George Dimitri Sawa's Arabic Musical and Socio-Cultural Glossary of Kitab al-Aghani is the first comprehensive lexicographical study of Umayyad and early Abbasid-era music theory and practices. It defines melodic and rhythmic modes, musical forms, instruments, technical terms and metaphors used in evaluating compositions and performances, and the emotional effects of tarab. It explains the processes of composition and learning, performance practice, musical change and aesthetics, and addresses the behavior of court musicians to help understand societal views of music. Medieval dictionaries, reference works on Arabic literature, theoretical treatises as well as full quotations from the Aghani are used. This glossary will be of interest to scholars and students of the music and socio-cultural history of the early Islamic era.

This book is about how music "in a key" is composed. Further, it is about how such music was composed when it was no longer compulsory to do so, starting a few years before the First World War. In an eclectic journey through the history of compositional technique, Daniel Harrison contends that the tonal system did not simply die out with the dawn of twentieth century, but continued to supplement newer techniques as a compelling means of musical organization, even into current times. Well-known art music composers such as Bartok, Hindemith, Prokofiev, and Messiaen are represented alongside composers whose work moves outside the standard boundaries of art music: Leonard Bernstein, Murice Durufle, Frank Martin, Xiaoyong Chen. Along the way, the book attends to military bugle calls, a trailer before a movie feature, a recomposition of a famous piece by Arnold Schoenberg, and the music of Neil Diamond, David Shire, and Brian Wilson. A celebration of the awesome variety of musical expressions encompassed in what is called tonal music, Pieces of Tradition is a book for composers seeking ideas and effects, music theorists interested in its innovations, and all those who practice the analysis of composition in all its modern and traditional variations.

Beginning in the 1930s, men and a handful of women came from India's many communities-Marathi, Parsi, Goan, North Indian, and many others--to Mumbai to work in an industry that constituted in the words of some, "the original fusion music." They worked as composers, arrangers, assistants, and studio performers in one of the most distinctive popular music and popular film cultures on the planet. Today, the songs played by Mumbai's studio musicians are known throughout India and the Indian diaspora under the popular name "Bollywood," but the musicians themselves remain, in their own words, "behind the curtain"--the anonymous and unseen performers of one of the world's most celebrated popular music genres.
Now, Gregory D. Booth offers a compelling account of the Bollywood film music industry from the perspective of the musicians who both experienced and shaped its history. In a rare insider's look at the process of musical production from the late 1940s to the mid 1990s, before the advent of digital recording technologies, Booth explains who these unknown musicians were and how they came to join the film music industry. On the basis of a fascinating set of first-hand accounts from the musicians themselves, he reveals how the day-to-day circumstances of technology and finance shaped both the songs and the careers of their creator and performers. Booth also unfolds the technological, cultural, and industrial developments that led to the enormous studio orchestras of the 1960s-90s as well as the factors which ultimately led to their demise in contemporary India.
Featuring an extensive companion website with video interviews with the musicians themselves, Behind the Curtain is apowerful, ground-level view of this globally important music industry.

As the turbulent 60's began to fade into the calmer 70's, a coterie of young singers, songwriters, musicians, artists, and poets began to congregate, musically on the stage of The New Bijou Theater - the Springfield, Missouri nightclub that would become the loose-knit group's home. What started as an informal weekly gathering, quickly morphed into a formal band. Dubbed the Family Tree, they became a favorite of the local counter-culture, as well as a continuation of the tradition-rich, Springfield music scene - which, until recently, included the Ozark Jubilee (the nation's first televised country music show). Though unprofitable at the time, they stuck to their guns and their original songs. When a rough tape of an early Bijou gig caught the ear of music mogul, John Hammond, it culminated in a 26-song studio demo, which caught the ear of A&M executive, David Anderle. The group signed with the label, changed their name to its present moniker, and whisked off to London to record their debut album under the tutelage of Glyn Johns. The album contained "If You Want to Get to Heaven." Their subsequent album, recorded in rural Missouri, contained "Jackie Blue." Both songs remain staples on 'classic rock' radio. By the early 80's, the Ozark Mountain Daredevils found themselves right where the Family Tree had stood a decade before - in Springfield with no record deal. They did, though, find themselves with legions of loyal fans around the world. Amidst personnel changes, personal turmoils and a cornucopia of tales from the rock-n-roll highway, the next twenty years were spent 'on the road'. Though continuing to write, they could garner little interest among the rapidly modernizing music industry - a situation many long-haired, long-named hippie bands of the 70's find themselves in. Their music, though, lives in the hearts of their fans.

