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Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Story behind the Song
by Jack Canfield Mark Victor Hansen Lamont Dozier Jo-Ann GeffenYou will get an inside look at the personal stories behind your favorite songs as songwriters get up close and personal with exclusive stories about how and why they wrote them.Songs tell a story, and now popular singers and songwriters are sharing more of the story! These artists reveal the inspiration, influence, and background, and when and why they wrote their most famous songs, in Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Story Behind the Song. Includes great photos of the songwriters. The print edition contains the lyrics to all 101 songs, and the eBook includes lyrics to 85 of the songs. Songs, with personal stories behind them, many of which are being told for the first time, include: Storyteller/Songwriter Song TitleAaron Lewis, Staind OutsideAaron Neville Yellow MoonAaron Tippin Kiss ThisAmanda McBroom The RoseAngélique Kidjo BatongaAnn Wilson, Heart Dog and ButterflyBarry Manilow One VoiceBilly Bob Thornton The Poor HouseBilly Steinberg True ColorsBrenda Russell Get HereCarly Simon Let the River RunCarol Connors With You I'm Born AgainCarole Bayer Sager That's What Friends Are ForChristina Aguilera FighterChynna Phillips Hold OnClint Black When I Said I DoCorey Taylor (Slipknot) DualityDarius Rucker It Won't Be Like This For LongDaryl Hall Sara SmileDavid Cassidy Stand and Be ProudDiane Warren Because You Loved MeDiane Warren I Don't Want To Miss A ThingDoug Ingle (Iron Butterfly) In-A-Gadda-Da-VidaEd Robertson (Barenaked Ladies) EasyEddie Money Two Tickets To ParadiseEnrique Iglesias Be With YouArt Alexakis (Everclear) Father Of MineGavin Rossdale Love Remains the SameGreg Camp (Smash Mouth) All StarHal David What the World Needs Now Is LoveHoward Hewett Say AmenHowie Dorough (Backstreet Boys) What Makes You Different (Makes You Beautiful) Huey Lewis The Heart Of Rock n' RollIggy Pop Lust For LifeJack Tempchin Peaceful Easy FeelingJanis Ian At SeventeenJeff Barry Walkin' In the SunJeff Barry Tell Laura I Love HerJerry Cantrell (Alice in Chains) RoosterJewel HandsJim Croce (by Ingrid Croce) Bad, Bad Leroy BrownJim Croce (by Ingrid Croce) OperatorJim Peterik (Survivor) Eye Of the TigerJoan Jett Bad ReputationJohn Legend Ordinary PeopleJohn Oates She's GoneJohn Sebastian (Lovin' Spoonful) Do You Believe In MagicJohn Sebastian (Lovin' Spoonful) DaydreamKanye West Welcome To HeartbreakKelly Keagy (Night Ranger) Midnight MadnessKenny Loggins Moose 'n MeKim Carnes Don't Fall In Love With a DreamerLamont Dozier Stop In the Name of LoveLamont Dozier Where Did Our Love GoLarry Gatlin All the Gold In CaliforniaLisa Loeb StayLiz Phair Divorce SongMacy Gray Sweet BabyMark Hoppus (Blink 182) The Rock Sho...
Children's Book of Music (DK Children's Book of)
by DKGo on a musical journey around the world in this children&’s introduction.Discover the power of music and be inspired by cultures from all over the world with this extensive children&’s guide. This book is the perfect introduction for young readers to the world of music and celebrates music from every continent!Children aged 9+ can find out how instruments are made and played, and learn about the fascinating lives and achievements of great composers and musicians, from Bach to Bowie, Bjork and Beyoncé. All the essential information about music is covered, including the major movements, composers, instruments and techniques.This music book for children offers: - Chapters which cover a huge range of musical styles, from the very first instruments to the modern day.- Explanations of how music touches our lives, from festivals and religion, to TV and film, pop music and stardom.- Profiles of influential musicians from Bach to Elvis.- A focus on key instruments such as piano and violin, showing their component parts and the famous musicians who play them.Children&’s Book of Music is full of facts and photos highlighting musical styles from across the globe, from the very earliest music through to classical and blues, via reggae, Afropop, hip-hop and dance – making it the perfect gift for budding musicians.More in the seriesThe Children&’s Book of series inspires young learners to dive into their favorite topic and immerse themselves in the ins and outs, from fun facts to experts in the field. If you liked Children&’s Book of Music, then why not try the guide for budding artists, Children&’s Book of Art?
