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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Theory of music & musicology
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.
"Maybe you won't like steel band. It's possible. But it's been said
that the Pied Piper had a steel band helping him on his famous
visit to Hamelin." When the US Navy distributed this press release,
anxieties and tensions of the impending Cold War felt palpable. As
President Eisenhower cast his gaze towards Russia, the American
people cast their ears to the Atlantic south, infatuated with the
international currents of Caribbean music. Today, steelbands have
become a global phenomenon; yet, in 1957 the exotic sound and the
unique image of the US Navy Steel Band was one-of-a-kind. Could
calypso doom rock `n' roll? Band founder Admiral Daniel V. Gallery
thought so and envisioned his steelband knocking "rock 'n' roll and
Elvis Presley into the ash can." From 1957 until their disbandment
in 1999, the US Navy Steel Band performed over 20,000 concerts
worldwide. In 1973, the band officially moved headquarters from
Puerto Rico to New Orleans and found the city and annual Mardi Gras
tradition an aptmusical and cultural fit. The band brought a
significant piece of Caribbean artistic capital-calypso and
steelband music-to the American mainstream. Its impact on the
growth and development of steelpan music in America is enormous.
Steelpan Ambassadors uncovers the lost history of the US Navy Steel
Band and provides an in-depth study of its role in the development
of the US military's public relations, its promotion of goodwill,
its recruitment efforts after the Korean and VietnamWars, its
musical and technological innovations, and its percussive
propulsion of the American fascination with Latin and Caribbean
music over the past century.
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."
In the 1940s and '50s, Richard Dyer-Bennet (1913-1991) was among
the best known and most respected folk singers in America. Paul O.
Jenkins tells, for the first time, the story of Dyer-Bennet, often
referred to as the "Twentieth-Century Minstrel." Dyer-Bennet's
approach to singing sounded almost foreign to many American
listeners. The folk artist followed a musical tradition in danger
of dying out. The Swede Sven Scholander was the last European
proponent of minstrelsy and served as Dyer-Bennet's inspiration
after the young singer traveled to Stockholm to meet him one year
before Scholander's death.
Dyer-Bennet's achievements were many. Nine years after his
meeting with Scholander, he became the first solo performer of his
kind to appear in Carnegie Hall. This book argues Dyer-Bennet
helped pave the way for the folk boom of the mid-1950s and early
1960s, finding his influence in the work of Joan Baez, Judy
Collins, and many others. It also posits strong evidence that
Dyer-Bennet would certainly be much better known today had his
career not been interrupted midstream by the anticommunist,
Red-scare blacklist and its ban on his performances..
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.
This is a facsimile of the first edition, printed for the Author,
in Edinburgh in 1721.
Perfect Harmony and Melting Strains assembles interdisciplinary
essays investigating concepts of harmony during a transitional
period, in which the Pythagorean notion of a harmoniously ordered
cosmos competed with and was transformed by new theories about
sound - and new ways of conceptualizing the world. From the
perspectives of philosophy, literary scholarship, and musicology,
the contributions consider music's ambivalent position between
mathematical abstraction and sensibility, between the metaphysics
of harmony and the physics of sound. Essays examine the late
medieval and early modern history of ideas concerning the nature of
music and cosmic harmony, and trace their transformations in early
modern musico-literary discourses. Within this framework, essays
further offer original readings of important philosophical,
literary, and musicological works. This interdisciplinary volume
brings into focus the transformation of a predominant Renaissance
worldview and of music's scientific, theological, literary, as well
as cultural conceptions and functions in the early modern period,
and will be of interest to scholars of the classics, philosophy,
musicology, as well as literary and cultural studies.
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.
