Music-History & Criticism

A timeless tale of love, lust, and politics, Tosca is one of the most popular operas ever written. In Tosca's Rome, Susan Vandiver Nicassio explores the surprising historical realities that lie behind Giacomo Puccini's opera and the play by Victorien Sardou on which it...

In Meeting Jimmie Rodgers, the first book to explore the deep legacy of "The Singing Brakeman" from a twenty-first century perspective, Barry Mazor offers a lively look at Rodgers' career, tracing his rise from working-class obscurity to the pinnacle of renown that came with...

In this Very Short Introduction, D. Kern Holoman considers the structure, roots, and day-to-day functioning of the modern philharmonic society. He explores topics ranging from the life of a musician in a modern orchestra, the recent wave of new hall construction from Berlin to...

Of all the styles of jazz to emerge in the twentieth century, none is more passionate, more exhilaratingly up-tempo, or more steeped in an outsider tradition than Gypsy Jazz. And there is no one more qualified to write about Gypsy Jazz than Michael Dregni,...

The universally acclaimed and award-winning Oxford History of Western Music is the eminent musicologist Richard Taruskin's provocative, erudite telling of the story of Western music from its earliest days to the present. Each book in this superlative five-volume set illuminates-through a representative sampling of...

Georgia on My Mind, Rockin' Chair, Skylark, Lazybones, and of course the incomparable Star Dust--who else could have composed these classic American songs but Hoagy Carmichael? He remains, for millions, the voice of heartland America, eternal counterpoint to the urban sensibility of Cole Porter...

Arranged in chronological order, these pieces add up to nothing less than a full-scale history of the greatest tour band in the history of rock. From Tom Wolfe's account of the Dead's first performance as the Grateful Dead (at an Acid Test in 1965),...

Country music of late 1960s and early 1970s was a powerful symbol of staunch conservative resistance to the flowering hippie counterculture. But in 1972, the city of Austin, Texas became host to a growing community of musicians, entrepreneurs, journalists, and fans who saw country...

The world of Sub-Saharan African music is immensely rich and diverse, containing a plethora of repertoires and traditions. In The African Imagination in Music, renowned music scholar Kofi Agawu offers an introduction to the major dimensions of this music and the values upon which...

Since the mid-twentieth century, Zolt疣 Kod疝y's child-developmental philosophy for teaching music has had significant positive impact on music education around the world, and is now at the core of music teaching in the United States and other English speaking countries. The Kod疝y Today handbook...

To what extent can music be employed to shape one culture's understanding of another? In the American imagination, Japan has represented the "most alien" nation for over 150 years. This perceived difference has inspired fantasies--of both desire and repulsion--through which Japanese culture has profoundly...

Recent years have seen a rise in interest, from a diversity of fields, in the musical ensemble as an exemplary form of creative group behavior. Musical ensembles can be understood and investigated as high functioning small group organizations that have coordinative structures in place...

A stirring and eye-opening celebration of the enduring legacy of one of the most acclaimed and influential albums of the 90s--The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Released in 1998, Lauryn Hill's first solo album is often cited by music critics as one of the most...

This book breaks new ground in the social and cultural history of eighteenth-century music in Britain through the study of a hitherto neglected resource, the lists of subscribers that were attached to a wide variety of publications, including musical works.Author: Simon D. I. FlemingISBN-10:...

Funk is an African American musical genre that causes the average listener to have an uncontrollable desire to move their feet and dance. Funknology is a synthesis of ideas designed to cause the average reader to have an irresistible urge to move their heart....

In his preface to the first Arcana: Musicians on Music (2000), avant-garde composer and saxophone player John Zorn wrote: "This book exists to correct an unfortunate injustice, the incredible lack of insightful critical writing about a significant generation of the best and most important...

John Zorn's acclaimed Arcana series, now in its seventh installment, is a major source on new music theory and practice in the twenty-first century. The most varied collection to date, Arcana VII includes personal essays by New Music luminaries Pat Metheny, Bryce Dessner, Irvine...