Children’s Guided Participation in Jazz Improvisation: A Study of the ‘Improbasen’ Learning Centre (SEMPRE Studies in The Psychology of Music)
by Guro Gravem JohansenImprobasen is a Norwegian private learning centre that offers beginner's instrumental tuition within jazz improvisation for children between the ages of 7 and 15. This book springs out of a two-year ethnographic study of the teaching and learning activity at Improbasen, highlighting features from the micro-interactions within the lessons, the organisation of Improbasen, and its international activity. Music teachers, students, and scholars within music education as well as jazz research will benefit from the perspectives presented in the book, which shows how children systematically acquire tools for improvisation and shared codes for interplay. Through a process of guided participation in jazz culture, even very young children are empowered to take part in a global, creative musical practice with improvisation as an educational core. This book critically engages in current discussions about jazz pedagogy, inclusion and gender equity, beginning instrumental tuition, creativity, and authenticity in childhood.
Children’s Home Musical Experiences Across the World
by Susan Young Beatriz IlariThis book offers a fresh and diverse perspective on home musical activities of young children from a variety of countries, including; Brazil, Denmark, Greece, Israel, Kenya, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, South Africa,Taiwan, the UK, and the United States. Narrowing their study to seven-year-olds from middle-class families, the articles in this volume argue that home musical experiences provide new and important windows into musical childhoods as they relate to issues of identity, family life, gender, culture, social class and schooling. Though childhood musical engagement differs considerably, it has direct implications for a better understanding of music education and childhood development. Using a wiki to share data and research across time and space, this volume is a model for collaborative cross-cultural research and is centered on the home as a primary research site for children's musical engagement.
China and the West: Music, Representation, and Reception
by Hon-Lun Yang Michael SaffleWestern music reached China nearly four centuries ago, with the arrival of Christian missionaries, yet only within the last century has Chinese music absorbed its influence. As China and the West demonstrates, the emergence of “Westernized” music from China—concurrent with the technological advances that have made global culture widely accessible—has not established a prominent presence in the West. China and the West brings together essays on centuries of Sino-Western musical exchange by musicologists, ethnomusicologists, and music theorists from around the world. It opens with a look at theoretical approaches of prior studies of musical encounters and a comprehensive survey of the intercultural and cross-cultural theoretical frameworks—exoticism, orientalism, globalization, transculturation, and hybridization—that inform these essays. Part I focuses on the actual encounters between Chinese and European musicians, their instruments and institutions, and the compositions inspired by these encounters, while Part II examines theatricalized and mediated East-West cultural exchanges, which often drew on stereotypical tropes, resulting in performances more inventive than accurate. Part III looks at the musical language, sonority, and subject matters of “intercultural” compositions by Eastern and Western composers. Essays in Part IV address reception studies and consider the ways in which differences are articulated in musical discourse by actors serving different purposes, whether self-promotion, commercial marketing, or modes of nationalistic—even propagandistic—expression. The volume’s extensive bibliography of secondary sources will be invaluable to scholars of music, contemporary Chinese culture, and the globalization of culture.
Chinaberry Sidewalks
by Rodney CrowellFrom the acclaimed musician comes a tender, surprising, and often uproarious memoir about his dirt-poor southeast Texas boyhood. The only child of a hard-drinking father and a Holy Roller mother, Rodney Crowell was no stranger to bombast from an early age, whether knock-down-drag-outs at a local dive bar or fire-and-brimstone sermons at Pentecostal tent revivals. He was an expert at reading his father's mercurial moods and gauging exactly when his mother was likely to erupt, and even before he learned to ride a bike, he was often forced to take matters into his own hands. He broke up his parents' raucous New Year's Eve party with gunfire and ended their slugfest at the local drive-in (actual restaurants weren't on the Crowells' menu) by smashing a glass pop bottle over his own head. Despite the violent undercurrents always threatening to burst to the surface, he fiercely loved his epilepsy-racked mother, who scorned boring preachers and improvised wildly when the bills went unpaid. And he idolized his blustering father, a honky-tonk man who took his boy to see Hank Williams, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Johnny Cash perform live, and bought him a drum set so he could join his band at age eleven. Shot through with raggedy friends and their neighborhood capers, hilariously awkward adolescent angst, and an indelible depiction of the bloodlines Crowell came from, Chinaberry Sidewalks also vividly re-creates Houston in the fifties: a rough frontier town where icehouses sold beer by the gallon on paydays; teeming with musical venues from standard roadhouses to the Magnolia Gardens, where name-brand stars brought glamour to a place starved for it; filling up with cheap subdivisions where blue-collar day laborers could finally afford a house of their own; a place where apocalyptic hurricanes and pest infestations were nearly routine. But at its heart this is Crowell's tribute to his parents and an exploration of their troubled yet ultimately redeeming romance. Wry, clear-eyed, and generous, it is, like the very best memoirs, firmly rooted in time and place and station, never dismissive, and truly fulfilling.
