
administration, and maintaining contact with an ever widening
circle including Ferruccio Busoni, Julius Roentgen, Otto Erich
Deutsch, Alphons von Rothschild, Paul von Klenau, Wilhelm
Furtwangler, Paul Hindemith, MorizViolin, John Petrie Dunn, and
Hans Weisse. Extracts from the diaries provide a summary of
important parts of the correspondence that do not survive. The
volume includes a detailed exposition of the editorial method,
biographicalnotes on correspondents, and a substantial general
introduction. Each of the sections is prefaced by an introduction
which provides essential historical context, and the letters and
diary entries are fully annotated. IAN BENT is Emeritus Professor
of Music at Columbia University in New York, and lives in the
United Kingdom. DAVID BRETHERTON is Lecturer in Music at the
University of Southampton. WILLIAM DRABKIN is Professorof Music at
the University of Southampton. CONTRIBUTORS: Marko Deisinger,
Martin Eybl, Christoph Hust, Kevin C. Karnes, John Koslovsky, Lee
Rothfarb, John Rothgeb, Hedi Siegel, Arnold Whittall
This book discusses the relationship between Greek Orthodox
ecclesiastical music and laiko (popular) song in Greece. Laiko
music was long considered a lesser form of music in Greece, with
rural folk music considered serious enough to carry the weight of
the ideologies founded within the establishment of the contemporary
Greek state. During the 1940s and 1950s, a selective exoneration of
urban popular music took place, one of its most popular cases being
the originating relationships between two extremely popular musical
pieces: Vasilis Tsitsanis’s “Synnefiasmeni Kyriaki” (Cloudy
Sunday) and its descent from the hymn “Ti Ypermacho” (The
Akathist Hymn). During this period the connection of these two
pieces was forged in the Modern Greek conscience, led by certain
key figures in the authority system of the scholarly world. Through
analysis of these pieces and the surrounding contexts, Ordoulidis
explores the changing role and perception of popular music in
Greece.
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