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Books > Arts & Architecture > Music > Theory of music & musicology
This investigation of Polish, Jewish, and German sources demonstrates the roles of music in occupied Poland. Its former citizens had their access to music controlled by the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda. It was rationed as other goods, depending on racial (i.e. also legal) status. Official music performances served as a propagandistic tool to further divide the Nazi-segregated population. Music played clandestinely embodied resistance. It restored the sense of community and helped save musicians persecuted as Jews, like Wladyslaw Szpilman. The documents analyzed in the monograph confirm the dehumanization of prospective victims, mixed with a narcissistic self-righteous view of Nazi songs and propaganda ultimately led to the organized presence of music in the Holocaust sites.
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.
The Performance of Listening in Postcolonial Francophone Culture argues that globalized media has allowed for efficient transmission of transnational culture, and in turn, our everyday experiences are informed by sounds ranging from voices, to music, to advertising, to bombs, and beyond. In considering cultural works from French-speaking North Africa and the Middle East all published or released in France from 1962-2011, Solheim's study of listening across cultural genres will be of interest to any scholar or lay person curious about contemporary postcolonial France. This book is also a primer to contemporary Francophone culture from North Africa and the Middle East. Some of the French-speaking world's most renowned and adored artists are the subject of this study, including preeminent Algerian feminist novelist, filmmaker and historian Assia Djebar (1936-2015), the first writer of the Maghreb to become part of the Academie Francaise; celebrated Iranian graphic novelist and filmmaker Marjane Satrapi (Persepolis, Chicken with Plums); the lauded Lebanese-Quebecois playwright and dramaturge Wajdi Mouawad (Littorial, Incendies), and Lebanese comic artist and avant jazz trumpeter Mazen Kerbaj, whose improvisation with Israeli fighter jets during the 2006 Israeli War, "Starry Night," catapulted him to global recognition. An interdisciplinary study of contemporary Francophone cultures, this book will be of interest to French scholars and students in literary studies, performance studies, gender studies, anthropology, history, and ethnomusicology.
Though George Grove, 1820-1900, was never a professional musician, his is one of the most familiar names in music: as founder of the great <I>Dictionary of Music and Musicians</I> that bears his name and first director of the Royal College of Music. This book surveys his varied activities as engineer, biblical scholar, administrator, educationalist, and writer on music, and assesses the qualities that led him to play a major role in the cultural life of London in the period 1850-1900.
The Music of the Spheres in the Western Imagination describes various systematic musical ecologies of the cosmos by examining attempts over time to define Western theoretical musical systems, whether practical, human, nonhuman, or celestial. This book focuses on the theoretical, theological, philosophical, physical, and mathematical concepts of a cosmic musical order and how these concepts have changed in order to fit different worldviews through the imaginations of theologians, theorists, and authors of fiction, as well as the practical performance of music. Special attention is given to music theory treatises between the ninth and sixteenth centuries, English-language hymnody from the eighteenth century to the present, polemical works on music and worship from the last hundred years, the Divine Comedy of Dante, nineteenth- and twentieth-century English-language fiction, the fictional works of C.S. Lewis, and the legendarium of J.R.R. Tolkien.
*** 'A fantastical journey through what might have been... Exciting and compelling' -CHRIS HAWKINS, BBC 6 MUSIC 'A detailed researcher and writer... Ingenious' -RECORD COLLECTOR This is the story of the great lost Beatles album. The end of the Beatles wasn't inevitable. It came through miscommunication, misunderstandings and missed opportunities to reconcile. But what if it didn't end? What if just one of those chances was taken, and the Beatles carried on? What if they made one last, great album? In Like Some Forgotten Dream, Daniel Rachel - winner of the prestigious Penderyn Music Book Prize - looks at what could have been. Drawing on impeccable research, Rachel examines the Fab Four's untimely demise - and from the ashes compiles a track list for an imagined final album, pulling together unfinished demos, forgotten B-sides, hit solo songs, and arguing that together they form the basis of a lost Beatles masterpiece. Compelling and convincing, Like Some Forgotten Dream is a daring re-write of Beatles history, and a tantalising glimpse of what might have been. Praise for Daniel Rachel: Walls Come Tumbling Down: 'Superlative...brilliant' - Q Magazine 'Triumphant' - The Guardian 'Brilliant' - Mojo Isle of Noises: 'In depth, scholarly' - Q Magazine 'Fascinating' - The Guardian / NME 'Fantastic, insightful interviews' - Noel Gallagher Don't Look Back in Anger: 'A-grade, A-list' - The Sunday Times 'A rollicking read' - Mail on Sunday 'Remarkable' - Art Review 'Book of the Week' - The Guardian
Historical ethnomusicology is increasingly acknowledged as a significant emerging subfield of ethnomusicology due to the fact that historical research