Chinatown Opera Theater in North America
by Nancy Yunhwa RaoThe Chinatown opera house provided Chinese immigrants with an essential source of entertainment during the pre “World War II era. But its stories of loyalty, obligation, passion, and duty also attracted diverse patrons into Chinese American communities Drawing on a wealth of new Chinese- and English-language research, Nancy Yunhwa Rao tells the story of iconic theater companies and the networks and migrations that made Chinese opera a part of North American cultures. Rao unmasks a backstage world of performers, performance, and repertoire and sets readers in the spellbound audiences beyond the footlights. But she also braids a captivating and complex history from elements outside the opera house walls: the impact of government immigration policy; how a theater influenced a Chinatown's sense of cultural self; the dissemination of Chinese opera music via recording and print materials; and the role of Chinese American business in sustaining theatrical institutions. The result is a work that strips the veneer of exoticism from Chinese opera, placing it firmly within the bounds of American music and a profoundly American experience.
China’s Music Industry Unplugged: Business Models, Copyright and Social Entrepreneurship in the Online Platform Economy
by Zhen Troy ChenThis research book is the first of its kind to conduct an interdisciplinary research on the recent and dramatic developments in China’s music industries with a particular focus on business models, copyright protection, and artist compensation. The monograph explores and discusses proper business models through which revenue can be generated and maintained in a changing copyright climate and transforming business environment. It also discusses how musicians can be fairly compensated in the online platform economy informed by social entrepreneurship. This book is distinctive in the sense that it explores the intersection of cultural and creative industries, legal studies, business studies, and new media. It uses a qualitative and mixed-method approach to study business innovations and institutions in the making in the second largest economy which is also gaining cultural and political significance around the world.
Chinese Folklore Studies Today: Discourse and Practice
by Edited by Lijun Zhang and Ziying YouChinese folklorists are well acquainted with the work of their English-language colleagues, but until recently the same could not be said about American scholars' knowledge of Chinese folkloristics. Chinese Folklore Studies Today aims to address this knowledge gap by illustrating the dynamics of contemporary folklore studies in China as seen through the eyes of the up-and-coming generation of scholars. Contributors to this volume focuses on topics that have long been the dominant areas of folklore studies in China, including myth, folk song, and cultural heritage, as well as topics that are new to the field, such as urban folklore and women's folklore. The ethnographic case studies presented here represent a broad range of geographic areas within mainland China and also introduce English-language readers to relevant Chinese literature on each topic, creating the foundation for further cross-cultural collaborations between English-language and Chinese folkloristics.
Chinese Street Music: Complicating Musical Community (Elements in Twenty-First Century Music Practice)
by Samuel HorlorMusical community is a notion commonly evoked in situations of intensive collective activity and fervent negotiation of identities. Passion Square shows, the daily singing of Chinese pop classics in parks and on street corners in the city of Wuhan, have an ambivalent relationship with these ideas. They inspire modest outward signs of engagement and are guided by apparently individualistic concerns; singers are primarily motivated by making a living through the relationships they build with patrons, and reflection on group belonging is of lesser concern. How do these orientations help complicate the foundations of typical musical community discourses? This Element addresses community as a quality rather than as an entity to which people belong, exploring its ebbs and flows as associations between people, other bodies and the wider street music environment intersect with its various theoretical implications. A de-idealised picture of musical community better acknowledges the complexities of everyday musical experiences.