Since advent of autism as a diagnosed condition in the 1940s, the importance of music in the lives of autistic people has been widely observed and studied. Articles on musical savants, extraordinary feats of musical memory, unusually high rates of absolute or "perfect" pitch, and the effectiveness of music-based therapies abound in the autism literature. Meanwhile, music scholars and historians have posited autism-centered explanatory models to account for the unique musical artistry of everyone from Bela Bartok and Glenn Gould to "Blind Tom" Wiggins. Given the great deal of attention paid to music and autism, it is surprising to discover that autistic people have rarely been asked to account for how they themselves make and experience music or why it matters to them that they do. In Speaking for Ourselves, renowned ethnomusicologist Michael Bakan does just that, engaging in deep conversations - some spanning the course of years - with ten fascinating and very different individuals who share two basic things in common: an autism spectrum diagnosis and a life in which music plays a central part. These conversations offer profound insights into the intricacies and intersections of music, autism, neurodiversity, and life in general, not from an autistic point of view, but rather from many different autistic points of view. They invite readers to partake of a rich tapestry of words, ideas, images, and musical sounds (on the companion website) that speak to both the diversity of autistic experience and the common humanity we all share.

The relationship between popular music and consumer brands has never been so cosy. Product placement abounds in music videos, popular music provides the soundtrack to countless commercials, social media platforms offer musicians tools for perpetual promotion, and corporate-sponsored competitions lure aspiring musicians to vie for exposure. Activities that once attracted charges of 'selling out' are now considered savvy, or even ordinary, strategies for artists to be heard and make a living. What forces have encouraged musicians to become willing partners of consumer brands? At what cost? And how do changes in popular music culture reflect broader trends of commercialization? Selling Out traces the evolution of 'selling out' debates in popular music culture and considers what might be lost when the boundary between culture and commerce is dismissed as a relic.

The Musicality of Narrative Film is the first book to examine in depth the film/music analogy. Using comparative analysis, Kulezic-Wilson explores film's musical potential, arguing that film's musicality can be achieved through various cinematic devices, with or without music.

Hip-Hop Within and Without the Academy explores why hip-hop has become such a meaningful musical genre for so many musicians, artists, and fans around the world. Through multiple interviews with hip-hop emcees, DJs, and turntablists, the authors explore how these artists learn and what this music means in their everyday lives. This research reveals how hip-hop is used by many marginalized peoples around the world to help express their ideas and opinions, and even to teach the younger generation about their culture and tradition. In addition, this book dives into how hip-hop is currently being studied in higher education and academia. In the process, the authors reveal the difficulties inherent in bringing this kind of music into institutional contexts and acknowledge the conflicts that are present between hip-hop artists and academics who study the culture. Building on the notion of bringing hip-hop into educational settings, the book discusses how hip-hop is currently being used in public school settings, and how educators can include and embrace hip-hop s educational potential more fully while maintaining hip-hop s authenticity and appealing to young people. Ultimately, this book reveals how hip-hop s universal appeal can be harnessed to help make general and music education more meaningful for contemporary youth."

Mozart's emergence as a mature artist coincides with the rise to prominence of the piano, an instrument that came alive under his fingers and served as medium for many of his finest compositions. In Mozart's Piano Music, William Kinderman reconsiders common assumptions about Mozart's life and art while offering comprehensive and incisive commentary on the solo music and concertos. After placing Mozart's pianistic legacy in its larger biographical and cultural context, Kinderman addresses the lively gestural and structural aspects of Mozart's musical language and explores the nature of his creative process. Incorporating the most recent research throughout this encompassing study, Kinderman expertly surveys each of the major genres of the keyboard music, including the four-hand and two-piano works. Beyond examining issues such as Mozart's earliest childhood compositions, his musical rhetoric and expression, the social context of his Viennese concertos, and affinities between his piano works and operas, Kinderman's main emphasis falls on detailed discussion of selected individual compositions.

