Music-History & Criticism

"Not just a deeply thoughtful and richly populated survey of modern experimental music, it's a meditation on hearing itself."--GuardianDigital technology has changed the ways in which music is perceived, stored, distributed, mediated, and created. In the eye of the storm stands David Toop, shedding...

Material Cultures of Music Notation brings together a collection of essays that explore a fundamental question in the current landscape of musicology: how can writing and reading music be understood as concrete, material practices in a wider cultural context? Drawing on interdisciplinary approaches from...

An engaging blend of memoir and music history, Distant Melodies explores the changing ideas of home, displacement, and return through the lives and chamber music of four composers. How does music played and heard over many years inform one's sense of home? Writing during...

Author: Karl FrenchISBN-10: 0749950706ISBN-13: 9780749950705Publisher: PiatkusLanguage: EnglishPublished: 11/01/2005Pages: 304Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.50lbsSize: 7.50h x 5.00w x 1.10d

Popular music in Japan has been under the overwhelming influence of American, Latin American and European popular music remarkably since 1945, when Japan was defeated in World War II. Beginning with gunka and enkaat the turn of the century, tracing the birth of hit...

The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions...

Toronto was Lonnie Johnson's last stop in a career of stops, at least the eighth city in which he lived for any length of time. The influential African-American singer and guitarist, a formative figure in the history of blues and jazz dating back to...

Founded by Al O'Connor in 1973, the steelband program at Northern Illinois University was the first of its kind in the United States. Thanks to the talent and dedication of O'Connor, Cliff Alexis, Liam Teague, Yuko Asada, and a plethora of NIU students and...

Profiles are presented under the headings of orchestras and orchestra leaders, string players, wind and percussion players, keyboard players, and non-playing orchestra/band affiliates. Features 100 photographs.Author: Antoinette D. HandyISBN-10: 0810834197ISBN-13: 9780810834194Publisher: Scarecrow PressLanguage: EnglishPublished: 12/21/1998Pages: 432Format: HardcoverWeight: 1.53lbsSize: 8.50h x 5.50w x 1.13d

Selwyn Seyfu Hinds--award-winning former editor-in-chief of The Source--presents an extraordinary memoir/history of hip-hop as seen through the eyes of one fan-turned-luminary. The moment nine-year-old Hinds heard "Rapper's Delight" in Guyana, he embarked upon an amazing, if occasionally contentious, relationship with hip-hop--one that would continue...

Reading the Boss: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Works of Bruce Springsteen, edited by Roxanne Harde and Irwin Streight, draws together close readings of Bruce Springsteen's lyrics by scholars across a range of academic disciplines. The editors first make a compelling comparison between Bruce Springsteen...

Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was a great harmonic innovator and one of the most original musical voices of the twentieth century. He created fresh, new tonal perspectives without abandoning tonality itself. With a revolutionary sense of instrumental colour and a fleeting, atmospheric sound world, he...

The book examines from various viewpoints Britten's War Requiem, written in 1962 to celebrate the consecration of the new Coventry Cathedral and uniting the famous anti-war poetry of Wilfred Owen with the Latin Requiem Mass. Britten's and Owen's pacifist beliefs are compared, and the...

Renowned nineteenth-century musicologist Fran ois-Joseph F tis assembled this authoritative survey with the assistance of noted violin maker and dealer Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume. Focusing on the work of the Italian master violin maker Stradivarius, this volume explores the early history and construction of stringed instruments....

The colonial days of America marked not only the beginnings of a country, but also of a new culture, part of which was the first American music publishers, entrepreneurs, and instrument makers forging musical communities from New England to New Spain. Elements of British,...

An exploration of the production, transmission, and mutation of affective tonality--when sound helps produce a bad vibe.Sound can be deployed to produce discomfort, express a threat, or create an ambience of fear or dread--to produce a bad vibe. Sonic weapons of this sort include...

From bell ringing to fireworks, gongs to cannon salutes, a dazzling variety of sounds and soundscapes marked the China encountered by the West around 1800. These sounds were gathered by diplomats, trade officials, missionaries, and other travelers and transmitted back to Europe, where they...

In the illustrious and richly documented history of American jazz, no figure has been more controversial than the jazz critic. Jazz critics can be revered or reviled--often both--but they should not be ignored. And while the tradition of jazz has been covered from seemingly...

This book provides the first scholarly history of the　viola d'amore, a popular bowed string instrument of the Baroque era, with a unique tone produced by a set of metal sympathetic strings. Composers like Bach made use of the viola d'amore for its particular sound,...

From the "War on Hippies" to the Great Rock 'n' Roll Swindle, the story of Modern Lovers is a high octane tale of Brutalist architecture, rock 'n' roll ambition and the struggle for identity in a changing world. One of punk rock's foundational documents,...

The mention of the term "melodrama" is likely to evoke a response from laymen and musicians alike that betrays an acquaintance only with the popular form of the genre and its greatly heightened drama, exaggerated often to the point of the ridiculous. Few are...

Concepts of Time in Post-War European Music gives a historical and philosophical account of the discussions of the nature of time and music during the mid-twentieth century. The nature of time was a persistent topic among composers in Paris and Darmstadt in the decades...

Presence Through Sound narrates and analyses, through a range of case studies on selected musics of China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, and Tibet, some of the many ways in which music and 'place' intersect and are interwoven with meaning in East Asia. It explores how...

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed...

Artie Shaw, the world famous clarinet-playing bandleader who became popular during the Swing Era, was immersed in the music business as a performer for 30 years, from the summer of 1924, when he began to study saxophone, until the summer of 1954, when he...

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed...

