Music-History & Criticism

Almost 50 years ago, my generation participated in the Summer of Love. Boys From Houston III reflects our teen scene in Houston during the summer of 1967; which clubs we attended, the bands we loved to dance to and the music that captured our...

Milwaukee hasn't earned a reputation as a launching pad for hopeful rock stars, but for generations it has had the perfect acoustics for the garage band rock scene. Of course, the whole point of garage rock is that every place has the perfect acoustics,...

In 1962, Harry Tuft founded the Denver Folklore Center to bring together contemporary folk music fans and performers such as Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Judy Collins and so many more. In the following decade, a core of folk enthusiasts established the Swallow Hill Music...

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, legendary artists like Aretha Franklin, the Rolling Stones, Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan traveled to North Alabama to record with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm section, also known as the Swampers. But Alabama hasn't just attracted musical stars...

The music that has been produced in Memphis over the past 100 years is as unique and diverse as the city itself. Growing out of the Mississippi Delta, the Memphis blues have been transported worldwide by such ambassadors as B.B. King and Howlin' Wolf....

The first notes of jazz hit Cape Cod in the very early days of the genre. Bournehurst-on-the-Canal hosted top bands, and emerging swing era dancers packed the hall. Cape Cod's "First Lady of Jazz," Marie Marcus, was a child prodigy in Boston and found...

Inside the Texas State Prison is a surprising story of ingenuity, optimism and musical creativity. During the mid-twentieth century, inmates at the Huntsville unit and neighboring Goree State Farm for Women captured hearts all over Texas during weekly radio broadcasts and live stage performances....

Kentuckians have been wearing out shoe leather at informal jamborees since the state was settled over two hundred years ago. Tadpole's Dew Drop Inn played host to some fifteen hundred musical shindigs in its time as a mecca of Marshall County music. A Rosine...

Despite its sparse population, Kansas is well represented in the annals of music history. The state claims some of the most popular acts from the past century, including Kansas, Count Basie, Big Joe Turner, Martina McBride, Melissa Etheridge and Charlie Parker. A wide variety...

Carolina Beach Music from the '60s to the '80s" "The New Wave" picks up where "Carolina Beach Music" " The Classic Years" left off, covering more of those classic beach music tunes as well as the newer self-aware songs that were the beginning of...

In the Carolinas, bluegrass is more than music--it's a way of life. The origins of the genre date back to the earliest frontier settlements, and banjo music appeared at dances in Greenville, South Carolina, as early as 1780. The genre was essential to socialization...

From the first Tin Pan Alley tunes to today's million-view streaming hits, pop songs have been supported and influenced by an increasingly complex industry that feeds audience demand for its ever-evolving supply of hits. Harvey Rachlin investigates how music entered American homes and established...

The Free Musics goes into previously unexplored territory in the study of music-the social reality of musicians, especially those categorized as avant-garde, viewing all such musicians as distinct social groups. They are motivated specific to musicology and social/economic realities, which have changed from the...

This book discusses the myriad ways in which Beethoven begins his works and the structural, rhetorical, and emotional implications of these beginnings for listeners. Examining the opening moments of nearly 200 compositions, it offers a new method of analysis of Beethoven's music. At the...

This book challenges the assumption that Franz Schubert (1797-1828), best known for the lyricism of his songs, symphonies and chamber music, lacked comparable talent for drama. It is commonly assumed that Franz Schubert (1797-1828), best known for the lyricism of his songs, symphonies, and...

Covering Brahms's 32 song opuses published during four decades of song-writing, this book offers a way of understanding what Brahms believed to be the right poetic basis for his immortal music. Johannes Brahms's much-loved solo songs continue to be enjoyed in recordings and on...

Satie's music and ideas are inextricably linked with the City of Light. This book situates Satie's work within the context and sonic environment of contemporary Paris. Erik Satie's (1866-1925) music appeals to wide audiences and has influenced both experimental artists and pop musicians. Little...

Music at German Courts serves to illustrate the extraordinary diversity of eighteenth-century German court music establishments without losing sight of what these Kapellen had in common. What was musical life at German courts really like during the eighteenth century? Were musical ensembles as diverse...

Christian Lehmann brings his experience as a musicologist, singer and academic to this fascinating journey through the origins of music and its role in human development, culture and society.Author: Christian LehmannISBN-10: 1783080280ISBN-13: 9781783080281Publisher: First Hill BooksLanguage: EnglishPublished: 09/15/2014Pages: 174Format: HardcoverWeight: 0.82lbsSize: 8.50h x 5.50w...

Canadian-American singer-songwriter Rufus Wainwright is famous around the world for his multi-faceted musical style, shown through both his recorded output and his engaging live performances. In this book, Katherine Williams combines aspects of his life story with scholarly readings drawn from several methodologies. Popular...

Graham Collier's career in jazz lasted over five decades. He was a bassist, a band-leader, a composer, an educator and an author, who wrote extensively about the music. His working life was littered with 'firsts'. Amongst his many achievements, he was the first British...

Born in 1905, Bill Russell demonstrated diverse musical interests from an early age. A contemporary of John Cage, Henry Cowell and Lou Harrison, his significance as a percussion composer is well known among aficionados and his work as a musicologist of New Orleans jazz...

David Bowie: every single song. Everything you want to know, everything you didn't know. David Bowie remains mysterious and unknowable, despite 45 years of recording and performing. His legacy is roughly 600 songs, which range from psychedelia to glam rock to Philadelphia soul, from...

For over 70 years the secret romance between the famous Sir Granville Bantock, a British conductor and composer who traveled the world giving concerts, and Muriel Mann has been exactly that-a secret. The year, 1936, had Sir Granville traveling the East Coast of the...

