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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Theory of music & musicology
No band has ever been able to demonstrate the enduring power of rock and roll quite like the Rolling Stones, who continue to enthrall, provoke, and invigorate their legions of fans more than fifty years since they began. In Counting Down the Rolling Stones: Their 100 Finest Songs, rock writer Jim Beviglia dares to rank the band's finest 100 songs in descending order. Beviglia provides an insightful explanation about why each song deserves its place. Looking at the story behind the song and supplying a fresh take on the musical and lyrical content, he illuminates these unforgettable songs for new and diehard fans alike. Taken together, the individual entries in Counting Down the Rolling Stones tell a fascinating story of the unique personalities and incredible talents that made the Stones a band for the ages. Counting Down the Rolling Stones is the perfect playlist builder, whether it is for the longtime fan or the newbie just getting acquainted with the work of Mick, Keith, and the boys.
This book offers an overview of issues related to the regulated, formal organization of sound and speech in verse intended for singing. Particularly, it is concerned with the structural properties and underlying mechanisms involved in the association of lyrics and music. While in spoken verse the underlying metrical scheme is grounded in the prosody of the language in which it is composed, in sung verse the structure is created by the mapping of specific prosodic units of the text (syllables, moras, tones, etc.) onto the rhythmic-melodic structure provided by the tune. Studying how this mapping procedure takes place across different musical genres and styles is valuable for what it can add to our knowledge of language and music in general, and also for what it can teach us about individual languages and poetic traditions. In terms of empirical coverage, the collection includes a wide variety of (Western) languages and metrical/musical forms, ranging from the Latin hexameter to the Norwegian stev, from the French chant courtois to the Sardinian mutetu longu. Readers interested in formal analyses of vocal music, or in metrics and linguistics, will find useful insights here.
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.
SamulNori is a percussion quartet which has given rise to a genre, of the same name, that is arguably Korea's most successful 'traditional' music of recent times. Today, there are dozens of amateur and professional samulnori groups. There is a canon of samulnori pieces, closely associated with the first founding quartet but played by all, and many creative evolutions on the basic themes, made by the rapidly growing number of virtuosic percussionists. And the genre is the focus of an abundance of workshops, festivals and contests. Samulnori is taught in primary and middle schools; it is part of Korea's national education curriculum. It has dedicated institutes, and there are a number of workbooks devoted to helping wannabe 'samulnorians'. It is a familiar part of Korean performance culture, at home and abroad, in concerts but also in films and theatre productions. SamulNori uses four instruments: kkwaenggwari and ching small and large gongs, and changgo and puk drums. These are the instruments of local percussion bands and itinerant troupes that trace back many centuries, but samulnori is a recent development of these older traditions: it was first performed in February 1978. This volume explores this vibrant percussion genre, charting its origins and development, the formation of the canon of pieces, teaching and learning strategies, new evolutions and current questions relating to maintaining, developing, and sustaining samulnori in the future.
Research on translation and music has so far focused mainly on "art music" and on issues such as quality, singability and accessibility. Studies which seek to embed translation and music within their historical and sociocultural contexts are relatively rare. This book aims to shed light on how translations of popular music contribute to fostering international relations by focusing on a case study of Turkish-Greek rapprochement in the last two decades. It provides a brief account of the thaw in relations between the two countries and then examines the ways in which translation and music have played a role in these changes. By looking at the phenomenon through the music's various forms of materiality (on paper, in audio and through the internet) and the different forms the accompanying translations take, and by drawing on a range of disciplines (popular music studies, sociology of music, ethnomusicology, social anthropology, comparative literature and fan studies), the book aims to foreground the multifaceted nature of translation and music and their wide-ranging impact on society and international relations.