Chinese Street Opera in Singapore
by Tong Soon LeeSince Singapore declared independence from Malaysia in 1965, Chinese street opera has played a significant role in defining Singaporean identity. Carefully tracing the history of amateur and professional performances in Singapore, Tong Soon Lee reflects on the role of street performance in fostering cultural nationalism and entrepreneurship. He explains that the government welcomes Chinese street opera performances because they combine tradition and modernism and promote a national culture that brings together Singapore's four main ethnic groups--Eurasian, Malay, Chinese, and South Asian. Chinese Street Opera in Singapore documents the ways in which this politically motivated art form continues to be influenced and transformed by Singaporean politics, ideology, and context in the twenty-first century. By performing Chinese street opera, amateur troupes preserve their rich heritage, underscoring the Confucian mind-set that a learned person engages in the arts for moral and unselfish purposes. Educated performers also control behavior, emotions, and values. They are creative and innovative, and their use of new technologies indicates a modern, entrepreneurial spirit. Their performances bring together diverse ethnic groups to watch and perform, Lee argues, while also encouraging a national attitude focused on both remembering the past and preparing for the future in Singapore.
Chinese Émigré Composers and Divergent Modernisms: Chen Yi and Zhou Long (Elements in Music since 1945)
by Mia ChungThis Element examines the factors that drove the stylistic heterogeneity of Chen Yi and Zhou Long after the Cultural Revolution. Known as 'New Wave' composers, they entered the Central Conservatory of Music once the Cultural Revolution ended and attained international recognition for their modernisms after their early careers in America. Scholars have often treated their early music as contingent outcomes of that cultural and political moment. This Element proposes instead that unique personal factors shaped their modernisms despite their shared experiences of the Cultural Revolution and educations at the Central Conservatory and Columbia University. Through interviews on six stages of their development, the Element examines and explains the reasons for their stylistic divergence.
Chita \ (Spanish edition)
by Chita RiveraLas memorias tan esperadas y tremendamente entretenidas de la leyenda del escenario Chita Rivera, tres veces ganadora del premio Tony, homenajeada en los Centros Kennedy y ganadora de la Medalla Presidencial de la Libertad.Era conocida como Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero, hasta que Broadway le cambió el nombre. Pero Dolores, el lado irreverente de Chita Rivera, que es sensual, oscura y feroz, nunca se alejó de la acción, y ella informó y dio forma a algunos de los papeles más aclamados del ícono de Broadway, incluidos Anita en WEST SIDE STORY, Rosie en BYE BYE BIRDIE, Velma en CHICAGO y Aurora en EL BESO DE LA MUJER ARAÑA.Con el deseo de llegar a los viejos fanáticos y transmitir su extraordinaria amplitud de experiencia a las nuevas generaciones, Chita lleva al lector a las habitaciones donde sucedió: la fermentación creativa, los choques de egos, los descubrimientos milagrosos, la euforia cuando todo salió bien. , la decepción cuando todo salió mal. Estamos con ella mientras trabaja con Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, Stephen Sondheim, Bob Fosse, Jerome Robbins, Hal Prince, Liza Minnelli, Sammy Davis Jr, Gwen Verdon y muchos otros.También aprendemos detalles profundamente conmovedores y reveladores sobre su educación y cómo eso ha sido un factor indeleble en su trabajo y carrera. Publicando el año en que Chita cumple 90 espectaculares años de juventud, CHITA es la inolvidable y apasionante historia personal de una artista que abrió su propio camino e inspiró a innumerables artistas a hacer lo mismo.
Chita: A Memoir
by Chita RiveraThe long-awaited and wildly entertaining memoir of the star of stage and screen, the legendary Chita Rivera—three-time Tony Award–winner, Kennedy Centers honoree, and recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.She was born Dolores Conchita Figueroa del Rivero—until the entertainment world renamed her. But Dolores—the irreverent side of the sensual, dark and ferocious Chita—was always present center stage, and was influential in creating some of Broadway most iconic and acclaimed roles, including Anita in West Side Story‚ the part that made her a star—Rosie in Bye Bye, Birdie, Velma in Chicago, and Aurora in Kiss of the Spider Woman.Written in gratitude to her longstanding fans and with the hope that new generations may learn from her extraordinary experience, Chita takes us behind the curtain to reveal the highs and lows of one extraordinary showbusiness career—the creative fermentation, the ego clashes, the miraculous discoveries, the exhilaration when it all went right, and the disappointment when it all went wrong. Chita invites us into workrooms and rehearsal studies, on stage and on set as she works with some of the greatest talents of the age, including Leonard Bernstein, Arthur Laurents, Stephen Sondheim, Bob Fosse, Jerome Robbins, Hal Prince, Liza Minnelli, Sammy Davis Jr, Gwen Verdon, Shirley MacLaine, and many others. We also learn deeply moving, revelatory details about her upbringing and her heritage, and how they indelibly shaped her work and career.This colorful and entertaining memoir—as vital and captivating as Chita herself—is the unforgettable and engrossing personal story of a performer who blazed her own trail and inspired countless performers to forge their own unique path to success.