Author: Paul WilliamsISBN-10: 0934558353ISBN-13: 9780934558358Publisher: Entwhistle BooksLanguage: EnglishPublished: 02/01/2000Pages: 212Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.60lbsSize: 8.05h x 5.08w x 0.65d

TURN IT ON AGAIN PETER GABRIEL, PHIL COLLINS AND GENESISAuthor: Dave ThompsonISBN-10: 0879308109ISBN-13: 9780879308100Publisher: Backbeat BooksLanguage: EnglishPublished: 11/01/2004Pages: 336Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.46lbsSize: 8.86h x 7.78w x 0.83d

Being musical does not necessarily mean being a musician; it doesn't mean playing the piano at parties or composing songs for lovers. It is a way of being awake, an angle of perception, a tilt of the ear. The musical ear knows it is...

People Get Ready!: A New History of Gospel Music is a passionate, celebratory, and carefully researched chronology of one of America's greatest treasures. From Africa through the spirituals, from minstrel music through jubilee, and from traditional to contemporary gospel, People Get Ready! shows the...

(Guitar). The solos, duets and songs in this anthology are taken from the original sources and are graded and carefully fingered for the modern player. It is as faithful as possible to the originals while offering a practical performing score suitable for the concert...

What if our existence is a product of its interruptions? What if the words that structure our lives are themselves governed by the periods and commas that bring them to a close, or our images by the cinematic cuts that mark them off? Are...

Microgroove continues John Corbett's exploration of diverse musics, with essays, interviews, and musician profiles that focus on jazz, improvised music, contemporary classical, rock, folk, blues, post-punk, and cartoon music. Corbett's approach to writing is as polymorphous as the music, ranging from oral history and...

John Cage's disdain for records was legendary. He repeatedly spoke of the ways in which recorded music was antithetical to his work. In Records Ruin the Landscape, David Grubbs argues that, following Cage, new genres in experimental and avant-garde music in the 1960s were...

Noise, an underground music made through an amalgam of feedback, distortion, and electronic effects, first emerged as a genre in the 1980s, circulating on cassette tapes traded between fans in Japan, Europe, and North America. With its cultivated obscurity, ear-shattering sound, and over-the-top performances,...

Along with the Stooges, the Velvet Underground, and the New York Dolls, the MC5 are recognized in music circles as one of the bands that paved the way for punk rock. While the group did not reach the heights of national celebrity or financial...

Music of Yes examines the work of one of the most creative groups from the progressive rock period, Yes.Unlike most books on rock music, Music of Yes does not focus on personalities, but instead on musical structures, lyrical vision, and cultural and historical context....

In The Drum: A History, drummer, instructor, and blogger Matt Dean details the earliest evidence of the drum from all regions of the planet, looking at cave paintings, statues, temple reliefs, and burial remains before finding existing relics of actual drums, which have survived...

How did a small, humble folk instrument become an American icon? How did the guitar come to represent freedom, the open road, protest and rebellion, the blues, youth, lost love, and sexuality? In this intensely personal memoir and informative history, National Public Radio commentator...

Technology has always been inseparable from the development of music. But in the twentieth century a rapid acceleration took place: a new "machine music" came into existence, electronic musical instruments appeared, and composers sometimes seemed more like sound technicians than musicians. In this book...

Opera is the fastest growing of all the performing arts, attracting audiences of all ages who are enthralled by the gorgeous music, vivid drama, and magnificent production values. If you've decided that the time has finally come to learn about opera and discover for...

The intimate story of one of the great American bands of our time, creators of the controversial masterpiece Yankee Hotel Foxtrot When alt-country heroes-turned-rock-iconoclasts Wilco handed in their fourth album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, to the band's label, Reprise, a division of Warner Brothers, fans...

Nashville is a name synonymous with music. Years before the first radio broadcast of country music from Nashville's Grand Ole Opry, music and publishing were central to Nashville's self-identity. Thousands of songs flooded into the Cumberland and Tennessee River valleys from Southern Appalachia, sung...