The newly emerged interdisciplinary field of Disability Studies offers a sociopolitical analysis of disability, focusing on its social construction, and shifting attention from biology to culture. In the past fifteen years, disability-related scholarly work has been undertaken in a variety of disciplines, and disability now occupies a central place in cultural analysis, along with well-established categories like race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and class. The Oxford Handbook of Disability Studies represents a comprehensive "state of current research" for the field of Disability Studies and Music. The forty-two chapters in the book span a wide chronological and geographical range, from the biblical, the medieval, and the Elizabethan, through the canonical classics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, up to modernist styles and contemporary musical theater and popular genres, with stops along the way in post-Civil War America, Ghana and the South Pacific, and many other interesting times and places. Disability is a broad, heterogeneous, and porous identity, and that diversity is reflected in the variety of bodily conditions under discussion here, including autism and intellectual disability, deafness, blindness, and mobility impairment often coupled with bodily deformity. Cultural Disability Studies has, from its inception, been oriented toward physical and sensory disabilities, and has generally been less effective in dealing with cognitive and intellectual impairments and with the sorts of emotions and behaviors that in our era are often medicalized as "mental illness." In that context, it is notable that so many of these essays are centrally concerned with madness, that broad and ever-shifting cultural category. There is also in impressive diversity of subject matter including YouTube videos, Ghanaian drumming, Cirque du Soleil, piano competitions, castrati, medieval smoking songs, and popular musicals. Amid this diversity of time, place, style, medium, and topic, the chapters share two core commitments. First, they are united in their theoretical and methodological connection to Disability Studies, especially its central idea that disability is a social and cultural construction. Disability both shapes and is shaped by culture, including musical culture. Second, these essays individually and collectively make the case that disability is not something at the periphery of culture and music, but something central to our art and to our humanity.

Sounding Off brings together a selection of essays on philosophy of music written by Peter Kivy--the leading expert on the subject. The essays fall into four groups, corresponding to Kivy's major interests. Part I contains two essays on the nature of musical genius. In Part II, three essays take up the subject of authenticity in performance, and explore what Kivy terms "the authenticity of interpretation." Part III contains four essays concerning the much discussed issues of musical representation and musical meaning. Finally, Part IV consists of three essays on the "pure musical parameters": these are essays on "music alone" or "absolute music"--music as the pure, formal structure of (sometimes) expressive sound. Eight of the eleven essays presented here are previously unpublished, and the book includes two appendices which provide Kivy's responses to criticism.

Josephine Lang (1815-80) was one of the most gifted, respected, prolific, and widely published song composers of the nineteenth century, yet her life and works have remained virtually unknown. Now, this carefully researched, compelling, and poignant study recognizes the composer for her remarkable accomplishments.
Based on years of study of unpublished letters, musical autographs, reviews, and the autobiographical poetry of Lang's husband, Reinhold Kostlin, the biographical portions of the book offer a stunning portrait of the composer as a woman and an artist.
In-depth musical analyses interwoven with the biography will be illuminating to scholars and to musicians of all skill levels. The analyses reveal Lang's sensitivity to her chosen poetic texts, as well as the validity of her claim that her songs were her diary; the authors demonstrate that many of the songs are directly connected to the events of Lang's life. The analyses are illustrated by an abundance of musical examples, including a number of complete songs. A companion CD, on which the authors have recorded 30 songs by Lang, complements the text.

This is a facsimile of the first edition, printed for the Author, in Edinburgh in 1721.