Chloe x Halle: Issue #2 (Scoop! The Unauthorized Biography #2)
by Jennifer PouxIntroducing a new series of unauthorized biographies on the world's biggest names and rising stars in entertainment, sports, and pop culture! Complete with quizzes, listicles, trivia, and a full-color pull-out poster of the star, this is the definitive collection to get the full Scoop! and more on your favorite celebrities.Is music just the beginning for Chloe x Halle?From their early years as singing sensations on YouTube to being discovered by Queen Bey, Chloe and Halle Bailey are on their way to becoming superstar singers.But when the musical duo was cast as on-screen sisters on the hit show Grown-ish, the real-life sisters took their career to the next level.So what's next?Get the full Scoop! and more on Chloe and Halle Bailey to find out their next move.
Chocolate Surrealism: Music, Movement, Memory, and History in the Circum-Caribbean (Caribbean Studies Series)
by Njoroge M. NjorogeIn Chocolate Surrealism, Njoroge M. Njoroge highlights connections among the production, performance, and reception of popular music at critical historical junctures in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The author sifts different origins and styles to place socio-musical movements into a larger historical framework.Calypso reigned during the turbulent interwar period and the ensuing crises of capitalism. The Cuban rumba/son complex enlivened the postwar era of American empire. Jazz exploded in the Bandung period and the rise of decolonization. And, lastly, Nuyorican Salsa coincided with the period of the civil rights movement and the beginnings of black/brown power. Njoroge illuminates musics of the circum-Caribbean as culturally and conceptually integrated within the larger history of the region. He pays close attention to the fractures, fragmentations, and historical particularities that both unite and divide the region’s sounds. At the same time, he engages with a larger discussion of the Atlantic world.Njoroge examines the deep interrelations between music, movement, memory, and history in the African diaspora. He finds the music both a theoretical anchor and a mode of expression and representation of black identities and political cultures. Music and performance offer ways for the author to re-theorize the intersections of race, nationalism and musical practice, and geopolitical connections. Further music allows Njoroge a reassessment of the development of the modern world system in the context of local, popular responses to the global age. The book analyzes different styles, times, and politics to render a brief history of Black Atlantic sound.
Choir Boy
by Tarell Alvin Mccraney"An exhilarating, multi-layered new play."-The Guardian"Stirring and stylishly told . . . McCraney's crispest and most confident work."-Daily News"Greatly affecting. . . . It takes a brave writer to set his language against the plaintive beauty of the hymns and spirituals . . . but McCraney's speech holds its own, locating poetry even in casual vernacular and again demonstrating his gift for simile and metaphor."-The Village VoiceThe Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys is dedicated to the creation of strong, ethical black men. Pharus wants nothing more than to take his rightful place as leader of the school's legendary gospel choir, but can he find his way inside the hallowed halls of this institution if he sings in his own key? Known for his unique brand of urban lyricism, Tarrell Alvin McCraney follows up his acclaimed trilogy The Brother/Sister Plays with this affecting portrait of a gay youth trying to find the courage to let the truth about himself be known. Set against the sorrowful sounds of hymns and spirituals, Choir Boy premiered at the Royal Court in London before receiving its Off-Broadway premiere in summer 2013 to critical and popular acclaim.Tarell Alvin McCraney is author of The Brother/Sister Plays: The Brothers Size, In the Red and Brown Water, and Marcus; Or the Secret of Sweet. Other works include Wig Out!, set in New York's drag clubs, and The Breach, which deals with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. His awards include the 2009 Steinberg Playwrights Award and the Paula Vogel Playwriting Award.