requires a different set of theories and methods than studies of contemporary practices and many historiographic techniques are rapidly transforming as a result of new technologies. In 2005, Bruno Nettl observed that "the term 'historical ethnomusicology' has begun to appear in programs of conferences and in publications" (Nettl 2005, 274), and as recently as 2012 scholars similarly noted "an increasing concern with the writing of musical histories in ethnomusicology" (Ruskin and Rice 2012, 318). Relevant positions recently advanced by other authors include that historical musicologists are "all ethnomusicologists now" and that "all ethnomusicology is historical" (Stobart, 2008), yet we sense that such arguments-while useful, and theoretically correct-may ultimately distract from careful consideration of the kinds of contemporary theories and rigorous methods uniquely suited to historical inquiry in the field of music. In Theory and Method in Historical Ethnomusicology, editors Jonathan McCollum and David Hebert, along with contributors Judah Cohen, Chris Goertzen, Keith Howard, Ann Lucas, Daniel Neuman, and Diane Thram systematically demonstrate various ways that new approaches to historiography--and the related application of new technologies--impact the work of ethnomusicologists who seek to meaningfully represent music traditions across barriers of both time and space. Contributors specializing in historical musics of Armenia, Iran, India, Japan, southern Africa, American Jews, and southern fiddling traditions of the United States describe the opening of new theoretical approaches and methodologies for research on global music history. In the Foreword, Keith Howard offers his perspective on historical ethnomusicology and the importance of reconsidering theories and methods applicable to this field for the enhancement of musical understandings in the present and future.
* Describes the creative energy of two highly respected 20th century artists, Iannis Xenakis both as engineer and composer, and Roger Reynolds, Pulitzer prize winning musician in 1989 * Will appeal to the professional sector of musicians and architects, and students in both of these disciplines * Connects the creative path of architecture and music, i.e., Xenakis' treatment of "light" in an architectural context parallels his use of varying textural density in his music. * Analyzes chamber works Achorripsis, Thallein, and his string quartet, Tetras, which pertain to the interactive house design
* Describes the creative energy of two highly respected 20th century artists, Iannis Xenakis both as engineer and composer, and Roger Reynolds, Pulitzer prize winning musician in 1989 * Will appeal to the professional sector of musicians and architects, and students in both of these disciplines * Connects the creative path of architecture and music, i.e., Xenakis' treatment of "light" in an architectural context parallels his use of varying textural density in his music. * Analyzes chamber works Achorripsis, Thallein, and his string quartet, Tetras, which pertain to the interactive house design
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.
As a monograph dealing with an individual raga, this book is a novel addition to the literature on Indian music, and therefore one without much precedent.
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.
In The Art of Listening, Anthony Arnone interviews 13 of the top cello teachers of our time, sharing valuable insights about performing, teaching, music, and life. While almost every other aspect of twenty-first-century life has been changed by technological advancements, the art of playing and teaching the cello has largely remained the same. Our instruments are still made exactly the same way and much of what we learn is passed on by demonstration and word of mouth from generation to generation. We are as much historians of music as we are teachers of the instrument. The teaching lineage in the classical music world has formed a family tree of sorts with a select number of iconic names at the top of the tree, such as Pablo Casals, Gregor Piatigorsky, and Leonard Rose. A large percentage of professional cellists working today studied with these giants of the cello world, or with their students. In addition to discussing the impact of these masters and their personal experience as their students, the renowned cellists interviewed in this book touch on a variety of topics from teaching philosophies to how technology has changed classical music.
Music as a narrative drama is an intriguing idea, which has captured explicit music theoretical attention since the nineteenth century. Investigations into narrative characters or personae has evolved into a sub-field-musical agency. In this book, Palfy contends that music has the potential to engage us in social processes and that those processes can be experienced as a social interaction with a musical agent. She explores the overlap between the psychological processes in which we participate in order to understand and engage with people, and those we engage in when we listen to music. Thinking of musical agency as a form of social process is quite different from existing theoretical frameworks for agency. It implies that we come to musical analysis by way of intuition-that our ideas are already partially formed based on our experience of the piece (and what it makes us feel or how it makes us sense it as any other) when we choose to analyze and interpret it. Palfy's focus on social processes is a very effective way to pinpoint when and why it is that our attention is captured and engaged by musical agents.
