Music-History & Criticism

This guide to the more adventurous evolutions of music since 1945--pointillism, post-Webernism, integral serialism, free dodecaphony, aleatory and indeterminate music, graphics, musique concrete, electronic music, and theatre music--was first published in 1975 and has been reprinted several times. For this second edition, Smith Brindle...

Many music lovers find Wagner's operas inexpressibly beautiful and richly satisfying, while others find them revolting, dangerous, self-indulgent, and immoral. The man who W.H. Auden once called "perhaps the greatest genius that ever lived" has inspired both greater adulation and greater loathing than any...

Between early 1806 and early 1807, Ludwig van Beethoven completed a remarkable series of instrumental works. But critics have struggled to reconcile the music of this banner year with Beethoven's heroic style, the paradigm through which his middle-period works have typically been understood.Drawing on...

Carl Schachter is the world's leading practitioner of Schenkerian theory and analysis. His articles and books have been broadly influential, and are seen by many as models of musical insight and lucid prose. Yet, perhaps his greatest impact has been felt in the classroom....

The year 1917 was unlike any other in American history, or in the history of American music. The United States entered World War I, jazz burst onto the national scene, and the German musicians who dominated classical music were forced from the stage. As...

Preeminent music theorist and leader in the study of music and disability Joseph Straus presents a truly groundbreaking take on musical modernism--demonstrating in an expansive and vivid multimedia presentation that modernist music is inextricably entwined with attitudes toward disability. In Broken Beauty, Straus argues...

Debussy's Critics: Sound, Affect, and the Experience of Modernism explores the music of Claude Debussy and its early reception in light of the rise of the empirical human sciences in Western Europe around the turn of the twentieth century. In the midst of a...

In 1946, Harry Choates, a Cajun fiddle virtuoso, changed the course of American musical history when his recording of the so-called Cajun national anthem "Jole Blon" reached number four on the national Billboard charts. Cajun music became part of the American consciousness for the...

Lateness and Brahms takes up the fascinating, yet understudied problem of how Brahms fits into the culture of turn-of-the-century Vienna. Brahms's conspicuous and puzzling absence in previous scholarly accounts of the time and place raises important questions, and as Margaret Notley demonstrates, the tendency...

Richard Strauss is an outlier in the context of twentieth century music. Some consider him a composer of the late romantic period, while others declare him a traitor of modernity for his role in National Socialism. Despite the controversy surrounding him, Strauss's works--even beyond...

In this fully updated edition of his long-indispensable study, Malcolm MacDonald takes advantage of 30 years of recent scholarship, new biographical information, and deeper understanding of Schoenberg's aims and significance to produce a superb guide to Schoenberg's life and work. MacDonald demonstrates the indissoluble...

In Shapes of American Ballet: Teachers and Training before Balanchine, Jessica Zeller introduces the first few decades of the twentieth century as an often overlooked, yet critical period for ballet's growth in America. While George Balanchine is often considered the sole creator of American...

Georg Philipp Telemann gave us one of the richest legacies of instrumental music from the eighteenth century. Though considered a definitive contribution to the genre during his lifetime, his concertos, sonatas, and suites were then virtually ignored for nearly two centuries following his death....

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...

In 1952, John Cage shocked audiences with 4'33", his compositional ode to the ironic power of silence. From Cage's minimalism to Chris Burden's radical performance art two decades later (in one piece he had himself shot), the post-war American avant-garde shattered the divide between...

Musical Solidarities: Political Action and Music in Late Twentieth-Century Poland is a music history of Solidarity, the social movement opposing state socialism in 1980s Poland. The story unfolds along crucial sites of political action under state socialism: underground radio networks, the sanctuaries of the...

Classical music shows a close relationship to language, and both musicology and philosophy have tended to approach music from that angle, exploring it in terms of expression, representation, and discourse. This book turns that idea on its head. Focusing on the music of Debussy...

Has the virtual invaded the realm of the real, or has the real expanded its definition to include what once was characterized as virtual? With the continual evolution of digital technology, this distinction grows increasingly hazy. But perhaps the distinction has become obsolete; perhaps...

"Most satisfying . . . A highly accessible initial foray into an astonishing, and inexhaustible, subject." --The Cleveland Plain Dealer Mozart's music has enthralled listeners for centuries. In this brilliant biography, acclaimed historian Paul Johnson draws upon his expert knowledge of the era and...

From the series examining the development of music in specific places during particular times, this book looks at European countries at the time of the Renaissance, concentrating on Italy. It is to be published in conjunction with a television series.Author: Iain FenlonISBN-10: 033352652XISBN-13: 9780333526521Publisher:...

A candid and eye-opening inside look at the final decades of Sinatra's life told by his longtime manager and friend, Eliot Weisman. By the time Weisman met Sinatra in 1976, he was already the Voice, a man who held sway over popular music and...

In this book, the work of legendary singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell is explored, emphasizing the way text and music work together to create an artistic statement in her recorded songs. Few singer-songwriters have been as influential as Joni Mitchell. Her song "Both Sides, Now" has...

This biography offers students and general readers an insightful look into Jerry Garcia's creative genius as a founding member of The Grateful Dead and the various influences on his work as he contributed to the countercultural movement in the United States. As a founding...

This in-depth musicological and critical study examines how Bernard Herrmann's score for Alfred Hitchcock's Vertigo plays a crucial role in the articulation and development of the film's narrative and how it affects readings of the film. Herrmann's collaboration with Hitchcock spanned eleven years and...

In this thorough research guide to the career and music of Bill Dixon the author has documented how Dixon refined a sonically unique pan-tonal language of trumpet playing. As a trumpeter, composer, educator, and theoretician, Bill Dixon has politically and musically influenced many phases...

