Music-History & Criticism

When Ferdinand "Jelly Roll" Morton sat at the piano in the Library of Congress in May of 1938 to begin his monumental series of interviews with Alan Lomax, he spoke of his years on the West Coast with the nostalgia of a man recalling...

After a hundred years of recording, the process of making records is still mysterious to most people who listen to them. Records hold a fundamental place in the dynamics of modern musical life, but what do they represent? Are they documents? Snapshots? Artworks? Fetishes?...

This collection represents the cream of the more than five hundred articles written for the Village Voice by Kyle Gann, a leading authority on experimental American music of the late twentieth century. Charged with exploring every facet of cutting-edge music coming out of New...

An aesthetic, historical, and theoretical study of four scores, Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement is a groundbreaking and imaginative treatment of the important yet neglected topic of Russian opera in the Silver Age. Spanning the gap between the supernatural Russian music of the...

The musical and social history of Los Angeles's black community from the 1920s through the early 1950s comes to life in this exceptional oral history collection. Through the voices of musicians who performed on L.A.'s Central Avenue during those years, a vivid picture of...

The richest place in America's musical landscape is that fertile ground occupied by jazz. Scott DeVeaux takes a central chapter in the history of jazz-the birth of bebop-and shows how our contemporary ideas of this uniquely American art form flow from that pivotal moment....

Puerto Rican music in New York is given center stage in Ruth Glasser's original and lucid study. Exploring the relationship between the social history and forms of cultural expression of Puerto Ricans, she focuses on the years between the two world wars. Her material...

In this classic work, George Perle argues that the seemingly disparate styles of post-triadic music in fact share common structural elements. These elements collectively imply a new tonality as "natural" and coherent as the major-minor tonality that was the basis of a common musical...

We experience and understand the world, including music, through body movement-when we hear something, we are able to make sense of it by relating it to our body movements, or form an image in our minds of body movements. Musical Gestures is a collection...

Film Music: A History explains the development of film music by considering large-scale aesthetic trends and structural developments alongside socioeconomic, technological, cultural, and philosophical circumstances. The book's four large parts are given over to Music and the "Silent" Film (1894--1927), Music and the Early...

Classic American Popular Song: The Second Half-Century, 1950-2000 addresses the question: What happened to American popular song after 1950? There are numerous books available on the so-called Golden Age of popular song, but none that follow the development of popular song styles in the...

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.Author: Stephen HeflingISBN-10: 0415966507ISBN-13: 9780415966504Publisher: RoutledgeLanguage: EnglishPublished: 10/24/2003Pages: 408Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.20lbsSize: 9.18h x 6.08w x 0.91d

First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.Author: James McCallaISBN-10: 0415966957ISBN-13: 9780415966955Publisher: RoutledgeLanguage: EnglishPublished: 08/22/2003Pages: 284Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.93lbsSize: 9.00h x 6.04w x 0.75d

Scathing reviews, whimsical stories, and diverting games fill the pages of this utterly engaging kaleidoscope of skewed tales on the world of Classical music. It dishes out a marvelous feast of tales served up by a master storyteller whose reach extends around the world...

What forces helped shape the output of this high-living, often arrogant, but immensely talented composer? This fascinating collection includes Simonetta Puccini's essay full of intimate details about her family, as well as writings by experts on the racist politics behind the creation of Madama...

Using the prize money from his Somerset Maugham Award, Duncan McLean traveled from Orkney, Scotland, to Texas in search of the extraordinary mix of jazz, blues, country, and mariachi that is Western Swing. This account of his travels takes in barbed-wire museums, onion festivals,...

Before Elvis Presley and rock-'n'-roll, another King ruled the roost of American popular music. His name was Benny Goodman and his domain, the gilded age of Swing. Benny's concerts, records, and radio shows catapulted the hot and controversial sounds of jazz into the hearts...

