The first book-length study of musical education and culture in twentieth-century Oxford. Music has always played a central role in the life of Oxford, in both the city and university, through the great collegiate choral foundations, the many amateur choirs and instrumentalists, and the professional musicians regularly drawn to perform there. Oxford, with its collegiate system and centuries-long tradition of musical activity, presents a distinctive and multi-layered picture of the role of music in urban culture and university life. The chapters in this book shed light on music's unique ability to link 'town and gown', as shown by the Oxford Bach Choir, the city's many churches, and the major choral foundations. The twentieth century saw the emergence of new musical initiatives and the book traces the development of these, including the University's Faculty of Music and the University Opera Club. Further, it explores music in the newly-founded women's colleges, contrasted with the musical society formed in 1930 at University College, an ancient men's college. The work of Oxford composers, including George Butterworth, Nicola Lefanu, Edmund Rubbra, and William Walton, as well as the composer for several 'Carry on' films, Bruce Montgomery, is surveyed. Two remarkable figures, Sir Hugh Allen and Sir Jack Westrup, recur throughout the book in a variety of contexts. The volume is indispensable reading for scholars and students of musical life in twentieth-century Britain, as well as those interested generally in the history of Oxford's thriving cultural life.

Where is the academic study of music today, and what paths should it take into the future? Should we be looking at how music relates to society and constructs meaning through it, rather than how it transcends the social? Can we 'remix' our discipline and attempt to address all musics on an equal basis, without splitting ourselves in advance into subgroups of 'musicologists', 'theorists', and 'ethnomusicologists'? These are some of the crucial issues that Nicholas Cook has raised since he emerged in the 1990s as one of the UK's leading and most widely read voices in critical musicology. In this book, collaborators and former students of Cook pursue these questions and others raised by his work-from notation, historiography, and performance to the place of music in multimedia forms such as virtual reality and video games, analysing both how it can bring people together and the ways in which it has failed to do so.

This volume brings together some of today's most exciting music scholars to engage with the multifaceted body of work produced by Nicholas Cook over the last thirty years. It offers a forum for scholars to respond to his challenges to the discipline - to 'rethink music', to go 'beyond the score', and to build a more 'relational musicology'. Scholars from a range of subdisciplines have been chosen to reflect Cook's breadth of interest, from music theory, musical multimedia and the performance turn, popular music studies, to the question of musical meaning. Cook's work has a fundamental conceptual synthesis - one that can play an important role in the future of musical scholarship globally.

In this collection, black religious scholars and pastors whose expertise range from theology, ethics, and the psychology of religion, to preaching, religious aesthetics, and religious education, discuss the legacy of Albert B. Cleage Jr. and the idea of the Black Madonna and child. Easter Sunday, 2017 will mark the fifty year anniversary of Albert B. Cleage Jr.'s unveiling of a mural of the Black Madonna and child in his church in Detroit, Michigan. This unveiling symbolized a radical theological departure and disruption. The mural helped symbolically launch Black Christian Nationalism and influenced the Black Power movement in the United States. But fifty years later, what has been the lasting impact of this act of theological innovation? What is the legacy of Cleage's emphasis on the literal blackness of Jesus? How has the idea of a Black Madonna and child informed notions of black womanhood, motherhood? LGBTQ communities? How has Cleage's theology influenced Christian education, Africana pastoral theology, and the Black Arts Movement? The contributors to this work discuss answers to these and many more questions.

From the cylinder to the download, the practice of music has been radically transformed by the development of recording and playback technologies. This Companion provides a detailed overview of the transformation, encompassing both classical and popular music. Topics covered include the history of recording technology and the businesses built on it; the impact of recording on performance styles; studio practices, viewed from the perspectives of performer, producer and engineer; and approaches to the study of recordings. The main chapters are interspersed by 'short takes' - short contributions by different practitioners, ranging from classical or pop producers and performers to record collectors. Combining basic information with a variety of perspectives on records and recordings, this book will appeal not only to students in a range of subjects from music to the media, but also to general readers interested in a fundamental yet insufficiently understood dimension of musical culture.

From the cylinder to the download, the practice of music has been radically transformed by the development of recording and playback technologies. This 2009 Companion provides a detailed overview of the transformation, encompassing both classical and popular music. Topics covered include the history of recording technology and the businesses built on it; the impact of recording on performance styles; studio practices, viewed from the perspectives of performer, producer and engineer; and approaches to the study of recordings. The main chapters are interspersed by 'short takes' - short contributions by different practitioners, ranging from classical or pop producers and performers to record collectors. Combining basic information with a variety of perspectives on records and recordings, this book will appeal not only to students in a range of subjects from music to the media, but also to general readers interested in a fundamental yet insufficiently understood dimension of musical culture.