In this well-written work, the author argues that the present
situation regarding the music of the classical tradition is
fundamentally untenable. While change is, of course, inevitable,
the author posits that teachers of the classical music tradition,
nonetheless, have a moral responsibility to do as much as possible
to advocate and work toward goals that will hasten and most
positively influence the direction of change. The author believes
that the present relationship between the music of the Western
classical tradition and the culture of the present is an unhealthy
one. The music of dead composers comprises the overwhelming
preponderance of music heard today, especially in the larger venues
such as symphony halls and opera houses. Specifically, the author
argues that we must promote and provide for (at least) an equal
place in our teaching, recordings, and performances for the music
of composers who are living at the time we undertake these
activities. He further advocates that this is not simply a matter
of currency, it is a matter of cultural vibrancyeven survivaland it
is an ethical and aesthetic concern toward which we must direct our
most serious attention and effort. As both a singer and a teacher,
the author delivers a resounding perspective in this book. He also
brings the important insights of others from other fields such as
literature, philosophy, and theater. The authors discussions
revolve around the situation of classical music, a situation that
in many ways exemplifies the gradual transformation of the
rationalization of the world, into the radical commodification of
the world. This outcome will be shown to be intimately linked to
ethical and aesthetic issues, whichwill be developed by means of an
extended consideration of the conflict between the rational and the
a-rational as it plays itself out in contrasts between music, art,
and literature, and science and philosophy. The book delves into
the problem of teaching music, particularly the problems commonly
dealt with in the teaching studio. Teachers of the Western music
tradition have developed tried and true techniques for dealing with
these problems as they occur in teaching, generally by helping
students toward an understanding of historical, musical, technical
and stylistic problems, among a host of others. These common
problems of teaching are, however, symptomatic of very deep,
complicated, and endemic philosophical issues that have, so far,
been insufficiently discussed in a form that might be useful to
teachers, performers, and lovers of the music of the Western
classical music tradition. The most unique contribution of these
discussions is the investigation into what is not discussed to any
depth in pedagogy bookswhat lies behind or beneath these commonly
experienced problems. This is a critical book for collections in
music.
Throughout the history of slavery, enslaved people organized
resistance, escape, and rebellion. Sustaining them in this struggle
was their music, some examples of which are sung to this day. While
the existence of slave songs, especially spirituals, is well known,
their character is often misunderstood. Slave songs were not only
lamentations of suffering or distractions from a life of misery.
Some songs openly called for liberty and revolution, celebrating
such heroes as Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner, and, especially,
celebrating the Haitian Revolution. The fight for freedom also
included fugitive slaves, free Black people, and their white allies
who brought forth a set of songs that were once widely disseminated
but are now largely forgotten, the songs of the abolitionists.
Often composed by fugitive slaves and free Black people, and first
appearing in the eighteenth century, these songs continued to be
written and sung until the Civil War. As the movement expanded,
abolitionists even published song books used at public meetings.
Mat Callahan presents recently discovered songs composed by
enslaved people explicitly calling for resistance to slavery, some
originating as early as 1784 and others as late as the Civil War.
He also presents long-lost songs of the abolitionist movement, some
written by fugitive slaves and free Black people, challenging
common misconceptions of abolitionism. Songs of Slavery and
Emancipation features the lyrics of fifteen slave songs and fifteen
abolitionist songs, placing them in proper historical context and
making them available again to the general public. These songs not
only express outrage at slavery but call for militant resistance
and destruction of the slave system. There can be no doubt as to
their purpose: the abolition of slavery, the emancipation of
African American people, and a clear and undeniable demand for
equality and justice for all humanity.
Western opera is a globalized and globalizing phenomenon and
affords us a unique opportunity for exploring the concept of
"orientalism," the subject of literary scholar Edward Said's modern
classic on the topic. Nicholas Tarling's Orientalism and the
Operatic World places opera in the context of its steady
globalization over the past two centuries. In this important
survey, Tarling first considers how the Orient appears on the
operatic stage in Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and the United
States before exploring individual operas according to the region
of the "Orient" in which the work is set. Throughout, Tarling
offers key insights into such notable operas as George Frideric
Handel's Berenice, Giuseppe Verdi's Aida, Giacomo Puccini's Madama
Butterfly, Pietro Mascagni's Iris, and others. Orientalism and the
Operatic World argues that any close study of the history of
Western opera, in the end, fails to support the notion propounded
by Said that Westerners inevitably stereotyped, dehumanized, and
ultimately sought only to dominate the East through art. Instead,
Tarling argues that opera is a humanizing art, one that emphasizes
what humanity has in common by epic depictions of passion through
the vehicle of song. Orientalism and the Operatic World is not
merely for opera buffs or even first-time listeners. It should also
interest historians of both the East and West, scholars of
international relations, and cultural theorists.
