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The Limit (Paperback)
Rosalind Belben; Introduction by Paul Griffiths
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R422
R339
Discovery Miles 3 390
Save R83 (20%)
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Ships in 9 - 15 working days
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Olivier Messiaen was one of the outstanding creative artists of his
time. The strength of his appeal, to listeners as well as to
composers, is a measure of the individuality of his music, which
draws on a vast range of sources: rhythms of twentieth-century
Europe and thirteenth-century India, ripe romantic harmony and
brittle birdsong, the sounds of Indonesian percussion and modern
electronic instruments. What binds all these together is, on one
level, his unswerving devotion to praising God in his art, and on
another, his independent view of how music is made. Messiaen's
music offers a range of ways of experiencing time: time suspended
in music of unparalleled changelessness, time racing in music of
wild exuberance, time repeating itself in vast cycles of
reiteration. In Olivier Messiaen and the Music of Time, leading
writer and musicologist, Paul Griffiths, explores the problems of
religious art, and includes searching analyses and discussions of
all the major works, suggesting how they function as works of art
and not only as theological symbols. This comprehensive and
stimulating book covers the whole of Messiaen's output up to and
including his opera, Saint Francoise d'Assise.
Returned from twenty years of travelling in China, Marco Polo now
languishes in a Genoan prison cell. But his fellow inmate,
Rustichello of Pisa, turns out to be an author of popular romances
and persuades Polo to dictate his memoirs to him. The scribe
listens, ignores, alters and embellishes. The consequent ironies,
uncertainties, slippages between fact and fiction are the very
stuff of the post-modern writer. On first publication in 1989, it
was widely praised. 'The narrative loops are as graceful as any
Arabian calligraphy ... Paul Griffiths writes superbly.' Hilary
Mantel, Daily Telegraph 'A thoroughly modern piece of fiction which
queries the nature of authorship, readership and truth itself ...
Marco's doubtful account of himself rapidly falters and falls
victim to ambiguity, paradox, self-reference, wilful anachronism
and parody.' Robert Irwin, TLS
This is the first collection of essays to survey punishment in England in the four centuries after 1500. Its principal concerns include the punishment of petty crime, the roots of transportation, mercy, changing perceptions of the nature and impact of capital punishment, and the cultural values affecting penal developments. The contributors explore compelling new bodies of evidence to offer fresh perspectives on this area.
The English were punished in many different ways in the five
centuries after 1500. This collection stretches from whipping to
the gallows, and from the first houses of correction to
penitentiaries. Punishment provides a striking way to examine the
development of culture and society through time. These studies of
penal practice explore violence, cruelty and shame, while offering
challenging new perspectives on the timing of the decline of public
punishment, the rise of imprisonment and reforms of the capital
code.
Events such as the fire of London and the Plague, and locations
like the Globe, are part of our 'national heritage' however until
recently the history of London between 1500 and 1750 has been
little studied. As a city London underwent exceptional changes -
its population soared from around 50,000 in 1500 to approximately
200,000 in 1600 and by 1700 it was nearly half a million. Covering
the themes of polis and the police, gender and sexuality, space and
place, and material culture and consumption the book encounters
thieves, prostitutes, litigious wives, the poor, disease, 'great
quantities of gooseberry pye' and the very taxing question of fresh
water. Focuses on the experiences and perceptions of Londoners,
rather than giving an account of a depersonalized and disembodied
thing called "London". Will be essential reading for anyone
interested in the history of London or in the social and cultural
history of early modern society. -- .
Musik bewegt sich in der Zeit und darin gleicht sie unserem Leben.
Ausgehend von diesem Gedanken schreibt der Autor eine mitreißende
und kompakte Geschichte der westlichen Musik von ihren Anfängen
bis ins 21. Jahrhundert der Komponisten, Interpreten und Zuhörer.
An 24 Stationen der Geschichte hält er inne und betrachtet anhand
der Komponisten, ihrer Werke und des gesellschaftlichen Umfelds die
sich wandelnden Vorstellungen darüber, was Musik ist und wofür
sie gemacht wird.Â
The life and works of one of the most difficult yet rewarding
composers of modern time. Jean Barraque is increasingly being
recognized as one of the great composers of the second half of the
20th century. Though he left only seven works, his voice in each of
them is unmistakeable, and powerful. He had no doubt of
hisresponsibility, as a creator, to take his listeners on
challenging adventures that could not but leave them changed. After
the collapse of morality he had witnessed as a child growing up
during the Second World War, and having taken notice of so much
disarray in the culture around him, he set himself to make music
that would, out of chaos, speak. Three others were crucial to him.
One was Pierre Boulez, who, three years older, provided him with
keysto a new musical language -- a language more dramatic, driving
and passionate than Boulez's. Another was Michel Foucault, to whom
he was close personally for a while, and with whom he had a
dialogue that was determinative for bothof them. Finally, in the
writings of Hermann Broch-and especially in the novel The Death of
Virgil-he found the myth he needed to realize musically. He played
for high stakes, and he took risks with himself as well as in
hisart. Intemperate and difficult, even with his closest friends,
he died in 1973 at the age of forty-five. Paul Griffiths was chief
music critic for the London Times (1982-92) and The New Yorker
(1992-96) and since 1996 has written regularly for the New York
Times. He has written books on Boulez, Cage, Messiaen, Ligeti,
Davies, Bartok and Stravinsky, as well as several librettos, among
them The Jewel Box (Mozart, 1991), Marco Polo (Tan Dun, 1996) and
What Next? (Elliott Carter, 1999).