Choir Boy
by Tarell Alvin Mccraney"An exhilarating, multi-layered new play."-The Guardian"Stirring and stylishly told . . . McCraney's crispest and most confident work."-Daily News"Greatly affecting. . . . It takes a brave writer to set his language against the plaintive beauty of the hymns and spirituals . . . but McCraney's speech holds its own, locating poetry even in casual vernacular and again demonstrating his gift for simile and metaphor."-The Village VoiceThe Charles R. Drew Prep School for Boys is dedicated to the creation of strong, ethical black men. Pharus wants nothing more than to take his rightful place as leader of the school's legendary gospel choir, but can he find his way inside the hallowed halls of this institution if he sings in his own key? Known for his unique brand of urban lyricism, Tarrell Alvin McCraney follows up his acclaimed trilogy The Brother/Sister Plays with this affecting portrait of a gay youth trying to find the courage to let the truth about himself be known. Set against the sorrowful sounds of hymns and spirituals, Choir Boy premiered at the Royal Court in London before receiving its Off-Broadway premiere in summer 2013 to critical and popular acclaim.Tarell Alvin McCraney is author of The Brother/Sister Plays: The Brothers Size, In the Red and Brown Water, and Marcus; Or the Secret of Sweet. Other works include Wig Out!, set in New York's drag clubs, and The Breach, which deals with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. His awards include the 2009 Steinberg Playwrights Award and the Paula Vogel Playwriting Award.
Choosing Death
by Albert MudrianThis exciting history, featuring an introduction by famed DJ John Peel, tells the two-decade-long history of grindcore and death metal through the eyes and ringing ears of the artists, producers, and label owners who propelled them.
Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal and Grindcore
by Albert MudrianThis exciting history, featuring an introduction by famed DJ John Peel, tells the two-decade-long history of grindcore and death metal through the eyes and ringing ears of the artists, producers, and label owners who propelled them.
Chopin
by John RinkThis anthology brings together representative examples of the most significant and engaging scholarly writing on Chopin by a wide range of authors. The essays selected for the volume portray a rounded picture of Chopin as composer, pianist and teacher of his music, and of his overall achievement and legacy. Historical perspectives are offered on Chopin’s biography ’as cultural discourse’, on the evolution and origins of his style, and on the contexts of given works. A fascinating contemporary overview of Chopin’s oeuvre is also provided. Seven source studies assess the status and role of Chopin’s notational practices as well as some enigmatic sketch material. Essays in the field of performance studies scrutinise the ’cultural work’ carried out by Chopin’s performances and discuss his playing style along with that of his contemporaries and students. This paves the way for a body of essays on analysis, aesthetics and reception, considering aspects of genre and including an overview of analytical approaches to select works. The remaining essays address Chopin’s handling of form, rhythm and other musical elements, as well as the ’meaning’ of his msuic. The collection as a whole underscores one of the most important aspects of Chopin’s legacy, namely the paradoxical manner in which he drew from the past - in particular, certain eighteenth-century traditions - while stretching inherited conventions and practices to such an extent that a highly original ’music of the future’ was heralded.
Chopin Masterpieces for Solo Piano: 46 Works
by Frédéric ChopinOf all the composers of piano music, it is Chopin whose works are most frequently performed. Musicians and music lovers delight in his lovely melodies, rich harmonies, captivating rhythms, and command of total keyboard sound.This generous collection contains 46 of Chopin's most important and best-loved pieces, edited by Carl Mikuli and based on first-hand knowledge of the master's personal approach to these works. Included are the Ballade No. 1 in G Minor, Berceuse, 3 Ecossaises, 5 Etudes (including the fiery "Revolutionary"), Fantaisie-Impromptu, "Marche Funèbre" from Sonata No. 2, 8 Mazurkas, 7 Nocturnes, 3 Polonaises (including the enormously popular "Militaire"), 9 Preludes, Scherzo No. 2 in B-flat Minor, and 6 Waltzes (including the "Minute Waltz"). Reprinted from authoritative sources, this superb collection brings together a splendid selection of pieces in one convenient, attractive, low-priced volume that will provide lasting enjoyment to a wide range of pianists and music lovers.
