Music-History & Criticism

"Mozart's honesty, his awareness of his own genius and his contempt for authority all shine out from these letters."--Sunday Times (London). " In Mozart's Letters, Mozart's Life, Robert Spaethling presents "Mozart in all the rawness of his driving energies" (Spectator), preserved in the "zany,...

The story of a revolution in classical music and technology, told through a century of recordings of the music of Johann Sebastian Bach In Reinventing Bach, his remarkable second book, Paul Elie tells the electrifying story of how musicians of genius have made Bach's...

Over ten years since his death, Biggie Smalls, also known as The Notorious B.I.G., is considered one of the most influential rappers of all time, a credit continually given by numerous hip-hop artists. Raised in Brooklyn during the crack-cocaine boom of the late 1970s...

Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Hole and Alice in Chains are the names that come to mind when we talk about grunge. But never before has there been a complete history of grunge with razor-sharp critical analysis--until now. Grunge, a style of music that wed classic...

With only two members and no bass player the White Stripes certainly seemed like the ultimate makeshift band. So how is it that this enigmatic couple--who publicize themselves as brother and sister though official documents say they're ex-husband-and-wife--became a multi-platinum musical sensation? From their...

Back in the early 1940s, late at night in the clubs of Harlem, a handful of jazz musicians began to experiment with a style that no one had ever heard before. The music was fast, complicated, impossible to play for many of the older...

Sonny Rollins is one of jazz's great innovators, arguably the most influential tenor saxophonist, along with John Coltrane, in the history of modern jazz. He began his musical career at the age of eleven, and within five short years he was playing with the...

This anthology of essays, interviews, and autobiographical pieces provides an invaluable overview of the evolution of contemporary music--from chromaticism, serialism, and indeterminacy to jazz, vernacular, electronic, and non-Western influences. Featuring classic essays by Stravinsky, Stockhausen, and Reich, as well as writings by lesser-known but...

This book analyzes the process of composition, learning and performance of the Southern folk blues of black America. Never before has this musical form been examined so scrupulously. Evans traces the impact of commercialism, especially the phonograph record, on blues history, as well as...

The names of Nat Hentoff and Albert J. McCarthy have become almost synonymous with jazz writing. Hentoff, editor of Jazz Review, writer for Downbeat, High Fidelity, New Yorker, and the Village Voice, and McCarthy, editor of Jazz Monthly, have raised jazz beyond mere appreciation...

A vibrant portrait of the importance, influence, and impact of John Cage's iconic piece 4'33" by a leading modern music critic First performed at the midpoint of the twentieth century, John Cage's 4'33", a composition conceived of without a single musical note, is among...

Music at the Limits is the first book to bring together three decades of Edward W. Said's essays and articles on music. Addressing the work of a variety of composers, musicians, and performers, Said carefully draws out music's social, political, and cultural contexts and,...

An extraordinary prodigy of Mozartean abilities, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy was a distinguished composer and conductor, a legendary pianist and organist, and an accomplished painter and classicist. Lionized in his lifetime, he is best remembered today for several staples of the concert hall and for...

The music of the 1980s left an indelible mark on pop culture. Thanks to the dawn of MTV and the increasing affordability of synthesizers, a generation of innovative artists took the world by storm to create one of the last great glory eras of...

When I was growing up, Heavy Metal/rock music was my music of choice, it was my life. Back in those days in the late 70's and into the early 80's, we would spend our time listening to the best albums of the moment on...

A reflective look at some of those responsible for the placement of Jacksonville, Florida on the universal map of rock and roll. This autobiographical account of personal and professional triumph and tragedy takes the reader through the formative years of both Lynyrd Skynyrd and...

This book is a look at the Monkees' music through playlists devoted each producer's vision of the band at various points in their career. The music that the Monkees released was an amalgamation of the efforts of several different producers. This book is an...

Morton Feldman: Friendship and Mourning in the New York Avant-Garde documents the collaborations and conflicts essential to the history of the post-war avant-garde. It offers a study of composer Morton Feldman's associations and friendships with artists like John Cage, Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston, Frank...

Building on his 2006 book, Which Side Are You On?, Dick Weissman's A New History of American and Canadian Folk Music presents a provocative discussion of the history, evolution, and current status of folk music in the United States and Canada. North American folk...

In 1997 the rap group Racionais MCs (the 'Rational' MCs) recorded the album Sobrevivendo no Inferno (Surviving in Hell), subsequently changing the hip-hop scene in S縊 Paulo and firmly establishing itself as the point of reference for youth across Brazil. In an era when...

What were Prince's politics? What did he believe about God? And did he really forsake the subject-sex-that once made him the most subversive superstar of the Reagan era? In this illuminating thematic biography, Joseph Vogel explores the issues that made Prince one of the...

On January 13, 1968, Johnny Cash (1932-2003) took the stage at Folsom Prison in California. The concert and the live album, At Folsom Prison, propelled him to worldwide superstardom. He reached new audiences, ignited tremendous growth in the country music industry, and connected with...

Edward "Kid" Ory (1886-1973) was a trombonist, composer, recording artist, and early New Orleans jazz band leader. Creole Trombone tells his story from birth on a rural sugar cane plantation in a French-speaking, ethnically mixed family, to his emergence in New Orleans as the...

In 1971, French jazz critics Philippe Carles and Jean-Louis Comolli cowrote Free Jazz/Black Power, a treatise on the racial and political implications of jazz and jazz criticism. It remains a testimony to the long-ignored encounter of radical African American music and French left-wing criticism....