Derived from the colorful traditions of vaudeville, burlesque, revue, and operetta, the musical has blossomed into America's most popular form of theater. Scott McMillin has developed a fresh aesthetic theory of this underrated art form, exploring the musical as a type of drama deserving...

Miles Davis and Juliette Greco, Jackson Pollock and Jack Kerouac, Marlon Brando and Bob Dylan and William Burroughs. What do all these people have in common? Fame, of course, and undeniable talent. But most of all, they were cool. Birth of the Cool is...

Iggy Pop once said of women: "However close they come I'll always pull the rug from under them. That's where my music is made." For so long, rock 'n' roll has been fueled by this fear and loathing of the feminine. The first book...

AMERICAN SINGING GROUPS: A HISTORY 1940 TO TODAYAuthor: Jay WarnerISBN-10: 0634099787ISBN-13: 9780634099786Publisher: Hal Leonard Publishing CorporationLanguage: EnglishPublished: 03/01/2006Pages: 622Format: PaperbackWeight: 2.08lbsSize: 9.20h x 7.44w x 1.10dReview Citation(s): Reference and Research Bk News 08/01/2006 pg. 251Choice 11/01/2006 pg. 452

Author: Carlton M. HughesISBN-10: 0595221726ISBN-13: 9780595221721Publisher: iUniverseLanguage: EnglishPublished: 03/27/2002Pages: 236Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.80lbsSize: 9.20h x 5.90w x 0.60d

"Record Collecting for Girls is an invitation for all of you stereophiles (who happen to be female), to make your own top-five lists, and then, armed and ready with the book's fun facts, to argue their merits to the ever-present boys' club of music...

Engaging, clear and informative, this is the story of western music - of its great composers and also of its performers and listeners, of changing ideas of what music is and what it is for. Paul Griffiths shows how music has evolved through the...

The vibrant world of jazz may be viewed from many angles, from social and cultural history to music analysis, from economics to ethnography. It is challenging and exciting territory. This volume of nineteen specially commissioned essays offers informed and accessible guidance to the challenge,...

Music and song are central to modern culture--social movements to cultural change. Building on their studies of the sixties culture and the theory of cognitive praxis, the authors examine the mobilization of cultural traditions and the formation of new collective identities through the music...

Theodor W. Adorno broached key questions about the role of music in contemporary society and argued that it affected consciousness and was a means of social management and control. Asserting that music sociology can be greatly enriched by returning to Adorno's focus on music...

The Cambridge Music Guide is for all those who love music and wish to know more about its colorful history, development and theory. Superbly illustrated, the Guide is a comprehensive tour of every aspect of the musical world, expertly edited by Stanley Sadie, editor...

From the Preface by Ted Gioia: All of these musicians fought their way back over the next decade, and their success in re-establishing themselves as important artists was perhaps the first signal, initially unrecognized as such, that a re-evaluation of the earlier West Coast...

A concise history of Romantic music and composers from Schubert to SibeliusAuthor: Arnold WhittallISBN-10: 050020215XISBN-13: 9780500202159Publisher: Thames & HudsonLanguage: EnglishPublished: 04/17/1987Pages: 192Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.50lbsSize: 8.20h x 5.70w x 0.50d

"Name an iconic Sixties rock moment and Ellen Sander was probably there. A beautifully written, sweeping yet intimate account of America's cultural awakening in that decade. Massively entertaining" -- Rolling Stone A #1 Amazon Bestseller: Musical Philosophy & Social Aspects As a pioneering rock...

For most of the last ten years of Beethoven's life, Anton Schindler was closely associated with the composer as pupil, secretary, servant, and factotum. This relationship gave him an incomparable vantage point for writing a personalized, detailed biography of the great man.In 1840 Schindler...

The Trait de l'harmonie of Jen-Philippe Rameau is one of the most important books in the history of Western music. Written while Rameau was still a relatively obscure organist and music master at Clermont-Ferrand, the book received but one printing during Rameau's life, in...