Chopin and His World
by Jonathan D. Bellman Halina GoldbergA new look at the life, times, and music of Polish composer and piano virtuoso Fryderyk ChopinFryderyk Chopin (1810–49), although the most beloved of piano composers, remains a contradictory figure, an artist of virtually universal appeal who preferred the company of only a few sympathetic friends and listeners. Chopin and His World reexamines Chopin and his music in light of the cultural narratives formed during his lifetime. These include the romanticism of the ailing spirit, tragically singing its death-song as life ebbs; the Polish expatriate, helpless witness to the martyrdom of his beloved homeland, exiled among friendly but uncomprehending strangers; the sorcerer-bard of dream, memory, and Gothic terror; and the pianist's pianist, shunning the appreciative crowds yet composing and improvising idealized operas, scenes, dances, and narratives in the shadow of virtuoso-idol Franz Liszt. The international Chopin scholars gathered here demonstrate the ways in which Chopin responded to and was understood to exemplify these narratives, as an artist of his own time and one who transcended it. This collection also offers recently rediscovered artistic representations of his hands (with analysis), and—for the first time in English—an extended tribute to Chopin published in Poland upon his death and contemporary Polish writings contextualizing Chopin's compositional strategies. The contributors are Jonathan D. Bellman, Leon Botstein, Jean-Jacques Eigeldinger, Halina Goldberg, Jeffrey Kallberg, David Kasunic, Anatole Leikin, Eric McKee, James Parakilas, John Rink, and Sandra P. Rosenblum. Contemporary documents by Karol Kurpiński, Adam Mickiewicz, and Józef Sikorski are included.
Chopin in Britain
by Peter WillisIn 1848, the penultimate year of his life, Chopin visited England and Scotland at the instigation of his aristocratic Scots pupil, Jane Stirling. In the autumn of that year, he returned to Paris. The following autumn he was dead. Despite the fascination the composer continues to hold for scholars, this brief but important period, and his previous visit to London in 1837, remain little known. In this richly illustrated study, Peter Willis draws on extensive original documentary evidence, as well as cultural artefacts, to tell the story of these two visits and to place them into aristocratic and artistic life in mid-nineteenth-century England and Scotland. In addition to filling a significant hole in our knowledge of the composer’s life, the book adds to our understanding of a number of important figures, including Jane Stirling and the painter Ary Scheffer. The social and artistic milieux of London, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh are brought to vivid life.
Chopin in Paris
by Tad SzulcChopin in Paris introduces the most important musical and literary figures of Fryderyk Chopin's day in a glittering story of the Romantic era. During Chopin's eighteen years in Paris, lasting nearly half his short life, he shone at the center of the immensely talented artists who were defining their time -- Hugo, Balzac, Stendhal, Delacroix, Liszt, Berlioz, and, of course, George Sand, a rebel feminist writer who became Chopin's lover and protector. Tad Szulc, the author of Fidel and Pope John Paul II, approaches his subject with imagination and insight, drawing extensively on diaries, memoirs, correspondence, and the composer's own journal, portions of which appear here for the first time in English. He uses contemporary sources to chronicle Chopin's meteoric rise in his native Poland, an ascent that had brought him to play before the reigning Russian grand duke at the age of eight. He left his homeland when he was eighteen, just before Warsaw's patriotic uprising was crushed by the tsar's armies. Carrying the memories of Poland and its folk music that would later surface in his polonaises and mazurkas, Chopin traveled to Vienna. There he established his reputation in the most demanding city of Europe. But Chopin soon left for Paris, where his extraordinary creative powers would come to fruition amid the revolutions roiling much of Europe. He quickly gained fame and a circle of powerful friends and acquaintances ranging from Rothschild, the banker, to Karl Marx. Distinguished by his fastidious dress and the wracking cough that would cut short his life, Chopin spent his days composing and giving piano lessons to a select group of students. His evenings were spent at the keyboard, playing for his friends. It was at one of these Chopin gatherings that he met George Sand, nine years his senior. Through their long and often stormy relationship, Chopin enjoyed his richest creative period. As she wrote dozens of novels, he composed furiously -- both were compulsive creators. After their affair unraveled, Chopin became the protÉgÉ of Jane Stirling, a wealthy Scotswoman, who paraded him in his final year across England and Scotland to play for the aristocracy and even Queen Victoria. In 1849, at the age of thirty-nine, Chopin succumbed to the tuberculosis that had plagued him from childhood. Chopin in Paris is an illuminating biography of a tragic figure who was one of the most important composers of all time. Szulc brings to life the complex, contradictory genius whose works will live forever. It is compelling reading about an exciting epoch of European history, culture, and music -- and about one of the great love dramas of the nineteenth century.