Music-History & Criticism

The Russian school of violin playing produced many of the twentieth century's leading violinists - from the famed disciples of Leopold Auer such as Jascha Heifetz, Nathan Milstein, and Mischa Elman to masters of the Soviet years such as David Oistrakh and Leonid Kogan....

The music of Broadway is one of America's most unique and popular calling cards. In Broadway to Main Street: How Show Tunes Enchanted America, author Laurence Maslon tells the story of how the most beloved songs of the American Musical Theater made their way...

In the wake of the Asia-Pacific War, Korean survivors of the "comfort women" system-those bound into sexual slavery for the Japanese military during the war-lived under great pressure not to speak about what had happened to them. Hearts of Pine brings us into the...

Few musicals have had the impact of Lerner and Loewe's timeless classic My Fair Lady. Sitting in the middle of an era dominated by such seminal figures as Rodgers and Hammerstein, Frank Loesser, and Leonard Bernstein, My Fair Lady not only enjoyed critical success...

In 1929 Nadia Boulanger accepted Igor Stravinsky's younger son, Soulima, as her student. Within two years, Stravinsky and Boulanger merged their artistic spheres, each influencing and enhancing the cultural work of the other until the composer's death in 1971. Teaching Stravinsky tells Boulanger's story...

What is music, what is its value, and what does it mean? In this stimulating volume, Roger Scruton offers a comprehensive account of the nature and significance of music from the perspective of modern philosophy. The study begins with the metaphysics of sound. Scruton...

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...

Drawing upon a remarkable mix of intensive research and the personal experience of a career devoted to the music about which Dvo疚 so presciently spoke, Maurice Peress's lively and convincing narrative treats readers to a rare and delightful glimpse behind the scenes of the...

The connections between a great artist's life and work are subtle, complex, and often highly revealing. In the case of Beethoven, however, the standard approach has been to treat his life and his art separately. Now, Barry Cooper's new volume incorporates the latest international...

Music in the USA: A Documentary Companion charts a path through American music and musical life using as guides the words of composers, performers, writers and the rest of us ordinary folks who sing, dance, and listen. The anthology of primary sources contains about...

Poised to become a classic of jazz literature, Visions of Jazz: The First Century offers seventy-nine chapters illuminating the lives of virtually all the major figures in jazz history. From Louis Armstrong's renegade-style trumpet playing to Sarah Vaughan's operatic crooning, and from the swinging...

Given the phenomenal fame and commercial success that the Beatles knew for the entire course of their familiar career, their music per se has received surprisingly little detailed attention. Not all of their cultural influence can be traced to long hair and flashy clothing;...

Country Music: A Very Short Introduction presents a compelling overview of the music and its impact on American culture. Country music has long been a marker of American identity; from our popular culture to our politics, it has provided a soundtrack to our national...

The first history of keyboard improvisation in European music in the postclassical and romantic periods, Fantasies of Improvisation: Free Playing in Nineteenth-Century Music documents practices of improvisation on the piano and the organ, with a particular emphasis on free fantasies and other forms of...

Described by music critic Alex Ross as "the most original musical thinker of our time" and having received innumerable accolades in a career spanning over fifty years, composer Steve Reich is considered by many to be America's greatest contemporary composer. His music, however, remains...

This book is about how music "in a key" is composed. Further, it is about how such music was composed when it was no longer compulsory to do so, starting a few years before the First World War. In an eclectic journey through the...

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...

From Washington Square Park and the Gaslight Café to WNYC Radio and Folkways Records, New York City's cultural, artistic, and commercial assets helped to shape a distinctively urban breeding ground for the folk music revival of the 1950s and 60s. Folk City explores New...

Straight out of his beloved Twitter feed @RockCriticLaw, acclaimed rock journalist and author of the classic books Come As You Are: The Story of Nirvana and Our Band Could Be Your Life, Michael Azerrad turns his trenchant eye to the art of rock writing...

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,...

The Power of Song explores the music and dance of Franciscan and Jesuit mission communities throughout the entire northern frontier of New Spain. Its purpose is to examine the roles music played: in teaching, evangelization, celebration, and the formation of group identities. There is...

The Guitar in Jazz presents in rich, entertaining detail the history and development of the guitar as a jazz instrument. In a series of essays by some of jazz's leading historians and critics, the volume traces the impressive evolution of jazz guitar playing, from...

"In his latest book on the aesthetics of music, Peter Kivy presents an argument not for authenticity but for authenticities of performance, including authenticities of intention, sound, practice, and the authenticity of personal interpretation in performance.... As usual, Kivy's work is beautifully written, well...

This book highlights the outstanding drum sets of rock, jazz, R&B, and country. Spanning seven decades, it features over 40 great kits played by Buddy Rich, Gene Krupa, Ringo Starr, John Bonham, Hal Blaine, Ginger Baker, Keith Moon, and more. A diagram details the...

(Percussion). The Great Jazz Drummers is an excellent reference for any drummer or jazz enthusiast. It features biographies and photos of 62 influential drummers, as well as a CD featuring 16 artists to demonstrate the gradual progression of jazz drumming through seven decades.Author: Ronald...

Whether you're a UFO skeptic, believer, or merely a rock music fan, Alien Rock takes you on a fascinating and irreverent journey exploring the extraterrestrial stories of your favorite rock icons. From Elvis to the Beatles and from Michael Jackson to Marilyn Manson, countless...