A musical experience is marked by the synthesis of passion and rationality, emotion and understanding, and body and mind. Ferrara demonstrates that each method of musical analysis confines musical significance to a single level: formal methods explain musical syntax; phenemonological methods describe the sound-in-time;...

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...

The Definitive History of Texas Music From the 1920s to the Present Texas is the land of Buddy Holly and Janis Joplin, Roy Orbison, and Ornette Coleman. It's where Stevie Ray Vaughn wailed his blues, and where Kirk Franklin praised the Lord. Texas Music...

Basically, this is the real thing. No rock star contrivance, no intellectual perspective, no master plan for world domination. You're talking about four guys from rural Washington who wanna rock...--Everett True, Melody Maker, March 18th, 1989 In 1992, Nirvana's breakthrough anthem, Smells Like Teen...

The first time on the open road with Dad's beat-up clunker and a brand-new driver's lecense. That first kiss. Practicing Steve Tyler moves in the garage. Lazy summer days with nothing to do but hang out with a group of friends and the radio....

Here is a lively and nostalgic look back at the forgotten era that gave us Hooked on a Feeling, Dancing in the Moonlight, I Am Woman, Seasons in the Sun, and more. The early '70s brought a Convoy of popular music--everything from the cheesy...

The guitar is the iconic instrument of modern popular music. It is portable, it has history, and it will always be hip. But why has the guitar become such a classic? Will Hodgkinson, a wannabe guitar player, whose only experience was an afternoon's bashing...

In The Show I'll Never Forget, writer Sean Manning has gathered an amazing array of unforgettable concert memories from a veritable A-list of acclaimed novelists, poets, biographers, cultural critics, and songwriters. Their candid, first-person recollections reveal as much about the writers' lives at the...

Da Capo Best Music Writing has become one of the most eagerly awaited annuals of them all. Celebrating the year in music writing by gathering a rich array of essays, missives, and musings on every style of music from rock to hip-hop to R&B...

Suddenly, popular music resembles an alien landscape. The great common ground of 45s, LPs, and even compact discs is rapidly falling by the wayside to be replaced by binary bits of sound. In the 21st century, radical advances in music technology threaten to overshadow...

It's here: the fourth and latest volume in the series that you have come to rely upon for your music reading fix. The 2003 volume will celebrate the year's best writing about music and its culture with a selection of pieces on a dazzling...

From Frank Sinatra to Sun Ra, from the jazz age to middle age, with thoughts on everything in-between, Francis Davis has been writing about American music and American culture for more than twenty years. His essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, The New...

Since the early days of rock 'n' roll--since Elvis Presley came out of Memphis to startle the world--a whole body of writing has grown up around it, from the album notes to obituaries, from on-the-road insider tales to dissections of the meaning behind the...

Twentieth century music has been remarkable for its pluralism. The various styles--atonality, neo-classicism, nationalism, serialism, jazz, computer music, minimalism, electronics, folklorism, "happenings," sheer chance--have been far from monolithic, and experimentation has been, perhaps, the century's only defining feature. With over 2500 entries, The Companion...

A compendium of Richard Wagner's prose works. Selected and arranged, and with an introduction by Albert Goldman and Evert SprinchornAuthor: Albert Goldman, Evert SprinchornISBN-10: 0306803194ISBN-13: 9780306803192Publisher: Da Capo PressLanguage: EnglishPublished: 03/22/1988Pages: 447Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.26lbsSize: 8.04h x 5.78w x 1.08d

Leonard Feather's autobiography is also the story of jazz over the last half-century. Since arriving in New York from London in 1935, he has managed to distinguish himself as a producer, composer, pianist, and one of the music's most acute critics. He was one...

The fifties, though a quiescent period in many ways, was one of the most fervent decades in jazz history. The landmarks of modern jazz were firmly planted and, it could be argued, nearly all directions the music has taken since then can be charted...

Listeners have enjoyed classical music recordings for more than a century, yet important issues about recorded performances have been little explored. What is the relationship between performance and recording? How are modern audiences affected by the trends set in motion by the recording era?...

During its first two centuries, opera was dominated by sopranos. There were male sopranos, or castrati, whose supercharged voices (female vocal cords powered by male lungs) were capable of feats of vocalism that are hard to imagine today. And there were female sopranos, or...

A prevailing belief among Russia's cultural elite in the early twentieth century was that the music of composers such as Sergei Rachmaninoff, Aleksandr Scriabin, and Nikolai Medtner could forge a shared identity for the Russian people across social and economic divides. In this illuminating...

Marina Frolova-Walker's fascinating history takes a new look at musical life in Stalin's Soviet Union. The author focuses on the musicians and composers who received Stalin Prizes, awarded annually to artists whose work was thought to represent the best in Soviet culture. This revealing...

The Austrian composer Anton Webern (1883-1945) is one of the major figures of musical modernism. His mature works comprise two styles: the so-called free atonal music composed between 1907 and 1924, and the twelve-tone serial music that began in 1924 and extended through the...

This new biography of Maurice Ravel (1875-1937), by one of the leading scholars of nineteenth- and twentieth-century French music, is based on a wealth of written and oral evidence, some newly translated and some derived from interviews with the composer's friends and associates. As...

Austrian composer Alban Berg (1885-1935), along with his contemporaries Arnold Schoenberg and Anton von Webern, dramatically altered the musical landscape of the Western world. Dave Headlam offers a comprehensive analysis of Berg's music in this original book. He examines each of the composer's works-including...

Igor Stravinsky and George Balanchine, among the most influential artists of the twentieth century, together created the music and movement for many ballet masterpieces. This engrossing book is the first full-length study of one of the greatest artistic collaborations in history. Drawing on extensive...