A framework for understanding the deep archive of Black performance in the digital era In an era of Big Data and algorithms, our easy access to the archive of contemporary and historical Blackness is unprecedented. That iterations of Black visual art, such as Bert Williams's 1916 silent film short "A Natural Born Gambler" or the performances of Josephine Baker from the 1920s, are merely a quick YouTube search away has transformed how scholars teach and research Black performance. While Black Ephemera celebrates this new access, it also questions the crisis and the challenge of the Black musical archive in a moment when Black American culture has become a global export. Using music and sound as its primary texts, Black Ephemera argues that the cultural DNA of Black America has become obscured in the transformation from analog to digital. Through a cross-reading of the relationship between the digital era and culture produced in the pre-digital era, Neal argues that Black music has itself been reduced to ephemera, at best, and at worst to the background sounds of the continued exploitation and commodification of Black culture. The crisis and challenges of Black archives are not simply questions of knowledge, but of how knowledge moves and manifests itself within Blackness that is obscure, ephemeral, fugitive, precarious, fluid, and increasingly digital. Black Ephemera is a reminder that for every great leap forward there is a necessary return to the archive. Through this work, Neal offers a new framework for thinking about Black culture in the digital world.
For nearly eight centuries - from the Muslim conquest of Spain in 711 to the final expulsion of the Jews in 1492 - Muslims, Jews and Christians shared a common Andalusian culture under alternating Muslim and Christian rule. Following their expulsion, the Spanish and Arabic- speaking Jews joined pre-existing diasporic communities and established new ones across the Mediterranean and beyond. In the twentieth century, radical social and political upheavals in the former Ottoman and European-occupied territories led to the mass exodus of Jews from Turkey and the Arab Mediterranean, with the majority settling in Israel. Following a trajectory from medieval Al-Andalus to present-day Israel via North Africa, Italy, Turkey and Syria, pausing for perspectives from Enlightenment Europe, Musical Exodus: Al-Andalus and its Jewish Diasporas tells of diverse song and instrumental traditions born of the multiple musical encounters between Jews and their Muslim and Christian neighbors in different Mediterranean diasporas, and the revival and renewal of those traditions in present-day Israel. In this collection of essays from Philip V. Bohlman, Daniel Jutte, Tony Langlois, Piergabriele Mancuso, John O'Connell, Vanessa Paloma, Carmel Raz, Dwight Reynolds, Edwin Seroussi, and Jonathan Shannon, with opening and closing contributions by Ruth F. Davis and Stephen Blum, distinguished ethnomusicologists, cultural historians, linguists and performers explore from multidisciplinary perspectives the complex and diverse processes and conditions of intercultural and intracultural musical encounters. The authors consider how musical traditions acquired new functions and meanings in different social, political and diasporic contexts; explore the historical role of Jewish musicians as cultural intermediaries between the different faith communities; and examine how music is implicated in projects of remembering and forgetting as societies come to terms with mass exodus by reconstructing their narratives of the past. The essays in Musical Exodus: Al-Andalus and its Jewish Diasporas extend beyond the music of medieval Iberia and its Mediterranean Jewish diasporas to wider aspects of Jewish-Christian and Jewish-Muslim relations. The authors offer new perspectives on theories of musical interaction, hybridization, and the cultural meaning of musical expression in diasporic and minority communities. The essays address how music is implicated in constructions of ethnicity and nationhood and of myth and history, while also examining the resurgence of Al-Andalus as a symbol in musical projects that claim to promote cross-cultural understanding and peace. The diverse scholarship in Musical Exodus makes a vital contribution to scholars of music and European and Jewish history.
The Principles and Practice of Tonal Counterpoint is a comprehensive textbook that combines practical, "how-to" guidance in 18th-century techniques with extensive historical examination of contrapuntal works and genres. Beginning with an introductory grounding in species counterpoint, tonal harmony, and figured bass, students progress through the study of chorale preludes, invertible counterpoint, and canonic and fugal writing. This textbook thoroughly joins principle with practice, providing a truly immersive experience in the study of tonal counterpoint and familiarizing students with contrapuntal styles from the Baroque period to the 21st century. Also available is a companion volume, The Principles and Practice of Modal Counterpoint, which focuses on 16th-century techniques and covers modal music from Gregorian chant through the 17th century.