Toys - from teddy bears to Barbie dolls to train sets - define our image of childhood innocence. But the truth is that toys represent a $21 billion a year industry, and with so much money at stake, the toy business is anything but child's play. In The Real Toy Story, investigative journalist Eric Clark exposes the startling truths behind Britain's favourite toys. Drawing on interviews with over 200 industry insiders, Clark names and shames the corporations spending millions on research into the best way to manipulate their target audience while manufacturing products in China under virtual slave labour conditions. In a world of cut-throat competition and cold-blooded marketing, toy companies are increasingly willing to sacrifice our children in the rush for profits. And as more children forsake cuddly play things for Ipods and cell phones, companies are using even more extreme tactics- unashamedly using sex and violence to sell dolls and action men to children as young as three - to make sure that their toy is the one that children want to have. The Real Toy Story is essential reading for the millions of adults who care about the toys they choose for the children in their lives.

The American toy business is massive, world dominating, cutthroat, exciting, and increasingly willing to sacrifice our kids in its frantic rush for profit. And yet, for all its rapaciousness, the industry is in the business of delighting and fascinating our children. Toys are one of the most emotive subjects in the world. We all remember our own toys; we care desperately about those we choose for our kids, knowing these objects help shape children's lives. They are also a constantly newsworthy item: every Christmas, which toys are hot -- and the scramble by parents to grab them before the stores are empty -- is front-page and TV bulletin news.

"The Real Toy Story" tells the tales of these toys and of the vast, world-dominating $22 billion American industry that creates them. The rewards for success are enormous: a top toy can earn billions -- H. Ty Warner shot into "Forbes's" World's Richest People list with his creation of Beanie Babies. The price of failure is just as huge -- the battlefield is littered with the corpses of once-successful toy companies whose multimillion-dollar gambles did not pay off.

It is a world of contrasts. "The Real Toy Story" looks at both sides: at Slinky, Elmo, Barbie, Transformers, and their creators, but also at the dark side of an industry that leads the way in cold-blooded marketing targeted at children. Parents will want to learn about how this seemingly benign industry exploits, sometimes surreptitiously, the many new media: cable television, the internet, CD-ROMs, sometimes even invading the playgrounds to peddle their wares to unsuspecting young people.

Perhaps more disturbingly, this hard-hitting book examines the vast gap between the cuddly image of toys and how almost all toys destined for America are actually produced in China under sweatshop conditions.

Today the toy industry is in the midst of rapid change. Tapping into the concern millions of adults have about the toys they choose for the children in their lives, this riveting expose is essential reading for everyone who cares about kids.

Revealing, amusing and packed with inside information, The Want Makers is an eye-opening look at the advertising industry and how it hones the powers of persuasion. Pervasive, global and ever-growing, advertising affects the whole of our lives- the toys our children demand, the TV shows we watch, the cars we drive, the drugs our doctors prescribe, the candidates we vote for-and the promises those candidates make. Insiders, including the heads of top agencies, motivational psychologists, research gurus and giant advertisers, offer candid insights and often startling information into what they do-and how and why.

The study of music is always, to some extent, "empirical," in that it involves testing ideas and interpretations against some kind of external reality. But in musicology, the kinds of empirical approaches familiar in the social sciences have played a relatively marginal role, being generally restricted to inter-disciplinary areas such as psychology and sociology of music. Rather than advocating a new kind of musicology, Empirical Musicology provides a guide to empirical approaches that are ready for incorporation into the contemporary musicologist's toolkit. Its nine chapters cover perspectives from music theory, computational musicology, ethnomusicology, and the psychology and sociology of music, as well as an introduction to musical data analysis and statistics. This book shows that such approaches could play an important role in the further development of the discipline as a whole, not only through the application of statistical and modeling methods to musical scores but also--and perhaps more importantly--in terms of understanding music as a complex social practice.

The study of music is always, to some extent, "empirical," in that it involves testing ideas and interpretations against some kind of external reality. But in musicology, the kind of empirical approaches familiar in the social sciences have played a relatively marginal role, being generally restricted to inter-disciplinary areas such as psychology and sociology of music. Rather than advocating a new kind of musicology, Empirical Musicology provides a guide to empirical approaches that are ready for incorporation into the contemporary musicologist's toolkit. Its nine chapters cover perspectives from music theory, computational musicology, ethnomusicology, and the psychology and sociology of music, as well as an introduction to musical data analysis and statistics. This book shows that such approaches could play an important role in the further development of the discipline as a whole, not only through the application of statistical and modeling methods to musical scores but also--and perhaps more importantly--in terms of understanding music as a complex social practice.