The strict traditions of piano teaching have remained entrenched for generations. The dominant influence of Muzio Clementi (1752-1832), the first composer-pedagogue of the instrument, brought about an explosion of autocratic instruction and bizarre teaching systems, exemplified in the mind-numbing drills of Hanon's "The Virtuoso...

The Delta Lowlands, a place of stunning innovation and creativity in music and film, has laid an incredible foundation for American entertainment. Talented singers, producers, and musicians from a narrow stretch of Arkansas Delta land--traversing U.S. Highway 65 south near England down to Pine...

Black Sabbath has often been credited with inventing heavy metal with their first album released in 1970. Their new style of music was loud, brutal, scary, innovative, and it has greatly influenced heavy metal bands since then. Their five decades of music cross generations...

As the turbulent 60's began to fade into the calmer 70's, a coterie of young singers, songwriters, musicians, artists, and poets began to congregate, musically on the stage of The New Bijou Theater - the Springfield, Missouri nightclub that would become the loose-knit group's...

This illustrated journey through lost, overlooked, and uncompleted works is "a fascinating enrichment of the history of sf and fantasy" (Booklist).Science fiction and fantasy reign over popular culture now, associated in our mind with blockbuster movies and massive conventions. But there's much more to...

I Found My Friends re-creates the story of Nirvana, from its earliest days in 1987 to its sudden end seven years later, through the words of the musicians and producers who played and interacted with the band. Soulsby interviewed over 200 musicians from bands...

Scholars have long known that world music was not merely the globalized product of modern media, but rather that it connected religions, cultures, languages and nations throughout world history. The chapters in this History take readers to foundational historical moments - in Europe, Oceania,...

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 first analytical study of the pioneering English musician. The historian, Paul Sutton begins by taking the reader through an entertaining potted history of rock music pioneers, tracing them all back to "a delta of Mississippi mud from where howled the first harmonica, and...

"Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller" was a 2004 SEBA Book Award finalist, and a 2004 Book Critics Circle Award finalist. "Goodbye, Little Rock and Roller" is an inventive and original book from Nashville singer/songwriter Chapman, who uses twelve of her most resonant songs as...

Field Guide to the Irish Music Session is the first and only book devoted entirely to the dynamics and etiquette of the traditional Irish musical gathering. There's more to these events than meets the eye or ear, and Field Guide covers it all, with...

50th Anniversary of The Beatles in America. The Beatles' performance at New York's Shea Stadium on August 15, 1965 is one of the most exciting and important concert events in the history of popular music. Produced by Sid Bernstein and introduced on stage by...

The first systematic assessment of the symphonic style of the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu [1890-1959], tracing the evolution of his musical language and including detailed analyses of all six symphonies. Over the past few decades the music of the Czech composer Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959)...

A vivid grasp of the story and the characters in The Ring of Niebelung brings Richard Wagner's mythic four-opera cycle to life. The Ring Cycle has a hold on our imagination like no other operatic work because it is archetypal and has the power...

FAB FOUR FAQ 2.0: THE BEATLES' SOLO YEARS 1970--1980Author: Robert RodriguezISBN-10: 0879309687ISBN-13: 9780879309688Publisher: Backbeat BooksLanguage: EnglishPublished: 03/01/2010Pages: 496Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.46lbsSize: 8.96h x 6.12w x 0.98d

Although Theodor W. Adorno is best known for his association with the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory, he began his career as a composer and successful music critic. Night Music presents the first complete English translations of two collections of texts compiled by German...

Hans Ulrich Obrist in conversation with the foremost musicians and composers of the mid- to late 20th-century, from Yoko Ono to Brian EnoFollowing the success of Hans Ulrich Obrist's A Brief History of Curating, this publication gathers the influential curator's interviews with some of...

A young man, dreaming of conquering the entertainment world, repeatedly copies what went before until he feels in command of the art that inspired him. He succeeds and achieves artistic greatness while simultaneously entertaining the crowds. The language of the street and The Bible...

On the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles in 1965 and 1966 an electrifying scene appeared out of nowhere, exploded into creativity, and then, just as suddenly, vanished. So much remarkable music, art, and social revolution came from one place at one time, it's difficult...

Listen. What do you hear?We are surrounded by sounds all the time, but we tend not to hear them; our brains are very good at editing what our ears pick up. If we stop for a moment to listen, there they are: the ticking...

Tav Falco's sprawling study of Memphis begins with the Civil War massacre at Fort Pillow, the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1878 and the grisly murders of the Harp Brothers. Falco traces these legends of Reconstruction-era Memphis to an equally brutal twentieth century underworld --...

The Singing Voice in Contemporary Cinema considers different contextual formations of singing and how they contribute to narrative, emotional affect and cultural sensitivities.The singing voice is arguably the most expressive of all musical instruments. This volume celebrates the ways in which singing features in...

Hangin' Tough, the second album by the New Kids on the Block, has sold more than seventeen million copies worldwide since it was released in 1988. But the album and the band have also been dismissed, derided and deemed uncool by the music establishment....

In this first installment of acclaimed music writer David Toop's interdisciplinary and sweeping overview of free improvisation, Into the Maelstrom: Music, Improvisation and the Dream of Freedom: Before 1970 introduces the philosophy and practice of improvisation (both musical and otherwise) within the historical context...

Smile is not merely a great unfinished album, but a living work of art that is all at once expansive, indeterminate, and resolutely pop. In the early 1960s, The Beach Boys rose from the suburbs of Hawthorne, California to become emissaries of a post-war...

When George Jones recorded "He Stopped Loving Her Today" more than thirty years ago, he was a walking disaster. Twin addictions to drugs and alcohol had him drinking Jim Beam by the case and snorting cocaine as long as he was awake. Before it...