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The Music of Hugh Wood
by Edward VennThe Music of Hugh Wood provides the first ever in-depth study of this well-known, yet only briefly documented composer. Over the years, Wood (b. 1932) has produced a sizeable oeuvre that explores the established genres of symphony, concerto, and quartet on the one hand, and songs and choruses on the other. Underpinned by an awareness of recent philosophical, theoretical and analytical concepts, Dr Edward Venn highlights both the technical basis of Wood's music and the expressive force of his work. In doing so, a picture emerges of Wood as an artist of considerable merit and power. The eclectic blend of national and international influences in the music of Hugh Wood combine to create an individual and distinctive musical language all his own. The book provides an overview of Wood's style, focussing on his engagement with modernism and the melodic, rhythmic, harmonic and formal characteristics of his musical language. From here a more detailed consideration of Wood's development as a composer is advanced, in which his technical development is illustrated alongside an exploration of various aspects of musical meaning embodied in his works. In the process, numerous analytical strategies ranging from formalist to narrative structures are utilized, demonstrating the fecundity and expressivity of Wood's music.
The Music of James Tenney: Volume 1: Contexts and Paradigms
by Robert WannamakerParsing the works of the experimental music pioneer Robert Wannamaker's monumental two-volume study explores the influential music and ideas of American composer, theorist, writer, performer, and educator James Tenney. Delving into the whole of Tenney's far-ranging oeuvre, Wannamaker provides in-depth, aurally grounded analyses of works linked to the artist's revolutionary theories of musical form, timbre, and harmonic perception. Volume 1, Contexts and Paradigms, chronologically surveys Tenney's creative development and output. Wannamaker begins each section with biographical, aesthetic, and technical context that illuminates a distinct period in Tenney's career. From there, he analyzes a small number of pieces that illuminate the concerns, characteristics, and techniques that emerged in Tenney's music during that time. Wannamaker supplements the text with musical examples, graphs, and diagrams while also drawing on unpublished material and newly available primary sources to flesh out each work and the ideas that shaped it. A landmark in experimental music scholarship, The Music of James Tenney is a first-of-its-kind consideration of the experimental music titan and his work.
The Music of James Tenney: Volume 2: A Handbook to the Pieces
by Robert WannamakerA work-by-work guide to the composer's groundbreaking music Robert Wannamaker's monumental two-volume study explores the influential music and ideas of American composer, theorist, writer, performer, and educator James Tenney. Delving into the whole of Tenney's far-ranging oeuvre, Wannamaker offers close, aurally grounded analyses of works linked to the artist's revolutionary theories of musical form, timbre, and harmonic perception. Written as a reference work, Volume 2, A Handbook to the Pieces, presents detailed entries on Tenney's significant post-1959 experimental works (excepting pieces covered in volume 1). Wannamaker includes technical information, an analysis of intentions and goals, graphs and musical examples, historical and biographical context, and thoughts from Tenney and others on specific works. Throughout, he discusses the striking compositional ideas found in Tenney's music and, where appropriate, traces an idea's appearance from one piece to the next to reveal the evolution of the composer's art and thought. A landmark in experimental music scholarship, The Music of James Tenney is a first-of-its-kind consideration of the experimental music titan and his work.
The Music of John Ireland
by Fiona RichardsThis title was first published in 2000. John Ireland (1879-1962) was as elusive as the music that he composed. His music resists easy categorization, in part because it is linked so closely to specific events, places and people in Ireland's personal life. The Music of John Ireland explores the expressive and extramusical qualities of Ireland's compositions and their complex system of personal musical symbols, images and ideas. Fiona Richards interweaves biography and musical analysis in a series of chapters which take their themes from the significant influences in Ireland's life: Anglo-Catholicism, paganism, the countryside, the city, love and war. Ireland emerges as highly individual, struggling with his religious beliefs, his sexuality, and an uncertainty as to his success. His music, often an expression of a state of mind, is given, for the first time, the close investigation that it merits. Ireland preferred to compose on a small scale, showing a masterful command of form and a gift for melody. Richards reveals how the essence of the man shines through in the miniatures that he wrote.