In October, 1975, the International Haydn Conference was held in Washington, D.C., during the last eight days of the Haydn Festival at Kennedy Center. Scholars and musicians from all over the world were brought together for the conference, participating in panel discussions, round tables,...

This new series of Norton books, devoted to informed discussion of contemporary music, draws principally upon articles first published in Perspectives of New Music, which Richard Kostelanetz has described as "among the most consistently interesting magazines in America." The Perspectives books will comprise a...

Known for creating classic films including His Girl Friday, The Big Sleep, Bringing Up Baby, and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Howard Hawks is one of the best-known Hollywood 'auteurs', but the important role that music plays in his films has been generally neglected by film...

This book provides a practical introduction to researching and performing early Anglo-American secular music and dance with attention to their place in society. Supporting growing interest among scholars and performers spanning numerous disciplines, this book contributes quality new scholarship to spur further research on...

Music and Encounter at the Mediterranean Crossroads: A Sea of Voices explores the musical practices that circulate the Mediterranean Sea. Collectively, the authors relate this musical flow to broader transnational flows of people and power that generate complex encounters, bringing the diverse cultures of...

In today's culture, popular music is a vital site where ideas about gender and sexuality are imagined and disseminated. Popular Music and the Politics of Hope: Queer and Feminist Interventions explores what that means with a wide-ranging collection of chapters that consider the many...

The life and career of George Frideric Handel, one of the most frequently performed composers from the Baroque period, are copiously and intricately documented through a huge variety of contemporary sources. This multi-volume major publication is the most up-to-date and comprehensive collection of these...

The book description for the previously published "Thayer's Life of Beethoven" is not yet available.Author: Elliot ForbesISBN-10: 069102717XISBN-13: 9780691027173Publisher: Princeton University PressLanguage: EnglishPublished: 04/12/1992Pages: 656Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.83lbsSize: 9.21h x 6.12w x 1.26d

Over the decades, AC/DC has carved out a unique niche in the rock world. Thanks to their stubborn refusal to alter their aggressive, in-your-face style that has been their stock in trade, they have emerged as one of the essential cornerstones of contemporary hard...

In a companion to his collections Riding on a Blue Note and Faces in the Crowd, Gary Giddins has assembled a mosaic of pieces that provide an essential guide to the jazz world. Moving with ease from sweeping surveys of jazz history to precise,...

"To this day, wherever great rock music is being made, there is the shadow of Bob Dylan," said Bruce Springsteen at the induction of Dylan into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988. Or to quote John Rockwell, "Anyone who didn't live...

One of the twentieth century's greatest composers, Jean Sibelius (1865-1957) virtually stopped writing music during the last thirty years of his life. Recasting his mysterious musical silence and his undeniably influential life against the backdrop of Finland's national awakening, Sibelius will be the definitive...

"The new Chris Cornell biography is the book his legacy deserves." --Kerrang "Reiff unearths plenty of unexpected details and novel anecdotes...but the book is perhaps most valuable for the way it rounds out and humanizes this man who managed to keep so many of...

Now a Netflix original movie starring Machine Gun Kelly, Daniel Webber, Douglas Booth, and Iwan Rheon, directed by Jeff Tremaine. "Without a doubt, it is the most detailed account of the awesome pleasures and perils of rock & roll stardom I have ever read....

"Year of Wonder is an absolute treat--the most enlightening way to be guided through the year." -- Eddie RedmayneA unique celebration of classical music that showcases one inspirational piece each day of the year, written by an award-winning violinist and BBC Radio personalityClassical music...

David Toop's extraordinary work of sonic history travels from the rainforests of Amazonas to the megalopolis of Tokyo via the work of artists as diverse as Brian Eno, Sun Ra, Erik Satie, Kate Bush, Kraftwerk and Brian Wilson. Beginning in 1889 at the Paris...

In this classic account of the new black music of the 1960s and 70s, celebrated photographer and jazz historian Val Wilmer tells the story of how a generation of revolutionary musicians established black music as the true vanguard of American culture. Placing the achievements...

