Music-History & Criticism

New York City Vaudeville provides a unique pictorial record of America's preeminent entertainment medium in the late 1800s through the early 1930s. New York's Palace Theatreserved as the flagship for vaudeville, on which stage everyvaudevillian aspired to perform. New York City Vaudevillefeatures photographs of...

The Speculum musicae of Magister Jacobus de Ispania from Li ge is the ultimate Medieval Summa of music. Compiled probably during the 1330s, it comprises no fewer than seven books, altogether totaling more than 375,000 words. Princeton musicologist Rob C. Wegman offers a translation...

Grant Maxwell examines the recorded music of popular culture with the same subtlety and care as he brings to the literary and philosophical texts of high culture. He seeks not just breadth of knowledge but coherence of insight; not just accumulation of knowledge but...

I have been lucky enough to have studied and worked with an ecletcic range of artists who, along the way, became my 'touchstones' as well as friends and mentors. What connects the mastery of ragtime and gospel great Rev. Gary Davis, improvisation genius Lennie...

These are the letters of a great love story. In 1917, the Czech composer Leos Janáçek met Kamila Stösslová while on holiday at Luhaçovice, a spa resort in Moravia. He was sixty-three and locked in a loveless marriage; she was twenty-six, the wife of...

After the Mass Ordinary, the Magnificat was the liturgical text most frequently set by Renaissance composers, and Orlando di Lasso's 101 polyphonic settings form the largest and most varied repertory of Magnificats in the history of European music. In the first detailed investigation of...

A brand-new look at the life and music of renowned composer Erich Wolfgang Korngold Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897-1957) was the last compositional prodigy to emerge from the Austro-German tradition of Mozart and Mendelssohn. He was lauded in his youth by everyone from Mahler to...

Aspects of beauty in the music of Mozart It is a common article of faith that Mozart composed the most beautiful music we can know. But few of us ask why. Why does the beautiful in Mozart stand apart, as though untouched by human...

Before the nineteenth century, instrumental music was considered inferior to vocal music. Kant described wordless music as "more pleasure than culture," and Rousseau dismissed it for its inability to convey concepts. But by the early 1800s, a dramatic shift was under way. Purely instrumental...

Since its first publication in 1990, Brahms and His World has become a key text for listeners, performers, and scholars interested in the life, work, and times of one of the nineteenth century's most celebrated composers. In this substantially revised and enlarged edition, the...

Edward Elgar (1857-1934) is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating, important, and influential figures in the history of British music. He rose from humble beginnings and achieved fame with music that to this day is beloved by audiences in England, and his work has...

Aaron Copland and His World reassesses the legacy of one of America's best-loved composers at a pivotal moment--as his life and work shift from the realm of personal memory to that of history. This collection of seventeen essays by distinguished scholars of American music...

In this book Jean-Jacques Nattiez, well-known for his pioneering work in musical semiology, examines both music, and discourse about music, as products of human activity that are perceived in varying ways by various cultures. Asking such questions as "what is a musical work" and...

Antonin Dvor疚 made his famous trip to the United States one hundred years ago, but despite an enormous amount of attention from scholars and critics since that time, he remains an elusive figure. Comprising both interpretive essays and a selection of fascinating documents that...

"Comprehensive and intelligently organized. . . . Jazz aficionados . . . should be grateful to have so much good writing on the subject in one place."--The New York Times Book Review "Alluring. . . . Capture[s] much of the breadth of the music,...

Leo Treitler is a central figure in American musicology, both for his writings on medieval and Renaissance music and for his influential work on historical analysis. In this elegant book he develops a powerful statement of what music analysis and criticism in relation to...

This ambitious study offers a panoramic survey of musical thought in the eighteenth century and, at the same time, a close analysis of the important theoretical topics of the period. The result is the most comprehensive account ever given of the theory behind the...

The complex status of Chopin in our culture--he was a native Pole and adopted Frenchman, and a male composer writing in "feminine" genres--is the subject of Jeffrey Kallberg's absorbing book. Combining social history, literary theory, musicology, and feminist thought, Chopin at the Boundaries is...

Though his image is tarnished today by unrepentant anti-Semitism, Richard Wagner (1813-1883) was better known in the nineteenth century for his provocative musical eroticism. In this illuminating study of the composer and his works, Laurence Dreyfus shows how Wagner's obsession with sexuality prefigured the...

When originally published in 1971, Hollywood Studio Musicians was the first detailed analysis of the work and careers of production personnel in an industry devoted to mass culture. Previously, most researchers overlooked mass-culture industries as work settings, preferring to focus on content rather than...

Author: Mabusha CooperISBN-10: 1410799352ISBN-13: 9781410799357Publisher: 1st Book LibraryLanguage: EnglishPublished: 02/04/2004Pages: 160Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.84lbsSize: 11.02h x 8.40w x 0.36d

The definitive work on the organ throughout history starting with a documented chronological history of the instrument, especially in England and Germany. When originally published in 1877 this work was the introduction to The Organ: Its History and Construction by Edward J. Hopkins, which...

There is little question about the incredible power of Bruce Springsteen's work as a particularly transformative art, as a lyrical and musical fusion that never shies away from sifting through the rubble of human conflict. As Rolling Stone magazine's Parke Puterbaugh observes, Springsteen 'is...

This vintage book contains a comprehensive treatise of Baroque music. It was written for the music student and music lover, with the aim of acquainting them with this great period of music history and helping them to gain a historical understanding of music without...

These free-wheeling, often exhilarating dialogues--which grew out of the acclaimed Carnegie Hall Talks--are an exchange between two of the most prominent figures in contemporary culture: Daniel Barenboim, internationally renowned conductor and pianist, and Edward W. Said, eminent literary critic and impassioned commentator on the...

does eminem matter? On assignment for his first cover story for Rolling Stone, the very first national cover story on Eminem, Anthony Bozza met a young blond kid, a rapper who would soon take the country by storm. But back in 1999, Eminem was...