The Music of Joonas Kokkonen
by Edward JurkowskiJoonas Kokkonen (1921-1996) has been one of the most performed Finnish composers during the past 25 years both within Finland and abroad.The author's study of Joonas Kokkonen is the first full-scale account in English. Starting with a brief survey of Finnish music during the 20th century, the book then devotes a separate chapter to each of the major genres in which Kokkonen composed: symphonic, orchestral, vocal, chamber and keyboard. Illustrated with over a hundred music examples, The Music of Joonas Kokkonen seeks to overturn his reputation in some quarters as a conservative, even old fashioned, composer, and argues that Kokkonen created an interesting and refreshing approach to dodecaphonic composition and pitch organization. With a full chronological listing of works and bibliography, this book is the most important reference source to date on Kokkonen and his music." "Book Description: One of the most performed Finnish composers during the last 25 years, Joonas Kokkonen (1921-1996) was also instrumental in the development of the nation's system of music education. In this study,the author (music, U. of Lethbridge, Canada) examines Kokkonen's compositions in each of five major genres: symphonic, orchestral, vocal, chamber, and key
The Music of Juan de Anchieta
by Tess Knighton Kenneth KreitnerThis book explores Juan de Anchieta’s life and his music and, for the first time, presents a critical study of the life and works of a major Spanish composer from the time of Ferdinand and Isabel. A key figure in musical developments in Spain in the decades around 1500, Anchieta served in the Castilian royal chapel for over thirty years, from his appointment in 1489 as a singer in the household of Queen Isabel, and he continued to receive a pension from her grandson, the Emperor Charles V, until his death in 1523. He traveled to Flanders in the service of the Catholic Monarchs’ daughter Juana, and was briefly music master to Charles himself. Anchieta, along with Francisco de Peñalosa, his contemporary in the Aragonese chapel, and a few others, was a key figure in the rise of elaborate written polyphony in the Spain of Josquin’s time. The book brings together two of the leading specialists in Spanish music of the era in order to review and revise the rich biographical material relating to Anchieta’s life, and the historiographical traditions which have dominated its telling. After a biographical overview, the chapters focus on specific genres of his music, sacred and secular, with suggestions as to a possible chronology of his work based on its codicology and style, and consideration of the contexts in which it was conceived and performed. A final chapter summarizes his achievement and his influence in his own time and after his death. As the first comprehensive study of Anchieta’s life and works, The Music of Juan de Anchieta is an essential addition to the history of Spanish music.
The Music of Life
by Louis ThomasFull of joy and discovery, Louis Thomas' The Music of Life is a simple, melodious picture book about finding big inspiration and beauty in the smallest of details.At night when everyone else is asleep, one artist sits awake--pencil in hand, stuck. Lenny is a composer, but this evening, no music floats from his head. Then as night breaks into dawn, Lenny's cat, Pipo, begins lapping milk. Lick lick lick. Birds yawn awake, singing in the trees. Tweet tweet! A bike bell tings on the street below. Suddenly, Lenny notices a rhythm to the world around him. He pulls on his coat and walks through the city to write down every sound he can find. Lenny listens to a gardener, a jogger, a dogwalker, and more neighborhood characters. Finally, the morning's sounds culminate in a sun-dappled symphony that Lenny conducts in the center of the park.
The Music of Liszt
by Humphrey SearleThis is the most authoritative study of Liszt's music, being a survey of his 700 compositions and a review of his place in the history of music.
The Music of Liszt
by Humphrey Searle Sara Davis BuechnerVirtuoso pianist Franz Liszt was a key figure in the evolution of modern music. Most of his 700 compositions, which range from romantic impressionism to daring experimental pieces, were written for the piano. This survey by a well-known British composer and musicologist constitutes the most authoritative English-language study of Liszt's works. "Mr. Searle is himself a composer of progressive outlook and he thus speaks with authority. His book was needed and he has made it a good one," observed the Times (London) Literary Supplement. This classic study surveys the compositions in chronological order and the medium for which they were written. The author examines in detail the most important pieces and fully reviews Liszt's place in history. Subjects include romantic pieces, symphonic poems, songs, symphonies, and other works. A biographical summary illustrates the relationship between significant works and events in the composer's life. Acclaimed by Library Journal as "a balanced, long-overdue treatment," this study is essential for every true Lisztian student.