New York City Jazz explores many of the haunts and hideaways that have played host to iconic jazz musicians and singers like Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, Billie Holiday, Dizzy Gillespie, and Lester Young. Considered the jazz capital of the world,...

Through stories of people, music, and dreams, King Records of Cincinnati tells the history of a recording company which launched countless musical careers.Starting with a few songs and a dream in 1943, King Records--a leading American independent--launched musical careers from a shabby brick factory...

The Oklahoma Cowboy Band was the first western string band in the nation to broadcast over the radio and appear on vaudeville, drawing large audiences throughout the Midwest and Northeast. The band began in Ripley as Billy McGinty's Cowboy Band and first played over...

Author Robert Dietsche is a Toledo born jazz historian and jazz critic who has resided in the Portland, Oregon area most of his life. Tatum's Town is the jazz history of his hometown, Toledo, Ohio, a city well known for producing and supporting great...

The Definitive '70s Pop Music Countdown Finally--the complete and systematic ranking of every song and every act that peaked on Cash Box(R) magazine's Top 100 pop singles charts of the 1970s 5,350 songs performed by 1,698 acts representing all the genres and their styles...

The powerful and compelling true story of corruption, coercion and murder surrounding the Tupac Shakur & Christopher "Biggie Smalls" Wallace homicides brought to 2014. With contribution by former Los Angeles Police Detective Russell Poole, the original Wallace homicide investigator, Michael Douglas Carlin, Director of...

"Paul is dead."It was the late 1960s, the Beatles hadn't toured since 1966, and some truly bizarre indications began appearing, pointing to the unthinkable: Paul McCartney had been killed in a car accident and replaced by a look-alike. The Walrus Was Paul unearths every...

In 1964, on the brink of the British Invasion, the music business in America shunned rock and roll. There was no rock press, no such thing as artist management -- literally no rock-and-roll business. Today the industry will gross over $20 billion. How did...

The dictionary defines trivia as: "matter or things of very slight importance, commonplace, or ordinary." Yet anyone who has ever read anything about a favorite sports star, singer, historic figure or celebrity will find that it is often the so-called trivia that makes things...

GALLAGHER MARRIOTT DERRINGER & TROWER THEIR LIVES AND MUSICAuthor: Dan MuiseISBN-10: 0634029568ISBN-13: 9780634029561Publisher: Hal Leonard Publishing CorporationLanguage: EnglishPublished: 04/01/2002Pages: 304Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.92lbsSize: 10.86h x 8.60w x 0.75d

Author: John MinahanISBN-10: 0595137458ISBN-13: 9780595137459Publisher: iUniverseLanguage: EnglishPublished: 11/20/2000Pages: 264Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.84lbsSize: 9.16h x 6.08w x 0.65d

Author: Nat BrandtISBN-10: 0595010113ISBN-13: 9780595010110Publisher: iUniverseLanguage: EnglishPublished: 12/01/2000Pages: 308Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.00lbsSize: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.69d

Sheramy Bundrick proposes that the depictions of musical performance in fifth century BC Athens were intimately linked to contemporary developments in the field of music itself, such as the debate over music in education, theories of musical ethos, and the growing popularity of professional...

From Please Please Me to Abbey Road, this collection of essays tells the fascinating story of the Beatles - the creation of the band, their musical influences, and their cultural significance, with emphasis on their genesis and practices as musicians, songwriters, and recording artists....

As the Soviet Union's foremost composer, Shostakovich's status in the West has always been problematic. Regarded by some as a collaborator, and by others as a symbol of moral resistance, both he and his music met with approval and condemnation in equal measure. The...

This is a new, thoroughly revised edition of Paul Oliver's classic study of the blues. First published in 1960, this remarkable book has not been superseded and its reappearance will be welcomed by all who wish to understand the complexity of meaning in the...

Peter Williams approaches afresh the life and music of arguably the most studied of all composers, interpreting both Bach's life by deconstructing his original obituary in the light of more recent information and his music by evaluating his priorities and irrepressible creative energy. How,...

This book is a study of Mozart's Don Giovanni, his second opera to a libretto by da Ponte. Although it is one of the handful of best-known and most often performed operas of the last two hundred years, Don Giovanni is seldom given in...

Part of the seminal Cambridge History of Music series, this volume departs from standard histories of early modern Western music in two important ways. First, it considers music as something primarily experienced by people in their daily lives, whether as musicians or listeners, and...

This edited volume brings together academic specialists writing on the multi-media operatic form from a range of disciplines: comparative literature, history, sociology, and philosophy. The presence in the volume's title of Pierre Bourdieu, the leading cultural sociologist of the late twentieth century, signals the...

A detailed investigation of the reception and cultural contexts of Puccini's music, this book offers a fresh view of this historically important but frequently overlooked composer. Wilson's study explores the ways in which Puccini's music and persona were held up as both the antidote...

Making Money, Making Music offers tools to encourage creative and adaptive entrepreneurship in the music business. Written for the classroom and the workplace, it introduces readers to core principles and processes and shows how to apply them adaptively to new contexts, facilitating a deeper...

Listening for the Secret is a critical assessment of the Grateful Dead and the distinct culture that grew out of the group's music, politics, and performance. With roots in popular music traditions, improvisation, and the avant-garde, the Grateful Dead provides a unique lens through...

Beginning with the simple question, "Why did audiences grow silent?" Listening in Paris gives a spectator's-eye view of opera and concert life from the Old Regime to the Romantic era, describing the transformation in musical experience from social event to profound aesthetic encounter. James...