A choice selection of essays, reviews and interviews providing
insights into musical performance, composition in the late 20th
century and very early 21st, and the nature of opera. Paul
Griffiths offers his own personal selection of some of his most
substantial and imaginative articles and concert reviews from over
three decades of indefatigable concertgoing around the world. He
reports on premieres and other important performances of works by
such composers as Elliott Carter, Sofia Gubaidulina, Karlheinz
Stockhausen, and Steve Reich, as well as Harrison Birtwistle and
other important British figures. Griffiths vividly conveys the
vision, aura, and idiosyncrasies of prominent pianists, singers,
and conductors [such as Herbert von Karajan], and debates changing
styles of performing Monteverdi and Purcell. A particular delight
is his response to the worldof opera, including Debussy's Pelleas
et Melisande [six contrasting productions], Pavarotti and Domingo
in Verdi at New York's Metropolitan Opera, Schoenberg's Moses and
Aaron, and two wildly different Jonathan Miller versions of
Mozart's Don Giovanni. From the author's preface: "We cannot say
what music is. Yet we are verbal creatures, and strive with words
to cast a net around it, knowing most of this immaterial stuff will
evadecapture. The stories that follow cover a wide range of events
over a period of great change. Yet the net's aim was always the
same, to catch the substance of things heard. "Criticism has to
work largely by analogy and metaphor. This is no limitation. It is
largely through such verbal ties that music is linked to other
sorts of experience, not least the natural world and the orchestra
of our feelings." Paul Griffiths's reviews and articleshave
appeared extensively in both Britain [Times, Financial Times, Times
Literary Supplement] and the United States [New Yorker, New York
Times]. He has written numerous books on Bartok, Cage, Messiaen,
Boulez, Maxwell Davies, twentieth-century music, opera, and the
string quartet, and is the author of the recent Penguin Companion
to Classical Music. He is also author of The Sea on Fire: Jean
Barraque.
In this cahier Paul Griffiths effects a multi-layered translation,
taking a series of eleven Japanese noh plays and turning them into
stories in English. The reader will encounter spirit-beings set
free, lovers lost and found, dreams and desires fulfilled, lessons
learned from nature, and always a longing for the infinite, as the
long, slow drama of each noh play is transformed into a short and
moving tale. Interspersed and contrasting with the stories are ten
photographs of contemporary Japan by John L. Tran which further
explore the relation between theatricality and narrative, while
offering hints of a very different vision of infinitude.
Over three decades, Paul Griffiths's survey has remained the
definitive study of music since the Second World War; this fully
revised and updated edition re-establishes Modern Music and After
as the preeminent introduction to the music of our time. The
disruptions of the war, and the struggles of the ensuing peace,
were reflected in the music of the time: in Pierre Boulez's radical
reformation of compositional technique and in John Cage's
development of zen music; in Milton Babbitt's settling of the
serial system and in Dmitry Shostakovich's unsettling symphonies;
in Karl Stockhausen's development of electronic music and in Luigi
Nono's pursuit of the universally human, in Iannis Xenakis's view
of music as sounding mathematics and in Luciano Berio's
consideration of it as language. The initiatives of these composers
and their contemporaries opened prospects that haven't yet stopped
unfolding. This constant expansion of musical thinking since 1945
has left us with no singular history of music; Griffiths's study
accordingly follows several different paths, showing how and why
they converge and diverge. This new edition of Modern Music and
After discusses not only the music of the fifteen years that have
passed since the previous edition, but also the recent explosion of
scholarly interest in the latter half of the Twentieth Century. In
particular, the third section of the book, 1980-1990, is expanded
to incorporate the variety of responses to the modernist impasse
experienced by composers of the time. In addition, a new fourth
part, "After Postmodernism: the 1990s and 2000s," examines highly
influential composers like Philip Glass and Pierre Boulez as well
as such topics as "Modernist Continuation" and "Music and the
Internet." For its breadth, wealth of detail, and characteristic
wit and clarity, the third edition of Modern Music and After is
required reading for the student and the enquiring listener.
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Lenti (Paperback)
Professor Paul Griffiths
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R487
Discovery Miles 4 870
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Ships in 10 - 15 working days
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Have you ever wondered why it takes so long to develop new
treatments? Medical progress is laden with red tape and other
obstacles, including the need to provide profits for the
pharmaceutical industry. This factional story weaves authentic
scientific information into the lives of fictitious characters to
give a topical example. Many people with elderly relatives will
know that chronic infection with Clostridium difficile is a common
problem. Medical researcher, Stephen Hurd, thinks that antibiotics
are contributing to the disease not the cure. His innovative
solution demands world-class medical research as well as social and
ethical acceptability. Arguing that desperate times call for
desperate measures, he fights against the bureaucracy controlling
clinical trials. This quest for a successful therapy occupies much
of the time he should be spending with his new wife and puts him
into competition with his old friend who works for a drug company
developing a new antibiotic. Gut Feeling tells a story. Remember,
the science and medicine are real. Randomised trials have shown
that Stephen's solution works. Would you be one of his volunteers?
In the past century, nearly all of the biological sciences have
been directly affected by discoveries and developments in genetics,
a fast-evolving subject with important theoretical dimensions. In
this rich and accessible book, Paul Griffiths and Karola Stotz show
how the concept of the gene has evolved and diversified across the
many fields that make up modern biology. By examining the molecular
biology of the 'environment', they situate genetics in the
developmental biology of whole organisms, and reveal how the
molecular biosciences have undermined the nature/nurture
distinction. Their discussion gives full weight to the
revolutionary impacts of molecular biology, while rejecting
'genocentrism' and 'reductionism', and brings the topic right up to
date with the philosophical implications of the most recent
developments in genetics. Their book will be invaluable for those
studying the philosophy of biology, genetics and other life
sciences.
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