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Ariane & Bluebeard: From Fairy Tale to Comic Book Opera
by Matthew Brown and Th. Emil HomerinMaurice Maeterlinck described his libretto Ariane et Barbe-bleue as "a sort of legendary opera, or fairy [opera], in three acts." In 1907, Paul Dukas finished setting Maeterlinck's libretto to music, and the opera's Paris premiere was lauded as a landmark in operatic history. Ariane & Bluebeard: From Fairy Tale to Comic Book Opera offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary look at this historic opera, including its structure, reception, and cultural implications. This lively collection juxtaposes chapters from experts in music, literature, the visual arts, gender studies, and religion and philosophy with vibrant illustrations by comic artist P. Craig Russell and interviews with performers and artists. Featuring material from newly discovered documents and the first English translation of several important sources, Ariane & Bluebeard allows readers to imagine the operain its various incarnations: as symbolist show, comic book, children's fairy tale, and more.
Arion: The Greatest Musician in Greece
by James LloydArion is a famous musician in ancient Greek mythology. He loves to travel across Rome and Greece to play his music. While trying to sail home, he is robbed by a group of pirates! Fearing death, he escapes by jumping into the ocean. When all hope seems lost, he meets a dolphin that might be able to help.
Aristoxenus of Tarentum and the Birth of Musicology (Studies in Classics #Vol. 9)
by Sophie GibsonAristoxenus made an enormous contribution to the development of music theory in antiquity. Despite his Pythagorean upbringing, he rejected Pythagorean methods of harmonics which focused on the mathematical significance of musical structures and instead applied a scientific methodology appropriated from Aristotle. This volume studies the theories of Aristoxenus.
The Arithmetic of Listening: Tuning Theory and History for the Impractical Musician
by Kyle GannTuning is the secret lens through which the history of music falls into focus, says Kyle Gann. Yet in Western circles, no other musical issue is so ignored, so taken for granted, so shoved into the corners of musical discourse.A classroom essential and an invaluable reference, The Arithmetic of Listening offers beginners the grounding in music theory necessary to find their own way into microtonality and the places it may take them. Moving from ancient Greece to the present, Kyle Gann delves into the infinite tunings available to any musician who feels straitjacketed by obedience to standardized Western European tuning. He introduces the concept of the harmonic series and demonstrates its relationship to equal-tempered and well-tempered tuning. He also explores recent experimental tuning models that exploit smaller intervals between pitches to create new sounds and harmonies.Systematic and accessible, The Arithmetic of Music provides a much-needed primer for the wide range of tuning systems that have informed Western music.
Army of She: Icelandic, Iconoclastic, Irrepressible Björk
by Evelyn McdonnellWearing thick glasses, speaking in her thick Icelandic accent, and, well, seeming a touch thick, Björk stormed the public consciousness in 2000 as an unlikely heroine in the experimental musical film Dancer In the Dark. Army of She is an in-depth look at the woman who first took the public stage twenty-three years ago, analyzing her rise from child prodigy to punk anarchist to New Wave novelty (as member of the Sugarcubes) to hit soloist to film star.
Arnold Bake: A Life with South Asian Music (SOAS Musicology Series)
by Bob Van Der LindenArnold Bake (1899–1963) was a Dutch pioneer in South Asian ethnomusicology, whose research impressed not only the most renowned Indologists of his time but also the leading figures in the emerging field of ethnomusicology. This long overdue biography sheds light on his knowledge of the theory and practice of South Asian music, as well as his legacy on the intellectual history of ethnomusicology. Bake spent nearly seventeen years in the Indian subcontinent and made numerous, irreplaceable recordings, films and photographs of local musicians and dancers. As a gifted Western musician, he studied Indian singing with Bhimrao Shastri, Dinendranath Tagore and Nabadwip Brajabashi, and successfully performed Rabindranath Tagore’s compositions and South Asian folk songs during hundreds of lecture-recitals in India, Europe and the United States. For the last fifteen years of his life, Bake taught Indian music at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London; he was the first to do so at a Western university. Besides his numerous writings and radio presentations, he advanced his subject through his activities in British and international research associations. The history of ethnomusicology, especially as applied to South Asia, cannot be fully understood without regard to Bake, and yet his contribution has remained, until now, unclear and unknown.