If the opera world is full of "intrigue, double meanings, and devious dramatics," then no place exemplifies this more than the world-famous Metropolitan Opera, where politics, ambition, and oversized egos have traditionally taken center stage along with some of the world's richest music. Drawing...

The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration and rapidly growing technology and expanding record-keeping made possible by advances in the printing press. In its determination to preserve the century of revolution, Gale initiated a revolution of its own: digitization of epic proportions...

A Social History of Early Rock 'n' Roll in Germanyexplores the people and spaces of St. Pauli's rock'n'roll scene in the 1960s. Starting in 1960, young British rockers were hired to entertain tourists in Hamburg's red-light district around the Reeperbahn in the area of...

When Schubert's contemporary reviewers first heard his modulations, they famously claimed that they were excessive, odd and unplanned. This book argues that these claims have haunted the analysis of Schubert's harmony ever since, outlining why Schubert's music occupies a curiously marginal position in the...

The most influential compositional movement of the past fifty years, spectralism was informed by digital technology but also extended the aesthetics of pianist-composers such as Franz Liszt, Alexander Scriabin, and Claude Debussy. Students of Olivier Messiaen such as Tristan Murail and G rard Grisey...

Performance Practice in the Music of Steve Reich provides a performer's perspective on Steve Reich's compositions from his iconic minimalist work, Drumming, to his masterpiece, Music for 18 Musicians. It addresses performance issues encountered by the musicians in Reich's original ensemble and the techniques...

Author: Newman Ivey WhiteISBN-10: 1258126729ISBN-13: 9781258126728Publisher: Literary Licensing, LLCLanguage: EnglishPublished: 10/15/2011Pages: 512Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.49lbsSize: 9.02h x 5.98w x 1.03d

The recent history of New Orleans is fraught with tragedy and triumph. Both are reflected in the city's vibrant, idiosyncratic music community. In Keith Spera's intimately reported Groove Interrupted, Aaron Neville returns to New Orleans for the first time after Hurricane Katrina to bury...

This book explores the web of pitch relations that generates the musical language of non-serialized twelve-tone music and supplies both the analytical materials and methods necessary for analyses of a vast proportion of the 20th century musical repertoire. It does so in a simple,...

Innovation in Music: Performance, Production, Technology and Business is an exciting collection comprising of cutting-edge articles on a range of topics, presented under the main themes of artistry, technology, production and industry. Each chapter is written by a leader in the field and contains...

In Music in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, John Arthur Smith presents the first full-length study of music among the ancient Israelites, the ancient Jews and the early Christians in the Mediterranean lands during the period from 1000 BCE to 400 CE. He considers...

Serious scholarship on the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams is currently enjoying a lively revival after a period of relative quiescence, and is only beginning to address the enduring affection of concert audiences for his music. The essays that comprise this volume extend the...

Fran ois Couperin's contribution to the literature of baroque keyboard music has long been recognized. Fran ois Couperin and 'The Perfection of Music' updates and expands upon David Tunley's valuable 1982 BBC Music Guide to the composer, and examines the whole of Couperin's output...

Despite Messiaen's position as one of the greatest technical innovators of the twentieth century, his musical language has not been comprehensively defined and investigated. The composer's 1944 theoretical study, The Technique of My Musical Language, expounds only its initial stages, and while his posthumously...

Despite their name, the silent films of the early cinematic era were frequently accompanied by music and other sound elements of many kinds, including mechanical instruments, live performers, and audience sing-alongs. The 12 chapters in this concise book explore the multitude of functions filled...

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 legendary Greek figure Orpheus was said to have possessed magical powers capable of moving all living and inanimate things through the sound of his lyre and voice. Over time, the Orphic theme has come to indicate the power of music to unsettle, subvert,...

Drawing upon the philosophical insights of Friedrich Schlegel, Walter Benjamin, Theodor W. Adorno, and Blixa Bargeld, this book explores the persistence of a critical-deconstructive approach to musical production, consumption, and reception in the German cultural sphere of the last two centuries.Author: M. HallISBN-10: 1137453362ISBN-13:...

Mieczyslaw Weinberg left his family behind and fled his native Poland in September 1939. He reached the Soviet Union, where he become one of the most celebrated composers. He counted Shostakovich among his close friends and produced a prolific output of works. Yet he...

An exploration of what self-referential compositions reveal about late medieval musical networks, linking choirboys to canons and performers to theorists.Author: Jane D. HatterISBN-10: 1108465595ISBN-13: 9781108465595Publisher: Cambridge University PressLanguage: EnglishPublished: 08/19/2021Pages: 299Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.06lbsSize: 9.61h x 6.69w x 0.63d

Contributors explore new aspects of composition and performance in this comprehensive examination of the repertory, institutions, performers, composers, and social and cultural world of one of the greatest moments in music history. They consider the cosmopolitan nature of music making; emergence of markets for...

Presenting a fresh picture of the life and work of Joseph Haydn, this biography captures all the complexities and contradictions of the composer's long career. In his lifetime Haydn achieved a degree of fame that easily surpassed that of Mozart and Beethoven. Later his...

Morton Feldman is widely regarded as one of America's greatest composers. His music is famously idiosyncratic, but, in many cases, the way he presented it is also unusual because, in the 1950s and 1960s, he often composed in non-standard musical notations, including a groundbreaking...

Although competitions in classical music have a long history, the number of contests has risen dramatically since the Second World War, all of them aiming to launch young artists' careers. This is not the symptom of marketization that it might appear to be. Despite...