The Music of Malaysia: The Classical, Folk and Syncretic Traditions (SOAS Musicology Series)
by Patricia Matusky Tan Sooi BengThe Music of Malaysia, first published in Malay in 1997 and followed by an English edition in 2004 is still the only history, appreciation and analysis of Malaysian music in its many and varied forms available in English. The book categorizes the types of music genres found in Malaysian society and provides an overview of the development of music in that country. Analyses of the music are illustrated with many examples transcribed from original field recordings. Genres discussed include theatrical and dance forms, percussion ensembles, vocal and instrumental music and classical music. It is an excellent introduction to and exploration of the country's vibrant musical culture. This new, fully revised and updated edition includes time lines, listening guides and two audio CDs of field recordings that are analysed and discussed in the text.
The Music of Mauricio Kagel
by Bj HeileMauricio Kagel was undoubtedly one of the major figures in the new music of the last fifty years. Growing up in the rich cultural atmosphere of Buenos Aires in the 1940s and '50s, where the writer Jorge Luis Borges was one of his teachers, he became a member of avant-garde circles as well as receiving a rigorous musical education. By 1957 Kagel had acted on the advice of Pierre Boulez to move to Europe to pursue a career as a composer. He quickly established himself at Cologne, the rallying point for young composers at the time, and became one of the leading, if controversial, figures at the famous Darmstadt summer courses. He embraced multiple serialism, aleatory technique and electronics, but he is best known for his pioneering explorations in music theatre, radio play, film and mixed media. Bj rn Heile charts Kagel's compositional development, considering the aesthetic and ideological issues the composer raises in his work. Focusing on Kagel's use of music as a means of intellectual inquiry, Heile shows Kagel to constantly question the nature of music and its role in society. Kagel's broadening of the concept of music to include theatre, film and other media, his disdain for purism as well as his subversive humour and sense of the absurd have challenged reified notions of music and art. Heile considers Kagel's background as Argentine immigrant to Europe (born to Russian-Jewish immigrants to Argentina) to situate the composer's aesthetic. What emerges is the breadth of Kagel's imagination and the multiplicity of contexts he drew from, which were both distinctive and, in the age of pluralist multiculturalism and globalization, exemplary. As Heile demonstrates, it was Kagel's enlarged notion of music as inherently multimedial that may be his most important contribution to new music, and on which his reputation ultimately rests.
The Music of Michael Nyman: Texts, Contexts and Intertexts
by Pwyll ap SiônNyman's rise to international prominence during the last three decades has made him one of the world's most successful living composers. His music has nevertheless been criticized for its parasitic borrowing of other composers' ideas and for its relentless self-borrowing. In this first book-length study in English, Pwyll ap Si laces Nyman's writings within the general context of Anglo-American experimentalism, minimalism and post-minimalism, and provides a series of useful contexts from which controversial aspects of Nyman's musical language can be more clearly understood and appreciated. Drawing upon terms informed by intertextual theory in general, appropriation and borrowing are first introduced within the context of twentieth-century art music and theory. Intertextual concepts are explained and their terms defined before Nyman's musical language is considered in relation to a series of intertextual classifications and types. These types then form the basis of a more in-depth study of his works during the second half of the book, ranging from opera and chamber music to film. Rather than restricting style and technique, Nyman's intertextual approach, on the contrary, is shown to provide his music with an almost infinite amount of variety, flexibility and diversity, and this has been used to illustrate a wide range of technical, aesthetic and expressive forms. He composes with his ear towards the past as if it were a rich quarry to mine, working like a musical archaeologist, uncovering artefacts and chiselling fresh and vibrant sonic edifices out of them.