Arnold Schoenberg's Journey
by Allen ShawnA composer's study and celebration of a difficult but influential artist, his work, and his timeProposing that Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) has been more discussed than heard, more tolerated than loved, composer Allen Shawn puts aside ultimate judgments about Schoenberg's place in musical history to explore the composer's fascinating world in a series of "linked essays--soundings" that are more searching than analytical, more suggestive than definitive. In an approach that is unusual for a book of an avowedly introductory character, the text plunges into the details of some of Schoenberg works, while at the same time providing a broad overview of his involvement in music, painting and the history through which he lived. Emphasizing music as an expressive art of rhythms and tones, Shawn approaches Schoenberg primarily from the listener's point of view, uncovering both the seeds of his radicalism in his early music and the traditional bases of his later work. Although liberally sprinkled with musical examples, the text can be read without them. By turns witty, personal, opinionated and instructive, "Arnold Schoenberg's Journey" is above all an appreciation of a great musical and artistic imagination in a time unlike any other.
Arnold Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw in Postwar Europe
by Joy H. CalicoJoy H. Calico examines the cultural history of postwar Europe through the lens of the performance and reception of Arnold Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw--a short but powerful work, she argues, capable of irritating every exposed nerve in postwar Europe. Schoenberg, a Jewish composer whose oeuvre had been one of the Nazis' prime exemplars of entartete (degenerate) music, immigrated to the United States and became an American citizen. Both admired and reviled as a pioneer of dodecaphony, he wrote this twelve-tone piece about the Holocaust in three languages for an American audience. This book investigates the meanings attached to the work as it circulated through Europe during the early Cold War in a kind of symbolic musical remigration, focusing on six case studies: West Germany, Austria, Norway, East Germany, Poland, and Czechoslovakia. Each case is unique, informed by individual geopolitical concerns, but this analysis also reveals common themes in anxieties about musical modernism, Holocaust memory and culpability, the coexistence of Jews and former Nazis, anti-Semitism, dislocation, and the presence of occupying forces on both sides of the Cold War divide.
Around the Opry Table: A Feast of Recipes and Stories from the Grand Ole Opry
by Kay WestCountry music and country cooking fans everywhere will savor this new official cookbook of the Grand Ole Opry and its members, featuring favorite recipes of country music legends past and present and the stories behind them.
Around the World in 57 1/2 Gigs
by Dave BidiniThe strengths of Bidini's two best-loved books, On a Cold Road and Tropic of Hockey, music and travel to unlikely places, come together in this account of his search for rock 'n' roll.When it looks as if the Rheostatics are breaking up after more than twenty years together, Dave Bidini is left feeling adrift from his moorings and decides to go on a very long road trip, playing solo and finding out about the state of rock 'n' roll around the world. Accompanied much of the way by his friend Al, who also has a solo act, Bidini sets out for London, England, his springboard for travel to Finland, Russia, China, Sierra Leone, and Ghana, punctuated by trips to Newfoundland and Gananoque in Canada, and to New York City.What Bidini finds is that the rock 'n' roll machine has not yet flattened the globe, as each place has taken what suits it from the West's dominant music and ignored the rest. Metal may have had its heyday in North America, but it still suits the quiet Finns just fine as a soundtrack for suicidal thoughts. In China, where Bidini plays with the Rheos-Not-Rheos as part of the Maple Rhythm Festival, he has to coach the crowd sitting quietly in plastic chairs how to clap rhythmically. In Russia, where live rock still lurks in hard-to-find places, the British band Smokie is far more popular than even the Rolling Stones, and the first Western band Mongolian audiences wanted to hear live was Boney M. In Africa, Bidini finds out just how far rock has wandered from its roots, and in Newfoundland, just how true it has stayed.Peopled with hosers, the über-hip, and the profoundly baffled, and brimming with tales of playing in strange venues to bemused locals and the odd drunk, Around the World takes readers on an unforgettable, ear-opening swing through the world of rock 'n' roll.From the Hardcover edition.