There can be no doubt as to the authenticity of BWV 143 as a genuine cantata by Johann Sebastian Bach. While the originals are lost, there are second and third "generation" copies. This study considers all known facts since the work's composition in the 18th century and discusses in detail the criteria for judging the authenticity of the work.
This volume provides a transnational study of the impact of musical cultures in the Eastern Baltics-Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, and Russia-at the end of the Cold War and in the early post-Communist period. Throughout the book, the contributors explore and conceptualize transnational musical collaboration and the diffusion of information, people, and ideas focusing on musical activity which shaped the moral and artistic outlook of several generations. The volume sheds light on the transformative power of politically and socially engaged music and offers a deeper understanding of the artistic potential of societies and its impact on social and political change.
The latest volume in the Music Library Association's Index and Bibliography series, Analyses of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Music, 1940-2000, features over 9,000 references to analyses of works by more than 1,000 composers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. References that address form, harmony, melody, rhythm, and other structural elements of musical compositions have been compiled into this valuable resource. This update of Arthur Wenk's well-known bibliography, last published in 1987, includes all the original entries from that work, along with additional references to analyses through 2000. International in scope, the bibliography covers writings in English, French, German, Italian, and other European languages, and draws from 167 periodicals as well as important theses, dissertations, books, and Festschriften. References are arranged alphabetically by composer, and include subheadings for specific works and genres. This bibliography provides students, scholars, performers, and librarians with broad coverage, detailed indexing, and ready access to a large and diverse body of analytical literature on nineteenth- and twentieth-century music.
Listening is a social process. Even apparently trivial acts of listening are expert performances of acquired cognitive and bodily habits. Contemporary scholars acknowledge this fact with the notion that there are "auditory cultures." In the fourth century BCE, Greek philosophers recognized a similar phenomenon in music, which they treated as a privileged site for the cultural manufacture of sensory capabilities, and proof that in a traditional culture perception could be ordered, regular, and reliable. This approachable and elegantly written book tells the story of how music became a vital topic for understanding the senses and their role in the creation of knowledge. Focussing in particular on discussions of music and sensation in Plato and Aristoxenus, Sean Gurd explores a crucial early chapter in the history of hearing and gently raises critical questions about how aesthetic traditionalism and sensory certainty can be joined together in a mutually reinforcing symbiosis.
Artistic Practice as Research in Music: Theory, Criticism, Practice brings together internationally renowned scholars and practitioners to explore the cultural, institutional, theoretical, methodological, epistemological, ethical and practical aspects and implications of the rapidly evolving area of artistic research in music. Through various theoretical positions and case studies, and by establishing robust connections between theoretical debates and concrete examples of artistic research projects, the authors discuss the conditions under which artistic practice becomes a research activity; how practice-led research is understood in conservatoire settings; issues of assessment in relation to musical performance as research; methodological possibilities open to music practitioners entering academic environments as researchers; the role of technology in processes of musical composition as research; the role and value of performerly knowledge in music-analytical enquiry; issues in relation to live performance as a research method; artistic collaboration and improvisation as research tools; interdisciplinary concerns of the artist-researcher; and the relationship between the affordances of a musical instrument and artistic research in musical performance. Readers will come away from the book with fresh insights about the theoretical, critical and practical work being done by experts in this exciting new field of enquiry.