With the exception of the new form, Opera, the previous two centuries of musicology have tended to present the Baroque Period, 1600-1750, as a period of functional, even mechanical, music. The contemporary discussion in this volume will help the reader understand that nothing could...

With the exception of the new form, Opera, the previous two centuries of musicology have tended to present the Baroque Period, 1600-1750, as a period of functional, even mechanical, music. The contemporary discussion in this volume will help the reader understand that nothing could...

With the exception of the new form, Opera, the previous two centuries of musicology have tended to present the Baroque Period, 1600-1750, as a period of functional, even mechanical, music. The contemporary discussion in this volume will help the reader understand that nothing could...

This is the definitive study in English of the role of the wind band during the French Revolution and the Bourbon Restoration. In instrumentation the modern wind band begins here. Finally available in a fully updated second edition including new material on works by...

This volume is a compilation of original philosophic views on the relationship of music and religion as early history progressed towards more modern times, beginning with the strong association of music with religion. The early Christian Church rejected most of these early views but...

For the first time, Dr. David Whitwell presents a thorough study of the performance of music in society together with the philosophical views on art versus entertainment, the role of performance in education and character formation and how earlier philosophers viewed the interplay among...

Classical Period Wind Band and Wind Ensemble Repertoire is the eighth volume in Dr. David Whitwell's ground breaking thirteen-volume History and Literature of the Wind Band and Wind Ensemble series. This volume is a companion to the fourth volume in this series, The Wind...

The Nineteenth-Century Wind Band and Wind Ensemble is the fifth volume in Dr. David Whitwell's ground breaking thirteen-volume History and Literature of the Wind Band and Wind Ensemble series. Whitwell's meticulous scholarship reveals the continuous history of the wind ensemble, from its earliest roots...

The Wind Band and Wind Ensem-ble Before 1500 is the first vol-ume in Dr. David Whitwell's ground break-ing thir-teen vol-ume His-tory and Lit-er-a-ture of the Wind Band and Wind Ensem-ble series. Whitwell's metic-u-lous schol-ar-ship reveals the con-tin-u-ous his-tory of the wind ensem-ble, from its...

This book traces the history of music education from the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Greece and Rome to the modern era. The reader will see the most natural concepts of the ancient music education as it then passes through the Dark Ages when the...

The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads begins where Francis Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads leaves off. Bronson has collected all available tunes for each of Child's ballads, annotated and organized them, with notes describing the history and development of each tune...

The Traditional Tunes of the Child Ballads begins where Francis Child's The English and Scottish Popular Ballads leaves off. Bronson has collected all available tunes for each of Child's ballads, annotated and organized them, with notes describing the history and development of each tune...

What do a rockabilly musician turned cinematic swamp monster, a composer of player-piano music, an avant-garde cellist, a musical instrument that lent its name to a weapon, a rock musician turned Catholic monk, some of the best audio speakers in the world, and the...

"When religion becomes artificial, art has a duty to rescue it. Art can show that the symbols which religions would have us believe literally true are actually figurative. Art can idealize those symbols, and so reveal the profound truths they contain." - Richard Wagner...

It does all one could ask, and more, of a pocket guide.-The Times Literary Supplement One of the newest and most recommendable Mozart books is the Pocket Guide to Mozart. Written in a beautifully lucid and enthusiastic style.-The Independent on Sunday To celebrate the...

"Cape Town's public cultures can only be fully appreciated through recognition of its deep and diverse soundscape. We have to listen to what has made and makes a city. The ear is an integral part of the 'research tools' one needs to get a...

An analysis of sex and gender in music videos, covering everyone from Beyonce to Madonna, Nine Inch Nails to Mykki Blanco. In Justify My Love, Ryann Donnelly explores sex and gender in one of the most widely consumed art forms of our age --...

Moby Grape are a genuine cult phenomenon. Their story, a mixture of myth and truth, is a cautionary tale, a triumph, and a tragedy all at once. Though they are seen as a symbol of 1960s San Francisco, Moby Grape were never actually a...

The Music of the Future is not a book of predictions or speculations about how to save the music business or the bleeding edge of technologies. Rather, it's a history of failures, mapping 200 years of attempts by composers, performers and critics to imagine...

Sometimes popular music registers our concerns and anxieties more lucidly than we realise. This is evident in the case of an ideal of childhood innocence in rapid decay in recent decades. So claims Down with Childhood, as it takes in psychedelia's preoccupation with rebirth...

For a time, the Isle of Wight Festivals transformed a sleepy English island into the rock'n'roll capital of the world. What started in 1968 as a parochial one-nighter in a stubble field to raise funds for a local swimming pool, a year later ballooned...

The musical achievements of The Beatles are well chronicled but their ability to generate myths and legends is a lesser known area of Beatlemania. By turns the legends and stories told about the Fab Four are bizarre, downright scary, incredible and - occasionally -...

Raphael Bronstein is among the most legendary violin instructors in recent memory. Arguably one of the strongest influences on our current generation of violin teachers and players, he counted among his students such luminaries as Elmar Oliveira, Martha Strongin Katz, Lya Stern, Jay Zhong,...

I consider myself lucky to be born on the 29th of December in the year of 1970. On the other side of my Mother's womb awaited Afro's, bell bottoms, black power and soul music. However amidst the black love lay a dark cloud mixed...

Hip-Hop at it's core is authentic and unapologetic without those two attributes, you ain't Hip-Hop If you feel like you're disrespecting someone, when you say the word nigga, you're definitely not Hip-Hop. So, don't even put yourself in that space, especially if you feel...

Let's take it back to the seventiesWhen Rap was born and made emcees. But before they could even bless the MicIt would be the DJ that rocked the night From the Message that rained down from Sugar HillTo the beat from chic that spun...