Arousing Sense: Recipes for Workshopping Sensory Experience
by Tomie HahnEngaging with sensory experience provides a gateway to the contemplation and cultivation of creativity and ideas. Tomie Hahn's workshopping recipes encourage us to incorporate sensory-rich experiences into our research, creative processes, and understanding of people. The exercises recognize that playfulness allows for a loosening of self while increasing empathy and vulnerability. Their ability to spark sensory endeavors that reach into our deepest core offers potentially profound impacts on art making, research, ethnographic fieldwork, contemplation, philosophical or personal introspections, and many other activities. Designed to be flexible, these living recipes provide an avenue for performative adventures that invite us to improvise in ways suited to our own purposes or settings. Leaders and practitioners enjoy limitless arenas for using the senses for explorations that range from personally transformative to professionally productive to profoundly moving. User-friendly and practical, Arousing Sense is a guide to how teaching through sensory experience can lead to positive, transformative impact in the classroom and everyday life.
Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Loving and Living Alone
by Amy Key"[Arrangements in Blue] reflects on a life spent as a single woman and how that affects friendships, freedom, domesticity, family, sexuality, the psyche, the self. It observes things about being alone that I have never seen or heard articulated before.... beautiful, effortless.... I haven’t been so obsessed with a book in a long time." —Dolly Alderton “The poet Amy Key’s first book might be the most hyped memoir of 2023 (or at least a close second to Spare)… This raw, gorgeous, pulsing memoir is…the harbinger of a real talent.” —Laura Hackett, Sunday Times [UK] Amy Key—a writer “of rare and strange magic” (Guardian)—probes the art of living without romance in this soul-stirring debut. When British poet Amy Key was growing up, she envisioned a life shaped by love—and Joni Mitchell’s album Blue was her inspiration. “Blue became part of my language of intimacy,” she writes, recalling the dozens of times she played the record as a teen, “an intimacy of disclosure, vulnerability, unadorned feeling that I thought I’d eventually share with a romantic other.” As the years ticked by, she held on to this very specific idea of romance like a bottle of wine saved for a special occasion. But what happens when the romance we are all told will give life meaning never presents itself? Now single in her forties, Key explores the sweeping scales of romantic feeling as she has encountered them, using the album Blue as an expressive anchor: from the low notes of loss and unfulfilled desire—punctuated by sharp, discordant feelings of jealousy and regret—to the deep harmony of friendship, and the crescendos of sexual attraction and self-realization. Finding solace in Mitchell’s songs, Key plumbs Blue’s track list for themes that resonate with her heart’s seasons. Listening to the song “California,” she explores the mixed emotions that come with traveling alone in a world built for couples; she juxtaposes the lonely lyrics of “My Old Man” with the pleasurable art of curating a perfect apartment for one; and with the utmost tenderness, she parses out her decision to not have children with the eloquent “Little Green.” Mapping the evolution of her early conceptions of love through her adulthood, Key offers a tender and nakedly candid celebration of the many forms of intimacy that often go unnoticed. An essential work for both the single and the partnered, Arrangements in Blue is a bold manual for building a life on your own terms.
Ars antiqua: Organum, Conductus, Motet (Music In Medieval Europe Ser.)
by Edward H. RoesnerThe ars antiqua began to be mentioned in writings about music in the early decades of the fourteenth century, where it was cited along with references to a more modern "art", an ars nova. It was understood by those who coined the notion to be rooted in the musical practices outlined in the Ars musica of Lambertus and, especially, the Ars cantus mensurabilis of Franco of Cologne. Directly or indirectly the essays collected in this volume all address one or more of the issues regarding ars antiqua polyphony-questions relating to the nature and definition of genre; the evolution of the polyphonic idiom; the workings of the creative process including the role of oral process and notation and the continuum between these extremes; questions about how this music was used and understood; and of how it fits into the intellectual life of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Some of the essays ask new questions or approach long-standing ones from fresh perspectives. All, however, are rooted in a line of scholarship that produced a body of writing of continuing relevance.