The Music of Multicultural America: Performance, Identity, and Community in the United States (American Made Music Series)
by Kip Lornell and Anne K. RasmussenThe Music of Multicultural America explores the intersection of performance, identity, and community in a wide range of musical expressions. Fifteen essays explore traditions that range from the Klezmer revival in New York, to Arab music in Detroit, to West Indian steel bands in Brooklyn, to Kathak music and dance in California, to Irish music in Boston, to powwows in the midwestern plains, to Hispanic and Native musics of the Southwest borderlands. Many chapters demonstrate the processes involved in supporting, promoting, and reviving community music. Others highlight the ways in which such American institutions as city festivals or state and national folklife agencies come into play. Thirteen themes and processes outlined in the introduction unify the collection's fifteen case studies and suggest organizing frameworks for student projects. Due to the diversity of music profiled in the book—Mexican mariachi, African American gospel, Asian West Coast jazz, women's punk, French-American Cajun, and Anglo-American sacred harp—and to the methodology of fieldwork, ethnography, and academic activism described by the authors, the book is perfect for courses in ethnomusicology, world music, anthropology, folklore, and American studies. Audio and visual materials that support each chapter are freely available on the ATMuse website, supported by the Archives of Traditional Music at Indiana University.
The Music of Pavel Haas: Analytical and Hermeneutical Studies (Ashgate Studies in Theory and Analysis of Music After 1900)
by Martin ČurdaThe Czech composer Pavel Haas (1899–1944) is commonly positioned in the history of twentieth-century music as a representative of Leoš Janáček’s compositional school and as one of the Jewish composers imprisoned by the Nazis in the concentration camp of Terezín (Theresienstadt). However, the nature of Janáček’s influence remains largely unexplained and the focus on the context of the Holocaust tends to yield a one-sided view of Haas’s oeuvre. The existing scholarship offers limited insight into Haas’s compositional idiom and does not sufficiently explain the composer’s position with respect to broader aesthetic trends and artistic networks in inter-war Czechoslovakia and beyond. This book is the first attempt to provide a comprehensive (albeit necessarily selective) discussion of Haas’s music since the publication of Lubomír Peduzzi’s ‘life and work’ monograph in 1993. It provides the reader with an enhanced understanding of Haas’s music through analytical and hermeneutical interpretation as well as cultural and aesthetic contextualisation, and thus reveal the rich nuances of Haas’s multi-faceted work which have not been sufficiently recognised so far.
The Music of Peggy Glanville-Hicks
by Victoria RogersPeggy Glanville-Hicks (1912-1990) is an Australian composer whose full significance has only recently been appreciated. Born in Melbourne, Australia, she transcended the gendered expectations of her upbringing and went on to become a fine composer and a highly influential figure in the vibrant musical life of New York after the Second World War. Following early composition studies with Fritz Hart in Melbourne, Glanville-Hicks moved to London where she studied with Ralph Vaughan Williams, then to Paris where she was taught by the great pedagogue, Nadia Boulanger. Her migration to the USA in 1941 shaped the musical direction of her late works. After a brief neoclassical phase, she joined the small group of American composers who were using non-Western musics as their inspirational well-spring, including Colin McPhee, Alan Hovhaness, Lou Harrison and Paul Bowles. During this period she also forged an illustrious career as a music journalist and arts administrator, working tirelessly to promote new music and the careers of young composers. In the late 1950s she retreated to Greece to write 'the big works', most notably the operas which lie at the heart of her creative output. Her compositional career ended prematurely, and tragically, in 1967 following surgery the previous year for a life-threatening brain tumour. Against all medical expectations she went on to live for a further 24 years, returning to Australia in 1975 amidst a dawning recognition that one of the country's most significant composers had returned. Glanville-Hicks's career as a composer is impressive by any measure. She produced over 70 finely-crafted works, including operas, ballets, concertos, instrumental chamber pieces, songs and choral works. The story of her life has been told in the biographies. This book traces the development of her musical language from the English pastoral style of the early works, through the neoclassicism of the middle period, to the melody-rhythm concept of the late works,
The Music of Sounds and the Music of Things: Sonic Creativity Within Sampling and DIY Cultures
by Leigh Landy John RichardsThis book investigates two areas in which the appreciation of sonic creativity can be easily acquired across diverse cultures, ages and interests: the music of sounds – making music with any sounds, part of today’s sampling culture and the music of things – and the creation of instruments using existent materials (another type of sampling?) involving the notion of ‘instrument as composition’ as part of today’s DIY (or DIT, do it together) culture.The book offers broad discussions regarding the music of things (written by John Richards) followed by the music of sounds (written by Leigh Landy). These chapters are followed by a focus on the workshop demonstrating the collaborative and inclusive potential in both areas, and a spotlight on eight artists with a broad diversity of backgrounds and approaches to sound and music who discuss their perceptions. The book’s conclusion focuses on similarities and differences between the music of sounds and the music of things, suggesting, finally, that both might form part of the 21st- century’s folk music landscape.The book is primarily aimed towards students interested in current forms of sonic creativity but will be of interest to those interested in broader issues of sampling culture, hacking and sound studies.