The Routledge Handbook to the Music of Alfred Schnittke is a comprehensive study of the work of one of the most important Russian composers of the late 20th century. Each piece is discussed in detail, with particular attention to the composer's groundbreaking polystylism, as...

Writing about music, far from being the specialized domain of the rock critic with encyclopedic knowledge of micro-genres or the fancy-pants star journalist flying on private planes with Led Zeppelin, has become something almost any music lover can do--and does. It's been said, however,...

Unlocks the secrets behind the images and music of an important Spanish musical manuscript compiled for a brotherhood of suspected heretics ca. 1500. The Rosary Cantoral is a rare and beautifully decorated manuscript of Latin plainchant for the Catholic Mass compiled in Toledo, Spain,...

Nineteenth-Century Music: The Western Classical Tradition provides a guide to the basic literature of European art music for the period from which we still draw the majority of our repertory in modern concert halls and opera theaters. The study, revised and expanded, explores standard...

Music has long played a prominent role in cultural diplomacy, but until now no resource has comparatively examined policies that shape how non-western countries use music for international relations. Ethnomusicology and Cultural Diplomacy, edited by scholars David G. Hebert and Jonathan McCollum, demonstrates music's...

Music plays such an important part in everyone's life but how much do we know about the history of music? How did music shape our civilization and how was music itself shaped by the Catholic Church? Susan Treacy, an experienced professor of music, is...

In 65 perceptive pieces, including some of the work that earned him the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1997, Page offers what he calls "a collection of illumined moments " now gathered in a single volume for the wider audience who will treasure their...

Author: Michael L. JonesISBN-10: 1540210243ISBN-13: 9781540210241Publisher: History Press Library EditionsLanguage: EnglishPublished: 09/23/2014Pages: 130Format: HardcoverWeight: 0.76lbsSize: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.38d

Since the first edition was published in 2009, Patrik Wikstr m's The Music Industry has become a go-to text for students and scholars. This thoroughly updated third edition provides an international overview of the music industry and its future prospects in the world of...

A new organ was built in 1858 by the London firm J.W. Walker & Sons for the 12th century Norman Romsey Abbey in Hampshire, UK. This was a substantial instrument and yet no images of how it looked in the North Transept gallery exist...

David Beard presents the first definitive survey of Harrison Birtwistle's music for the opera house and theatre, from his smaller-scale works, such as Down by the Greenwood Side and Bow Down, to the full-length operas, such as Punch and Judy, The Mask of Orpheus...

Debussy: The Master Musicians by Edward Lockspeiser is a comprehensive biography of the French composer Claude Debussy. The book covers Debussy's life from his childhood in Paris to his rise as one of the leading figures of the Impressionist movement in music. Lockspeiser provides...

The vibrant intellectual, social and political climate of mid eighteenth-century Europe presented opportunities and challenges for artists and musicians alike. This book focuses on Mozart the man and musician as he responds to different aspects of that world. It reveals his views on music,...

The truth behind the pop music we love most.Author: Kim Cooper, David SmayISBN-10: 0922915695ISBN-13: 9780922915699Publisher: Feral HouseLanguage: EnglishPublished: 06/01/2001Pages: 344Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.55lbsSize: 10.03h x 7.05w x 0.91dAward: Firecracker Alternative Book Award - NomineeReview Citation(s): Booklist 09/15/2001 pg. 175Library Journal 09/15/2001

Brahms was a musician's musician, in some respects an "academic" composer, and so it's practically impossible for professional scholars and musicians to approach his music without wanting to demonstrate at some point that they are as smart as Brahms, and uniquely able to unravel...

Johann Sebastian Bach's the St. Matthew Passion stands as a singular expression of religious sensibility. First performed in 1727, and conceived within the constraints of Bach's role as cantor of the St. Thomas Church in the provincial German city of Leipzig, the music has...

In the Heart of the Beat argues for a fresh understanding of rap as an exemplary form of literary expression, rather than a profane and trendy musical genre. Pate focuses on works by several well-known artists to reveal in rap music, despite its penchant...

This book provides a comprehensive and lively introduction to the major trends in film scoring from the silent era to the present day, focussing not only on dominant Hollywood practices but also offering an international perspective by including case studies of the national cinemas...

Liszt's B minor Sonata is now regarded as his finest work for piano, and one of the pinnacles of Romantic piano music. This book, written by a pianist who has performed the Sonata extensively, includes a survey of Liszt's early attempts at sonata composition...

Harrison Birtwistle (1934- ) is one of the most eminent and acclaimed of contemporary British composers. This is the first book to provide a comprehensive view of his large and varied output, containing descriptions of every published work, and also a number of withdrawn...

New York City has always been a mecca in the history of jazz, and in many ways the city's jazz scene is more important now than ever before. Blowin' the Blues Away examines how jazz has thrived in New York following its popular resurgence...

2023 Jazz Journalists Association (JJA) Jazz Awards for Books of the Year--Honorable Mention Recipient On December 4, 1957, Miles Davis revolutionized film soundtrack production, improvising the score for Louis Malle's Ascenseur pour l'馗hafaud. A cinematic harbinger of the French New Wave, Ascenseur challenged mainstream...

2023 Jazz Journalists Association (JJA) Jazz Awards for Books of the Year--Honorable Mention Recipient On December 4, 1957, Miles Davis revolutionized film soundtrack production, improvising the score for Louis Malle's Ascenseur pour l'馗hafaud. A cinematic harbinger of the French New Wave, Ascenseur challenged mainstream...

How did castrati manage to amaze their eighteenth-century audiences by singing the same aria several times in completely different ways? And how could composers of the time write operas in a matter of days? The secret lies in the solfeggio tradition, a music education...