The 'Ars musica' Attributed to Magister Lambertus/Aristoteles (Royal Musical Association Monographs)
by translatedbyKaren DesmondThe treatise on musica plana and musica mensurabilis written by Lambertus/Aristoteles is our main witness to thirteenth-century musical thought in the decades between the treatises of Johannes de Garlandia and Franco of Cologne. Most treatises on music of this century - except for Franco‘s treatise on musical notation - survive in only a single copy; Lambertus‘s Ars musica, extant in five sources, is thus distinguished by a more substantial and long-lasting manuscript tradition. Unique in its ambitions, this treatise presents both the rudiments of the practice of liturgical chant and the principles of polyphonic notation in a dense and rigorous manner like few music treatises of its time - a conceptual framework characteristic of Parisian university culture in the thirteenth century. This new edition of Lambertus‘s treatise is the first since Edmond de Coussemaker‘s of 1864. Christian Meyer‘s meticulous edition is displayed on facing pages with Karen Desmonds English translation, and the treatise and translation are prefaced by a substantial introduction to the text and its author by Christian Meyer, translated by Barbara Haggh-Huglo.
Ars nova: French and Italian Music in the Fourteenth Century (Music In Medieval Europe Ser.)
by John L. Nádas Michael Scott CuthbertIn the early fourteenth century, musicians in France and later Italy established new traditions of secular and sacred polyphony. This ars nova, or "new art," popularized by theorists such as Philippe de Vitry and Johannes de Muris was the among the first of many later movements to establish the music of the present as a clean break from the past. The rich music of this period, by composers such as Guillaume de Machaut and Francesco Landini, is not only beautiful, but also rewards deep study and analysis. Yet contradictions and gaps abound in the ars nova of the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries-how do we read this music? how do we perform this music? what was the cultural context of these performances? These problems are well met by the ingenuity of approaches and solutions found by scholars in this volume. The twenty-seven articles brought together reflect the broad methodological and chronological range of scholarly inquiry on the ars nova.
Art and Music in the Early Modern Period: Essays in Honor of Franca Trinchieri Camiz
by Katherine A. McIverThe relationship between music and painting in the Early Modern period is the focus of this collection of essays by an international group of distinguished art historians and musicologists. Each writer takes a multidisciplinary approach as he or she explores the interface between music performance and painting, or between music and art theory. The essays reflect a variety and range of approaches and offer methodologies which might usefully be employed in future research in this field. The volume is dedicated to the memory of Franca Trinchieri Camiz, an art historian who worked extensively on topics related to art and music, and who participated in some of the conference panels from which many of these essays originate. Three of Professor Camiz's own essays are included in the final section of this volume, together with a bibliography of her writings in this field. They are preceded by two thematic groups of essays covering aspects of musical imagery in portraits, issues in iconography and theory, and the relationship between music and art in religious imagery.
The Art and Science of Surround and Stereo Recording: Including 3D Audio Techniques
by Edwin Pfanzagl-CardoneThis book presents an extensive and timely survey of more than 30 surround and 20 stereo-microphone techniques. Further, it offers, for the first time, an explanation of why the RCA "Living Stereo" series of legacy recordings from the 1950s and 60s is still appreciated by music lovers worldwide, despite their use of an apparently incorrect recording technique from the perspective of psychoacoustics. Discussing this aspect in detail, the book draws on the author’s study of concert hall acoustics and psychoacoustics. The book also analyzes the "fingerprint" features of a selected number of surround and – more importantly – stereo microphone techniques in depth by measuring their signal cross-correlation over frequency and also using an artificial human head. In addition, the book presents a rating of microphone techniques based on the assessment of various acoustic attributes, and merges the results of several subjective listening tests, including those conducted by other researchers. Building on this knowledge, it provides fresh insights into important microphone system features, from stereo to 3D audio. Moreover, it describes new microphone techniques, such as AB-PC, ORTF-T and BPT, and the recently defined BQIrep (Binaural Quality Index of reproduced music). Lastly, the book concludes with a short history of microphone techniques and case studies of live and studio recordings.