Traditionally, Wagnerian scholarship has always treated the Ring and Parsifal as two separate works. The Redeemer Reborn: Parsifal as the Fifth Opera of Wagner's Ring shows how Parsifal is in fact actually the fifth opera of the Ring. Schofield explains in detail how these five musical dramas portray a single, unbroken story which begins at the start of Das Rheingold when Wotan breaks a branch from the World Ash-tree and Alberich steals the gold of the Rhine, thus separating Spear and Grail, and ends with the reunion of the Spear and Grail in the temple of Monsalvat at the end of Parsifal. Schofield explains how and why the four main characters of the Ring are reborn in the opera Parsifal, needing to complete in Parsifal the spiritual journey begun in the Ring. He also shows how the redemption that is not attained in the process of the Ring is finally realized in the events of Parsifal.

When many people think of African music, the first ideas that come to mind are often of rhythm, drums, and dancing. These perceptions are rooted in emblematic African and African-derived genres such as West African drumming, funk, salsa, or samba and, more importantly, essentialized notions about Africa which have been fueled over centuries of contact between the "West," Africa, and the African diaspora. These notions, of course, tend to reduce and often portray Africa and the diaspora as primitive, exotic, and monolithic. In Africanness in Action, author Juan Diego Diaz explores this dynamic through the perspectives of Black musicians in Bahia, Brazil, a site imagined by many as a diasporic epicenter of African survivals and purity. Black musicians from Bahia, Diaz argues, assert Afro-Brazilian identities, promote social change, and critique racial inequality by creatively engaging essentialized tropes about African music and culture. Instead of reproducing these notions, musicians demonstrate agency by strategically emphasizing or downplaying them.

U2's significant career far exceeds that of most average successful rock bands, with a prolific output of thirteen well-received studio albums and a sometimes relentless touring schedule. The band is famous for uniquely drawing together music, art, faith, and activism, all within a lucrative career that has given each of these elements an unusual degree of social and cultural resonance. Broad-minded musically and intellectually, U2'soutput is thematically rich, addressing a slew of topics, from questions of faith to anxieties about commercialism to outright political statements. With one of the largest fan bases in the history of rock music, U2 and their work require contextualization and exploration. In U2: Rock 'n' Roll to Change the World, Timothy D. Neufeld takes up this challenge. Neufeld explores U2's move from the youthful idealism of a band barely able to play instruments through its many phases of artistic expression and cultural engagement to its employment of faith and activism as a foundation for its success. This book outlines how U2 reshaped the very musical and even political culture that had originally shaped it, demonstrating through close readings of its musical work the dynamic interplay of artistic expression and social engagement.

Geistliche Lieder und Psalmen, 1567, was compiled and published by Johann Leisentrit, a Roman Catholic priest who from 1559 to the time of his death in 1586, was Dean at the Cathedral of St. Peter's in Bautzen, a town in southeastern Germany. His hymnbook appeared in three complete editions (1567, 1573, 1584), and in abridged editions in 1575, 1576, and 1589. By adapting the vernacular hymn, a genre created by Protestant reformers, Leisentrit hoped to bring back to the "true church" (wahrglaubiger Christlicher Kirchen) those who had defected to Lutheranism. This was a formidable ambition because his diocese was located adjacent to the Moravian-Bohemian regions where the Protestant movement was born and remained vital. Containing approximately 260 texts set to 175 notated melodies, many borrowed from Protestant sources and adapted to serve Roman Catholic objectives, Leisentrit's book was the second Catholic hymnbook to be published in the sixteenth century. It surpassed its Protestant and Catholic precursors in scope and provided a model for the profusion of hymnbooks of numerous confessions that appeared in Germany in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries . Wetzel and Heitmeyer present their study in two parts: The first comprises six contextual chapters that survey earlier German achievements in hymnody, provide analyses of the texts and music in Leisentrit's book, and assess his achievement within the volatile environment of the Counter Reformation. The second gives the melodies in modern notation along with the first stanzas of the texts; provides detailed concordances and references to sources that identify textual and musical provenances; and concludes with six appendixes to facilitate scholarly cross-references. Fourteen of the seventy wood engravings from Leisentrit's book, many of which are visual representations of the prevailing confessional conflicts, are given in enlarged reproductions. The authors provide the only comprehensive study in English of a unique religious figure and his efforts to achieve confessional reconciliation in the decades following the Council of Trent. They add to a more accurate interpretation of the relationship between Lutherans and Catholics in the sixteenth century and support the hypothesis that some Lutherans remained more liturgically formal than their Catholic contemporaries.