The University of Louisville's annual Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition is the largest monetary award offered in its field. The international prize is offered for outstanding achievement by a living composer in a large musical genre, such as choral, orchestral, chamber, electronic, song-cycle, dance, opera, musical theater, or extended solo work. Since the award was first offered in 1985, the Dwight Anderson Memorial Music Library-one of the largest new music collections in North America-has housed the competition submissions. In order to keep an accurate listing detailing the holdings of this collection, this catalog was developed. Grawemeyer Award for Music Composition: The First Twenty Years catalogs every submission for this prestigious award, offering complete information on all the competition submissions, including title, composer, format, length, instrumentation, and information on where to find or purchase the composition. The bulk of the catalog is listed alphabetically by composer, so that users can learn whose works were submitted over the 20 years covered by the award. The additional appendixes provide the opposite perspective: a year-by-year glance at the award and those who submitted works each year. Concluding with an index, this catalog increases awareness of this collection and acknowledges the work of these important composers and their consequence to recent music history.
Music and Transcendence explores the ways in which music relates to transcendence by bringing together the disciplines of musicology, philosophy and theology, thereby uncovering congruencies between them that have often been obscured. Music has the capacity to take one outside of oneself and place one in relation to that which is 'other'. This 'other' can be conceived in an 'absolute' sense, insofar as music can be thought to place the self in relation to a divine 'other' beyond the human frame of existence. However, the 'other' can equally well be conceived in an 'immanent' (or secular) sense, as music is a human activity that relates to other cultural practices. Music here places the self in relation to other people and to the world more generally, shaping how the world is understood, without any reference to a God or gods. The book examines how music has not only played a significant role in many philosophical and theological accounts of the nature of existence and the self, but also provides a valuable resource for the creation of meaning on a day-to-day basis.
In Philosophy of Song and Singing: An Introduction, Jeanette Bicknell explores key aesthetic, ethical, and other philosophical questions that have not yet been thoroughly researched by philosophers, musicologists, or scientists. Issues addressed include: The relationship between the meaning of a song's words and its music The performer's role and the ensuing gender complications, social ontology, and personal identity The performer's ethical obligations to audiences, composers, lyricists, and those for whom the material holds particular significance The metaphysical status of isolated solo performances compared to the continuous singing of opera or the interrupted singing of stage and screen musicals Each chapter focuses on one major musical example and includes several shorter discussions of other selections. All have been chosen for their illustrative power and their accessibility for any interested reader and are readily available.
This book explores the artistic principles of Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, his concert activities, his art of piano playing, as well as his pedagogy and his attitude towards his students. The author presents the biographical data of the artist as well as the list of his recordings and introduces this extraordinary artist to a wider audience, especially to admirers of beautiful music and its performers. The book aims at encouraging in particular the young to follow the high artistic principles required in such a refined and unique art.
In various ways, the essays presented in this volume explore the structures and aesthetic possibilities of music, dance and dramatic representation in ritual and theatrical situations in a diversity of ethnographic contexts in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia. Each essay enters into a discussion of the "logic" of aesthetic processes exploring their social and political and symbolic import. The aim is above all to explore the way artistic and aesthetic practices in performance produce and structure experience. Angela Hobart is the coordinating lecturer at Goldsmiths College on Intercultural Therapy and lectures at the British Museum on the Art and Culture of South East Asia. Bruce Kapferer is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, Adjunct Professor at James Cook University and Honorary Professor at University College London.
It was Carl Dahlhaus who coined the phrase 'dead time' to describe the state of the symphony between Schumann and Brahms. Christopher Fifield argues that many of the symphonies dismissed by Dahlhaus made worthy contributions to the genre. He traces the root of the problem further back to Beethoven's ninth symphony, a work which then proceeded to intimidate symphonists who followed in its composer's footsteps, including Schubert, Mendelssohn and Schumann. In 1824 Beethoven set a standard that then had to rise in response to more demanding expectations from both audiences and the musical press. Christopher Fifield, who has a conductor's intimacy with the repertory, looks in turn at the five decades between the mid-1820s and mid-1870s. He deals only with non-programmatic works, leaving the programme symphony to travel its own route to the symphonic poem. Composers who lead to Brahms (himself a reluctant symphonist until the age of 43 in 1876) are frequently dismissed as epigones of Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Schumann but by investigating their symphonies, Fifield reveals their respective brands of originality, even their own possible influence upon Brahms himself and in so doing, shines a light into a half-century of neglected nineteenth century German symphonic music.