Art as Music, Music as Poetry, Poetry as Art, from Whistler to Stravinsky and Beyond
by Peter DayanIn 1877, Ruskin accused Whistler of ’flinging a pot of paint in the public’s face’. Was he right? After all, Whistler always denied that the true function of art was to represent anything. If a painting does not represent, what is it, other than mere paint, flung in the public’s face? Whistler’s answer was simple: painting is music - or it is poetry. Georges Braque, half a century later, echoed Whistler’s answer. So did Braque’s friends Apollinaire and Ponge. They presented their poetry as music too - and as painting. But meanwhile, composers such as Satie and Stravinsky were presenting their own art - music - as if it transposed the values of painting or of poetry. The fundamental principle of this intermedial aesthetic, which bound together an extraordinary fraternity of artists in all media in Paris, from 1885 to 1945, was this: we must always think about the value of a work of art, not within the logic of its own medium, but as if it transposed the value of art in another medium. Peter Dayan traces the history of this principle: how it created our very notion of ’great art’, why it declined as a vision from the 1960s and how, in the 21st century, it is fighting back.
Art Chantry Speaks
by Art Chantry Monica René RochesterThere used to be a time when designers were trained in the history of composition. Now you just buy a fuckin' piece of software and now you've become a designer."Art Chantry . . . Is he a Luddite?" asks a Rhode Island School of Design poster promoting a Chantry lecture. "Or is he a graphic design hero?"For decades this avatar of low-tech design has fought against the cheap and easy use of digital software. Chantry's homage to expired technology, and his inspired use of Xerox machines and X-Acto blade cuts of printed material, created a much-copied style during the grunge period and beyond.Chantry's designs were published in Some People Can't Surf: The Graphic Design of Art Chantry (Chronicle Books), exhibited at the Seattle Art Museum, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian, and the Louvre.More recently, Chantry has drawn upon his extraordinary collection of twentieth-century graphic art to create compelling histories of the forgotten and unknown on essays he has posted on his Facebook page. These essays might lionize the unrecognized illustrators of screws, wrenches, and pipes in equipment catalogs. Other posts might reveal how some famous artists were improperly recognized.Art Chantry Speaks is the kind of opinionated art history you've always wanted to read but were never assigned.
Art, Cybernetics and Pedagogy in Post-War Britain: Roy Ascott’s Groundcourse (Routledge Advances in Art and Visual Studies)
by Kate SloanThis is the first full-length study about the British artist Roy Ascott, one of the first cybernetic artists, with a career spanning seven decades to date. The book focuses on his early career, exploring the evolution of his early interests in communication in the context of the rich overlaps between art, science and engineering in Britain during the 1950s and 1960s. The first part of the book looks at Ascott’s training and early work. The second park looks solely at Groundcourse, Ascott’s extraordinary pedagogical model for visual arts and cybernetics which used an integrative and systems-based model, drawing in behaviourism, analogue machines, performance and games. Using hitherto unpublished photographs and documents, this book will establish a more prominent place for cybernetics in post-war British art.
Art Into Pop (Routledge Library Editions: Popular Music #2)
by Simon Frith Howard HorneThis book, first published in 1987, tells the intriguing and culturally complex story of the art school influence on postwar British popular music. Following Romantic attitudes from life class to recording studio, it focuses on two key moments – the early 1960s, when art students like John Lennon and Eric Clapton begin to play their own versions of American rock and blues and inflected youth music with Bohemian dreams, and the late 1970s, when punk musicians emerged from design courses and fashion departments to disrupt what were, by then, art-rock routines. Sixties rock Bohemians and seventies pop Situationists were, in their different ways, trying to solve the art students’ perennial problem – how to make a living from their art. Art Into Pop shows how this problem has been shaped by the history of British art education, from its nineteenth-century origins to current arguments about ‘pure’ and ‘applied’ training. In their simultaneous pursuit of authenticity and artifice, art school musicians exemplify the postmodern condition, the collapse of any distinction between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, the confusions of personal and commercial creativity. And so high pop theorists rub shoulders here with low pop practitioners, experimental musicians debate avant-garde ideas with corporate packagers, and artistic integrity becomes a matter of making oneself up.