In April 1967, the Bee Gees launched themselves onto the international music scene with the release of 'New Yok Mining Disaster 1941'. Whilst that haunting classic would be the first of many hits, the Bee Gees consisting of brothers Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb...

"Baraka writes with the passion and lyricism that can only come from a jazz critic who is uncompromisingly invested in the social and aesthetic dimensions of the music." --WBGO (Newark Public Radio)In 2007, Akashic Books ushered Amiri Baraka back into the forefront of America's...

On a sweltering Sunday evening in August 1965, 56,000 people traveled by plane, car, bus, ferry, and subway train to pack New York's Shea Stadium. They were there not for a ballgame, but a rock and roll concert--the audacious dream of promoter Sid Bernstein....

Since its introduction to Hawai'i in 1879, the 'ukulele has been many things: a symbol of an island paradise; a tool of political protest; an instrument central to a rich musical culture; a musical joke; a highly sought-after collectible; a cheap airport souvenir; a...

A riveting look at the transformative year in the lives and careers of the legendary group whose groundbreaking legacy would forever change music and popular culture.They started off as hysteria-inducing pop stars playing to audiences of screaming teenage fans and ended up as musical...

From the very beginning, music has helped us create our world - everything from language, to technology, to philosophy and religion. The Art of Ancient Music discusses the important role music has played in shaping human development. While emphasizing shared human themes, the text...

A raucous history of Vancouver's music and entertainment venues, from Prohibition-era nightclubs and Chinatown cabarets to gay bars, dive bars, goth hideaways, discos, and taverns. Archival posters and photos chronicle how the city's nightlife changed with times, and how some of these nightspots ushered...

In a series of powerful strokes, the music of Beethoven's last years redefined his legacy and enlarged the realm of experience accessible to the creative imagination. Maynard Solomon's Late Beethoven investigates the phenomenon of the final phase, focusing especially on the striking metamorphosis in...

Since 1963 Eric Clapton has contributed to two hundred albums by other artists: from very famous to the obscure and the unexpected: Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin, The Rolling Stones, Sting, Phil Collins, Rod Stewart, all four of the Beatles, Martha Vel騷, Jonathan Kelly, Corey...

Alex Ross, renowned New Yorker music critic and author of the international bestseller and Pulitzer Prize finalist The Rest Is Noise, reveals how Richard Wagner became the proving ground for modern art and politics--an aesthetic war zone where the Western world wrestled with its...

The definitive chronicle of underground music in the 1980s tells the stories of Black Flag, Sonic Youth, The Replacements, and other seminal bands whose DIY revolution changed American music forever. Our Band Could Be Your Life is the never-before-told story of the musical revolution...

Inside the making of one of the biggest-selling albums of all time: Fleetwood Mac's Rumours Fleetwood Mac's classic 1977 Rumours album topped the Billboard 200 for thirty-one weeks and won the Grammy for Album of the Year. More recently, Rolling Stone named it the...

"A dauntingly ambitious, obsessively researched" (Los Angeles Times) global history of music that reveals how songs have shifted societies and sparked revolutions. Histories of music overwhelmingly suppress stories of the outsiders and rebels who created musical revolutions and instead celebrate the mainstream assimilators who...

After John Coltrane, there was no more revered and profoundly influential saxophonist on the planet than Michael Brecker. For those coming of age in the 1970s, during that transitional decade when the boundaries between rock and jazz had begun to blur, Brecker stood as...

Joy Division's career has often been shrouded by myths. But the truth is surprisingly simple: over a period of several months, Joy Division transformed themselves from run-of-the-mill punk wannabes into the creators of one of the most atmospheric, disturbing, and influential debut albums ever...

Whether they're self-taught bashers or technical wizards, drummers are the thrashing, crashing heart of our favorite punk bands. In Forbidden Beat, some of today's most respected writers and musicians explore the history of punk percussion with personal essays, interviews and lists featuring their favorite...