This book studies recent music in the western classical tradition, offering a critique of current analytical/theoretical approaches and proposing alternatives. The critique addresses the present fringe status of recent music sometimes described as crossover, postmodern, post-classical, post-minimalist, etc. and demonstrates that existing descriptive languages and analytical approaches do not provide adequate tools to address this music in positive and productive terms. Existing tools and concepts were developed primarily in the mid-20th century in tandem with the high modernist compositional aesthetic, and they have changed little since then. The aesthetics of music composition, on the other hand, have been in constant transformation. Lochhead proposes new ways to conceive musical works, their structurings of musical experience and time, and the procedures and goals of analytic close reading. These tools define investigative procedures that engage the multiple perspectives of composers, performers, and listeners, and that generate conceptual modes unique to each work. In action, they rebuild a conceptual, methodological, and experiential place for recent music. These new approaches are demonstrated in analyses of four pieces: Kaija Saariaho's Lonh (1996), Sofia Gubaidulina's Second String Quartet (1987), Stacy Garrop's String Quartet no.2, Demons and Angels (2004-05), and Anna Clyne's "Choke" (2004). This book defies the prediction of classical music's death, and will be of interest to scholars and musicians of classical music, and those interested in music theory, musicology, and aural culture.
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)
Following the development of the German Lied after the nineteenth century - when it was widely known as the setting of Romantic poetry to music - this book explores the changing artistic scene in the early twentieth century, as rapid social, economic and environmental changes affected German cultural production. The Lied then faced not only a crisis of identity, but also a threat to its survival. This book considers the literary and musical ideas that both challenged and complemented each other as new directions in songwriting were developed across the modern period. The composers selected for their relevance in Lieder composition during this time illustrate not only the diversity of their musical thought but also a changing approach to the relationship between the poetic text and its musical counterpart. Hans Pfitzner represents the determination to maintain established tradition; subsequently, a chronological progression through the individuality of Paul Hindemith and social integrity of Hanns Eisler leads to the point where transformation of the genre can be said to have begun, with Arnold Schoenberg. With the Lieder of Alban Berg and Anton Webern, the genre arrived at a point of convergence with the ideals of German modernism. This study offers new insights into the cultural significance of German songwriting in the first part of the twentieth century.
During the past fifty years Schenkerian theory has been adopted as the main method for analysing tonal music. This book questions the value of Schenker's "tonal analysis" for musical description and interpretation, and discusses its relations to "generative" theory and "implicational" analysis - taking into account its links with linguistic syntax and the perception of tonal closure. It is observed how auxiliary theoretical concepts transform the music so as to pave the way for preordained tonal structures. Alternative readings of the music examples are provided.
Listen to Rap! Exploring a Musical Genre provides an overview of this kinetic and poetic musical genre for scholars of rap and curious novices alike. Listen to Rap! Exploring a Musical Genre discusses the 50 most influential, commercially successful, and important rappers, rap crews (bands), rap albums, and rap singles. Rap began as an American phenomenon, so the book's emphasis is on Americans, although it also includes information on Canadian, British, Indian, and African rappers and crews. Its organization makes information easily accessible for readers, and the emphasis on the sound of the music gives readers a new angle from which to appreciate the music. Unlike other titles in the series, this volume concentrates solely on rap music. Included in the book are rappers who range from the earliest practitioners of the genre to rappers who are redefining the genre today. A background section introduces the genre, while a legacy section shows how rap has cemented its place in the world. Additionally, another section shows the tremendous impact rap has had on popular culture. Provides readers with a ready list of the 50 most important people and events in rap Discusses vocal styles and musical production in depth Quickly and efficiently characterizes rappers, crews, albums, and singles Provides pertinent information that links rappers, producers, DJs (turntablists), and record labels Discusses the history of rap as a series of local phenomena in the introduction |
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