The Music of Spain (Routledge Revivals)
by Carl Van VechtenFirst published in 1920, The Music of Spain deals with historical periods, schools and style and appears to embrace everything related to music provided it affects or is affected by Spain in some degree, no matter how small or insignificant. The period extends from the sixteenth century to the early twentieth century and the author encircles his subject in a huge ring or parenthesis that opens with Antonio Cabezon, the Spanish Bach (according to Pedrell) and closes with the gypsy dancer and singer Pastora Imperio, queen of the Spanish “varieties” stage of today. It brings themes like Spain and music; the land of joy; and from George Borrow to Mary Garden. This book is an important historical reference for students and scholars of history of music, Spanish music.
The Music of Theology: Language – Space – Silence (Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies)
by Andrew Hass Mattias Martinson Laurens ten KateThis book reconceives theology as a musical endeavour in critical tension with language, space and silence. An Overture first moves us from music to religion, and then from theology back to music – a circularity that, drawing upon history, sociology, phenomenology, and philosophy, disclaims any theology of music and instead pursues the music in theology. The chapters that follow explore the three central themes by way of theory, music and myth: Adorno, Benjamin and Deleuze (language), Derrida, Rosa and Nancy (space), Schelling/Hegel, Homer and Cage (silence). In overdubbing each other, these chapters work towards theology as a sonorous rhythm between loss and freedom. A Coda provides three brief musical examples – Thomas Tallis, György Ligeti, and Evan Parker – as manifestations of this rhythm, to show in summary how music becomes the very pulse of theology, and theology the very intuition of music. The authors offer an interdisciplinary engagement addressing fundamental questions of the self and the other, of humanity and the divine, in a deconstruction of modern culture and of its bias towards the eye over the ear. The book harmonizes three scholarly voices who attempt to find where the resonance of our Western conceptions and practice, musically and theologically, might resound anew as a more expansive music of theology.
The Music of Time
by Preston B. NicholsFor the first time, Preston reveals his employment at Brookhaven Labs and how his connections in the music industry were used for mind control and manipulation of the masses. Ultimately, Preston's real-life adventures lead to time travel, his own role in the future, and the efforts of his adversaries to arrest him and put him permanently out of commission. This includes the bone chilling story of John Ford, Preston's colleague, who is locked up without a trial for his own efforts to expose the truth. In a remarkable twist of fate, mysterious forces rescue Preston and begin a documented investigation and eventual conviction of the most politically powerful man on Long Island. This book reveals more layers of mystery in mankind's epic quest to understand the paradox of time and the imprisonment of consciousness.
The Music of the Future
by Robert BarryThe Music of the Future is not a book of predictions or speculations about how to save the music business or the bleeding edge of technologies. Rather, it's a history of failures, mapping 200 years of attempts by composers, performers and critics to imagine a future for music. Encompassing utopian dream cities, temporal dislocations and projects for the emancipation of all sounds, The Music of the Future is in the end a call to arms for everyone engaged in music: "to fail again, fail better."