Unsayable Music presents theoretical, critical and analytical reflections on key topics of contemporary music including acoustic, electroacoustic, and digital music and audiovisual and multimedia composition. Six essays by Paulo C. Chagas approach music from different perspectives such as philosophy, sociology, cybernetics, musical semiotics, media, and critical studies. Chagas's practical experience, both as a composer of contemporary music and sound director of the Electronic Music Studio of Cologne, nourishes his observations on the specific creativity that emerges with the use of the technical apparatus, the development of the electronic music studio, the different aesthetics of electroacoustic music, and the forms of audiovisual and multimedia composition. The title Unsayable Music is a reference to Wittgenstein, who suggested that sound is only the surface of music and that the musical work conceals something more profound that can hardly be described by philosophical models or scientific theories."
In Songbooks, critic and scholar Eric Weisbard offers a critical guide to books on American popular music from William Billings's 1770 New-England Psalm-Singer to Jay-Z's 2010 memoir Decoded. Drawing on his background editing the Village Voice music section, coediting the Journal of Popular Music Studies, and organizing the Pop Conference, Weisbard connects American music writing from memoirs, biographies, and song compilations to blues novels, magazine essays, and academic studies. The authors of these works are as diverse as the music itself: women, people of color, queer writers, self-educated scholars, poets, musicians, and elites discarding their social norms. Whether analyzing books on Louis Armstrong, the Beatles, and Madonna; the novels of Theodore Dreiser, Gayl Jones, and Jennifer Egan; or varying takes on blackface minstrelsy, Weisbard charts an alternative history of American music as told through its writing. As Weisbard demonstrates, the most enduring work pursues questions that linger across time period and genre-cultural studies in the form of notes on the fly, on sounds that never cease to change meaning.
The Eurovision Song Contest (ESC) is more than a musical event that ostensibly "unites European people" through music. It is a spectacle: a performative event that allegorically represents the idea of "Europe." Since its beginning in the Cold War era, the contest has functioned as a symbolic realm for the performance of European selves and the negotiation of European identities. Through the ESC, Europe is experienced, felt, and imagined in singing and dancing as the interplay of tropes of being local and/or European is enacted. In Empire of Song: Europe and Nation in the Eurovision Song Contest, contributors interpret the ESC as a musical "mediascape" and mega-event that has variously performed and performs the changing visions of the European project. Through the study of the cultural politics of the ESC, contributors discuss the ways in which music operates as a dynamic nexus for making national identities and European sensibilities, generating processes of "assimilation" or "integration," and defining the celebrated notion of the "European citizen" in a global context. Scholars in the volume also explore the ways otherness and difference are produced, spectacularized, challenged, or even neglected in the televised musical realities of the ESC. For the contributing authors, song serves as a site for constituting Europe and the nation, on- and offstage. History and politics, as well as the constant production of European subjectivities, are sounded in song. The Eurovision song is a shifting realm where old and new states imagine their pasts, question their presents, and envision ideal futures in the New Europe. Essays in Empire of Song adopt theoretical and epistemological orientations in their exploration of "popular music" within ethnomusicology and critical musicology, questioning the idea of "Europe" and the "nation" through and in music, at a time when the European self appears more fragmented, if not entirely shattered. Bringing together ethnomusicology, music studies, history, social anthropology, feminist theory, linguistics, media ethnography, postcolonial theory, comparative literature, and philosophy, Empire of Song will interest students and scholars in a vast array of disciplines.
In addition to being a great composer, Richard Wagner was also an important philosopher. Julian Young begins by examining the philosophy of art and society Wagner constructs during his time as a revolutionary anarchist-communist. Modernity, Wagner argued, is to be rescued from its current anomie through the rebirth of Greek tragedy (the original Gesamtkunstwerk) in the form of the "artwork of the future," an artwork of which his own operas are the prototype. Young then examines the entirely different philosophy Wagner constructs after his 1854 conversion from Hegelian optimism to Schopenhauerian pessimism. "Redemption" now becomes, not a future utopia in this world, but rather "transfigured" existence in another world, attainable only through death. Viewing Wagner's operas through the lens of his philosophy, the book offers often novel interpretations of Lohengrin, The Ring cycle, Tristan und Isolde, Die Meistersinger, and Parsifal. Finally, Young dresses the cause of Friedrich Nietzsche's transformation from Wagner's intimate friend and disciple into his most savage critic. Nietzsche's fundamental accusation, it is argued, is one of betrayal: that Wagner betrayed his early, "life affirming" philosophy of art and life in favor of "life-denial." Nietzsche's assertion and the final conclusion of the book is that our task, now, is to "become better Wagnerians than Wagner."
Opera in Performance elucidates the performative dimension of contemporary opera productions. What are the most striking and decisive moments in a performance? Why do we respond so strongly to stagings that transform familiar scenes, to performers' bodily presence, and to virtuosic voices as well as ill-disposed ones? Drawing on phenomenology and performance theory, Clemens Risi explains how these moments arise out of a dialogue between performers and the audience, representation and presence, the familiar and the new. He then applies these insights in critical descriptions of his own experiences of various singers, stagings, and performances at opera houses and festivals from across the German-speaking world over the last twenty years. As the first book to focus on what happens in performance as such, this study shifts our attention to moments that have eluded articulation and provides tools for describing our own experiences when we go to the opera. This book will particularly interest scholars and students in theater and performance studies, musicology, and the humanities, and may also appeal to operagoers and theater professionals.