Breaking new ground in the field of Sound Studies, this book provides an in-depth study of the culture and physicality of dancehall reggae music. The reggae sound system has exerted a major influence on music and popular culture. Every night, on the streets of inner city Kingston, Jamaica, Dancehall sessions stage a visceral, immersive and immensely pleasurable experience of sonic dominance for the participating crowd. "Sonic Bodies" concentrates on the skilled performance of the crewmembers responsible for this signature of Jamaican music: the audio engineers designing, building and fine-tuning the hugely powerful "set" of equipment; the selectors choosing the music tracks played; and, MCs (DJs) on the mic hyping up the crowd. Julian Henriques proposes that these dancehall "vibes" are taken literally as the periodic movement of vibrations, and offers an analysis of how a sound system operates - not only at auditory, but also at corporeal and sociocultural frequencies. "Sonic Bodies" formulates a fascinating auditory critique of visual dominance and the dualities inherent in ideas of image, text or discourse. This innovative book questions the assumptions that reason resides only in the mind, that communication is an exchange of information and that meaning is only ever representation.

This book explains the state of the art in the use of the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of musical structures such as rhythms or scales. In particular the author explains the DFT of pitch-class distributions, homometry and the phase retrieval problem, nil Fourier coefficients and tilings, saliency, extrapolation to the continuous Fourier transform and continuous spaces, and the meaning of the phases of Fourier coefficients. This is the first textbook dedicated to this subject, and with supporting examples and exercises this is suitable for researchers and advanced undergraduate and graduate students of music, computer science and engineering. The author has made online supplementary material available, and the book is also suitable for practitioners who want to learn about techniques for understanding musical notions and who want to gain musical insights into mathematical problems.

If writing about music is like dancing about architecture, you'd do best to hone your chops and avoid cliches (like the one that begins this sentence) by learning from the prime movers." How to Write About Music" offers a selection of the best writers on what is perhaps our most universally beloved art form. Selections from the critically-acclaimed 33 1/3 series appear alongside new interviews and insights from authors like Jonathan Lethem, Carl Wilson and Kim Cooper." How to Write About Music "includes primary sources of inspiration from a variety of go-to genres such as: the album review, the personal essay, the blog post and the interview along with tips, writing prompts, and advice from the writers themselves. An extensive further reader section accompanies each chapter for a complete picture of contemporary music writing.Music critics of the past and the present offer inspiration through their work on artists like Neutral Milk Hotel, J.Dilla, The Rolling Stones, Joy Division, Lana Del Rey, Nirvana, Nas, Radiohead and countless others." How to Write About Music" is an invaluable tool for anyone who has ever dreamed of getting their music writing published and a pleasure for anyone who loves to read about music.

Few Mexican musicians in the twentieth century achieved as much notoriety or had such an international impact as the popular singer and songwriter Agustin Lara (1897-1970). Widely known as "el flaco de oro" ("the Golden Skinny"), this remarkably thin fellow was prolific across the genres of bolero, ballad, and folk. His most beloved "Granada," a song so enduring that it has been covered by the likes of Mario Lanza, Frank Sinatra, and Placido Domingo, is today a standard in the vocal repertory. However, there exists very little biographical literature on Lara in English. In AgustinLara: A Cultural Biography, author Andrew Wood's informed and informative placement of Lara's work in a broader cultural context presents a rich and comprehensive reading of the life of this significant musical figure. Lara's career as a media celebrity as well as musician provides an excellent window on Mexican society in the mid-twentieth century and on popular culture in Latin America. Wood also delves into Lara's music itself, bringing to light how the composer's work unites a number of important currents in Latin music of his day, particularly the bolero. With close musicological focus and in-depth cultural analysis riding alongside the biographical narrative, Agustin Lara: A Cultural Biography is a welcome read to aficionados and performers of Latin American musics, as well as a valuable addition to the study of modern Mexican music and Latin American popular culture as a whole."