Facsimile reprint of "The Seventh edition, Corrected and Elarged.
Printed by W. Godbid, for J. Playford at his Shop in the Temple
near the Church. 1674."
This is a facsimile reprint of the 1773 edition. Originally in two
volumes but now bound as one. There is a small bibliography
provided by the publisher.
When the story of modernity is told from a theological perspective,
music is routinely ignored - despite its pervasiveness in modern
culture and the manifold ways it has been intertwined with
modernity's ambivalent relation to the Christian God. In
conversation with musicologists and music theorists, in this
collection of essays Jeremy Begbie aims to show that the practices
of music and the discourses it has generated bear their own kind of
witness to some of the pivotal theological currents and
counter-currents shaping modernity. Music has been deeply affected
by these currents and in some cases may have played a part in
generating them. In addition, Begbie argues that music is capable
of yielding highly effective ways of addressing and moving beyond
some of the more intractable theological problems and dilemmas
which modernity has bequeathed to us. Music, Modernity, and God
includes studies of Calvin, Luther and Bach, an exposition of the
intriguing tussle between Rousseau and the composer Rameau, and an
account of the heady exaltation of music to be found in the early
German Romantics. Particular attention is paid to the complex
relations between music and language, and the ways in which
theology, a discipline involving language at its heart, can come to
terms with practices like music, practices which are coherent and
meaningful but which in many respects do not operate in
language-like ways.
Written by Simone Dennis, Lecturer in Anthropology at the
University of Southern Queensland, Australia, this book illuminates
the social processes of being and becoming emotional and of making
music, and the ways in which these processes are intertwined in the
context of an Australian police department that wields subtle forms
of power by emotional and musical means. The book is based on 18
months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a metropolitan police
(concert) band. Of primary analytic concern is the embodied and
social basis of emotion, and its capacity to facilitate connections
between persons in and through musical means. Police Beat moves
away from a focus on the cognitive apparatus that produces
experiences, and which thusly obscure the far more active and
multisensual roles that musicians have in constituting and
organizing their own sensual perceptions, to focus on embodied and
social experiences of making music, and of making emotion. The book
offers new insights into the means and modes of wielding subtle
forms of policing power in the contemporary world, and points to
the importance of music in organizing the social world.
The BBC Proms is the world's biggest and longest-running classical
music festival and one of the jewels in the crown for the BBC. Held
every summer at the Royal Albert Hall in London, it is one of the
strongest brand names in the music world and attracts a glittering
array of artists and orchestras. Whether you're a first-time
visitor or an experienced Prommer, watching at home or listening on
radio or online, the BBC Proms Guide will be an excellent companion
to a remarkable summer of music, which you can treasure and return
to in years to come. Filled with the latest programme details and
illuminating articles by leading experts, journalists and writers,
the BBC Proms Guide gives a wide-ranging insight into the
performers and repertoire, as well as thought-provoking opinion
pieces about audiences, music and music-making. The contents for
2021 include a specially commissioned short story by award-winning
author Chibundu Onuzo; an exploration of music and silence by
author, commentator and broadcaster Will Self; a celebration of the
history and influence of the iconic Royal Albert Hall 150 years
after its opening by historian, author, curator and television
presenter Lucy Worsley; a tribute to anniversary composer Igor
Stravinsky; and an article spotlighting the remarkable Kanneh-Mason
siblings (spearheaded by royal-wedding cellist Sheku).
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