Art Music: Love, Listening and Soulfulness
by Matthew Del NevoListening to music is not merely something one does, but something central to a way of living. Listening has the power to transport one into another way of being. It is a mode of feeling and forms the bedrock of deep emotion. Written from the viewpoint of a philosophy of sensibility, Matthew Del Nevo notes that this perspective may not be in fashion, but it follows a long tradition.Del Nevo emphasizes the aesthetic experience of listening to art music as it has developed and disintegrated in Western civilization. He recognizes a deep psychological element to what he calls soul—or more accurately sensibility. He addresses music in a non-technical way, taking up the powerful art theory of Charles Baudelaire, the music philosophy of Schopenhauer and Richard Wagner, and takes a strong critical stand against modernist intellectual art music.The importance of this book for the musically- literate reader is its insight into the metaphysics of nostalgia. This comprehension is missing from nearly all musical instruction because we have lost sight of it. Del Nevo asserts that this understanding must be brought back into our culture. And since this is a book about listening to art music, it is no less about sensibility and its cultivation, which in its object form we call culture. An engaging book, Art Music will appeal to those interested in music, culture, and philosophy.
Art Music Activism: Aesthetics and Politics in 1930s New York City (Music in American Life)
by Maria Cristina FavaSurrounded by the widespread misery of the Depression, left-leaning classical music composers sought a musical language that both engaged the masses and gave voice to their concerns. Maria Cristina Fava explores the rich creative milieu shaped by artists dedicated to using music and theater to advance the promotion, circulation, and acceptance of leftist ideas in 1930s New York City. Despite tensions between aesthetic and pragmatic goals, the people and groups produced works at the center of the decade’s sociopolitical and cultural life. Fava looks at the Composers’ Collective of New York and its work on proletarian music and workers’ songs before turning to the blend of experimentation and vernacular idioms that shaped the political use of music within the American Worker’s Theater Movement. Fava then reveals how composers and theater practitioners from these two groups achieved prominence within endeavors promoted by the Works Project Administration. Fava’s history teases out fascinating details from performances and offstage activity attached to works by composers such as Marc Blitzstein, Charles Seeger, Ruth Crawford Seeger, Elie Siegmeister, and Harold Rome. Endeavors encouraged avant-garde experimentation while nurturing innovations friendly to modernist approaches and an interest in non-western music. Blitzstein’s The Cradle Will Rock offered a memorable example that found popular success, but while the piece achieved its goals, it became so wrapped up in myths surrounding workers’ theater that critics overlooked Blitzstein’s musical ingenuity. Provocative and original, Art Music Activism considers how innovative classical composers of the 1930s balanced creative aims with experimentation, accessible content, and a sociopolitical message to create socially meaningful works.
Art, Music, and Literature, 1897-1902
by Theodore DreiserDreiser's captivating portraits of turn-of-the-century America's famous figures In this volume, liberally seasoned with period illustrations, Yoshinobu Hakutani has collected and annotated a rich selection of Theodore Dreiser's pre-fame writings on the cultural milieu of his day. In these brief essays, Dreiser sallies into the vibrant world of creative work in turn-of-the-century America. He inspects the eccentric and revealing paraphernalia of artists' studios, probes the work habits of writers, and goes behind the scenes in the popular song-writing business, where this week's celebrity is next week's has-been. He profiles famous figures and introduces numerous women artists, novelists, and musicians, including the prolific and tireless Amelia Barr (mother of fourteen children and author of thirty-two novels), the illustrator Alice B. Stephens, and the opera singer Lillian Nordica. Hakutani's notes provide biographical detail on dozens of now-obscure individuals mentioned by Dreiser.
Art, Music, and Mysticism at the Fin de Siècle: Seeing and Hearing the Beyond (Routledge Research in Art History)
by Michelle Foot Corrinne ChongThis edited volume explores the dialogue between art and music with that of mystical currents at the turn of the twentieth century. The volume draws on the most current research from both art historians and musicologists to present an interdisciplinary approach to the study of mysticism’s historical importance. The chapters in this edited volume gauge the scope of different interpretations of mysticism and illuminate how an exchange between the sister arts unveil an underlying stream of metaphysical, supernatural, and spiritual ideas over the course of the century. Case studies include Charles Tournemire, Joseph Péladan, Erik Satie, Hilma af Klint, Jean Sibelius, František Kupka, and Wassily Kandinsky. The contributors’ unique theoretical perspectives and disciplinary methodologies offer expert insight on both the rewards and inevitable aesthetic complications that arise when one artform meets another. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, musicology, visual culture, and mysticism.