The Music of the Netherlands Antilles: Why Eleven Antilleans Knelt before Chopin's Heart (Caribbean Studies Series)
by Jan BrokkenThe Music of the Netherlands Antilles: Why Eleven Antilleans Knelt before Chopin's Heart is not your usual musical scholarship. In October 1999, eleven Antilleans attended the service held to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Frédéric Chopin's death. This service, held in the Warsaw church where the composer's heart is kept in an urn, was an opportunity for these Antilleans to express their debt of gratitude to Chopin, whose influence is central to Antillean music history. Press coverage of this event caused Dutch novelist and author Jan Brokken (b. 1949) to start writing this book, based on notes he took while living on Curaçao from 1993 to 2002. Anyone hoping to discover an overlooked chapter of Caribbean music and music history will be amply rewarded with this Dutch-Caribbean perspective on the pan-Caribbean process of creolization. On Curaçao, the history and legacy of slavery shaped culture and music, affecting all the New World. Brokken's portraits of prominent Dutch Antillean composers are interspersed with cultural and music history. He puts the Dutch Caribbean's contributions into a broader context by also examining the nineteenth-century works by pianist Louis Moreau Gottschalk from New Orleans and Manuel Saumell from Cuba. Brokken explores the African component of Dutch-Antillean music—examining the history of the rhythm and music known as tambú as well as American jazz pianist Chick Corea's fascination with the tumba rhythm from Curaçao. The book ends with a discussion of how recent Dutch-Caribbean adaptations of European dance forms have shifted from a classical approach to contemporary forms of Latin jazz.
The Music of the Other: New Challenges for Ethnomusicology in a Global Age
by Laurent AubertWe are surrounded by new musical encounters today as never before, and the experience of musics from elsewhere is progressively affecting all arenas of the human conscience. Yet why is it that Western listeners expect a certain cultural and ethnic 'authenticity' or 'otherness' from visiting artists in world music, while contemporary musicians in Western music are no longer bound by such restraints? Should we feel uncomfortable when sacred rites from Asia or Africa are remade for Westerners as musical entertainment? As these thorny questions suggest, the great flood of world musics and of their agents into our most immediate cultural environment is not a simple matter of expanding global musical exchange. Instead, complex processes are at work involving the growth of intercontinental tourism, the development of new technologies of communication and our perceptions both of ourselves and of the new musical others now around us. Elegantly tracing the dimensions of these new musical encounters, Laurent Aubert considers the impact of world musics on our values, our habits and our cultural practices. His discussions of key questions about our contemporary music culture widen conventional ethnomusicological perspectives to consider not only the nature of Western society as a 'global village' but also the impact of current Western demands on the future of world musics and their practitioners.
The Music of the Stanley Brothers (Music in American Life)
by Neil V. Rosenberg Gary B. ReidThe Music of the Stanley Brothers brings together forty years of passionate research by scholar and record label owner Gary Reid. A leading authority on Carter and Ralph Stanley, Reid augments his own vast knowledge of their music with interviews, documents ranging from books to folios sold by the brothers at shows, and the words of Ralph Stanley, former band members, guest musicians, session producers, songwriters, and bluegrass experts. The result is a reference that illuminates the Stanleys' art and history. It is all here: dates and locations; the roster of players on well-known and obscure sessions alike; master/matrix and catalog/release numbers, with reissue information; a full discography sorting out the Stanleys' complex recording history; the stories behind the music; and exquisitely informed biographical notes that place events in the context of the brothers' careers and lives. Monumental and indispensable, The Music of the Stanley Brothers provides fans and scholars alike with a guide for immersion in the long career and breathtaking repertoire of two legendary American musicians.
The Musical Box: Including a Guide to Values
by Arthur W.J.G. Ord-HumeMusical boxes have been in existence since the early part of the 19th century. This book is a catalog for collectors of musical boxes. It describes the makers and models along with occasional comments about their characteristics and which ones might be the most desirable.
The Musical Child: Using the Power of Music to Raise Children Who Are Happy, Healthy, and Whole
by Joan Koenig&“Wonderful.&”—Herbie Hancock A pioneering music educator reveals how music can supercharge early childhood development—and how parents and educators can harness its power.Since opening her famed Parisian conservatory over three decades ago, Joan Koenig has led a global movement to improve children&’s lives and minds with the transformative power of music. With a curriculum and philosophy drawn from cutting-edge science, L&’Ecole Koenig has educated and empowered even its youngest students, from baby Max, whose coordination and communication grow as he wiggles and coos along to targeted songs and dance, to five-year-old Constance, who nourishes her empathy, creativity, and memory while practicing music from other cultures. In The Musical Child, Koenig shares stories from her classrooms, along with tips about how to use the latest research during the critical years when children are most sensitive to musical exposure—and most receptive to its benefits.A gift for parents, caregivers, musicians, and educators, The Musical Child reveals the multiple ways music can help children thrive—and how, in the twenty-first century, its practice is more vital than ever.