In Choral Masterpieces: Major and Minor, historian Nicholas Tarling surveys the landscape of choral works, some standard masterpieces that are commonly performed by choruses around the world, others deserving a second, closer look. As noted in the foreword by Uwe Grodd , music director of the Auckland Choral Society, this work "is a collection of essays about a number of outstanding works, including Beethoven's Miss Solemnis and Britten's War Requiem, but he also invites attention to lesser masterpieces. If the choral movement, which includes both singers and listeners, is to survive, new works must be created and repertory expanded. The book is an easy and captivating read even if you are not a chorister." Choral Masterpieces: Major and Minor features short essays on over 28 works, from major masterpieces such as Handel's Messiah and Bach's St. Matthew's Passion to off-the-beaten path choral works such as Samuel Coleridge-Taylor's Hiawatha and Frederick Delius' A Mass of Life. Throughout, Tarling offers assessments that sparkle with unique insights and at the same time ground listener's in the historical contexts of the work's production and performance. Each work is transformed in Tarling's able hands from musical work into a window into the mind and milieu of the composer. Choral Masterpieces: Major and Minor mixes choral mainstays with works that demand revisiting. Choral singers and their audiences, as well as choral societies and their directions and promoters, will find ample food for thoughts in these meditations on the choral tradition.
Heitor Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasileiras demonstrates how the composer achieved his own Brazilian neoclassical style in a group of works, nine suites in total, that is arguably one of the best examples of homage to J.S. Bach's music in the twentieth century. In this book, the corpus of Bachianas Brasileiras is contextualised and critically examined according to its structure and intertextual aspects, as well as its relationship to Bach's music, Brazilian popular music, and other works by contemporaries of Villa Lobos. A range of musical examples illustrate instances of the selected topics in the works, encompassing urban Brazilian popular music such as the choro, Brazilian northeast and afro rhythms, and citation of folkloric melodies. Dudeque's comprehensive examination of the Bachianas Brasileiras will be invaluable for scholars and researchers of music theory and analysis.
This book addresses the analysis of musical sounds from the viewpoint of someone at the intersection between physicists, engineers, piano technicians, and musicians. The study is structured into three parts. The reader is introduced to a variety of waves and a variety of ways of presenting, visualizing, and analyzing them in the first part. A tutorial on the tools used throughout the book accompanies this introduction. The mathematics behind the tools is left to the appendices. Part Two provides a graphical survey of the classical areas of acoustics that pertain to musical instruments: vibrating strings, bars, membranes, and plates. Part Three is devoted almost exclusively to the piano. Several two- and three-dimensional graphical tools are introduced to study various characteristics of pianos: individual notes and interactions among them, the missing fundamental, inharmonicity, tuning visualization, the different distribution of harmonic power for the various zones of the piano keyboard, and potential uses for quality control. These techniques are also briefly applied to other musical instruments studied in earlier parts of the book. For physicists and engineers there are appendices to cover the mathematics lurking beneath the numerous graphs and a brief introduction to Matlab (R) which was used to generate these graphs. A website accompanying the book (https://sites.google.com/site/analysisofsoundsandvibrations/) contains: - Matlab (R) scripts - mp3 files of sounds - references to YouTube videos - and up-to-date results of recent studies
Digital Scenography in Opera in the Twenty-First Century is the first definitive study of the use of digital scenography in Western opera production. The book begins by exploring digital scenography's dramaturgical possibilities and establishes a critical framework for identifying and comparing the use of digital scenography across different digitally enhanced opera productions. The book then investigates the impacts and potential disruptions of digital scenography on opera's longstanding production conventions, both on and off the stage. Drawing on interviews with major industry practitioners, including Paul Barritt, Mark Grimmer, Donald Holder, Elaine J. McCarthy, Luke Halls, Wendall K. Harrington, Finn Ross, S. Katy Tucker, and Victoria 'Vita' Tzykun, author Caitlin Vincent identifies key correlations between the use of digital scenography in practice and subsequent impacts on creative hierarchies, production design processes, and organisational management. The book features detailed case studies of digitally enhanced productions premiered by Dutch National Opera, Komische Oper Berlin, Opera de Lyon, The Royal Opera, Covent Garden, San Francisco Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Theatre Royal de la Monnaie, The Metropolitan Opera, Victorian Opera, and Washington National Opera. |
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