Music-History & Criticism

For nearly 25 years, Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune has been reviewing popular music: from indie up-and-comers and underground hip-hop artists to arena-filling rock-and-rollers and celebrity pop superstars. Turn It Up: A Guided Tour Through the Worlds of Pop, Rock, Rap and More...

This book explores the complexity of Cuban dance music and the webs that connect it, musically and historically, to other Caribbean music, to salsa, and to Latin Jazz. Establishing a scholarly foundation for the study of this music, Raul A. Fernandez introduces a set...

In The Emancipation of Slaves Through Music, music mogul Dr. Mathew Knowles presents a keen examination of the liberating effects of music on an oppressed people. By taking readers on the journey of its secret use during slavery up through its eventual commercialization in...

In this vibrant and pioneering book, Nadine Hubbs shows how a gifted group of Manhattan-based gay composers were pivotal in creating a distinctive "American sound" and in the process served as architects of modern American identity. Focusing on a talented circle that included Aaron...

The first book-length inquiry into the twisted romantic ballad, giving a sense of both its history and contemporary currency. Titled after Soft Cell's version of the original 1965 Gloria Jones track, Tainted Love is the first book-length inquiry into the subject of the twisted...

With her usual combination of erudition, innovation, and spirited prose, Susan McClary reexamines the concept of musical convention in this fast-moving and refreshingly accessible book. Exploring the ways that shared musical practices transmit social knowledge, Conventional Wisdom offers an account of our own cultural...

Presents a new history of how Hindustani court music responded to the political transitions of the nineteenth century. How far did colonialism transform north Indian music? In the period between the Mughal empire and the British Raj, how did the political landscape bleed into...

Anthropologist Georgina Born presents one of the first ethnographies of a powerful western cultural organization, the renowned Institut de Recherche et de Coordination Acoustique/Musique (IRCAM) in Paris. As a year-long participant-observer, Born studied the social and cultural economy of an institution for research and...

The untold story of how breaking - one of the most widely practiced dance forms in the world today - began as a distinctly African American expression in the Bronx, New York, during the 1970s. Breaking is the first and most widely practiced hip-hop...

Nicolas Slonimsky (1894-1995) was an influential and celebrated writer on music. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia in 1894, in his 101 years he taught and coached music; conducted the premieres of several 20th century masterpieces; composed works for piano and voice; and oversaw the...

This book traces the formation of the discipline of harmony at the Paris Conservatory, focusing on the seminal work of Charles-Simon Catel, and outlines the processes that would determine the content and scope of the discipline for much of the nineteenth century.Author: Michael J....

Black Bottom Stomp tells the compelling stories of the lives and times of nine seminal figures in American music history, including Scott Joplin, Louis Armstrong, and Jelly Roll Morton.Author: David a. Jasen, Gene JonesISBN-10: 0415936411ISBN-13: 9780415936415Publisher: RoutledgeLanguage: EnglishPublished: 09/21/2001Pages: 272Format: HardcoverWeight: 1.24lbsSize: 9.28h x...

Musicians, music lovers and music critics have typically considered Beethoven's overtly political music as an aberration; at best, it is merely notorious, at worst, it is denigrated and ignored. In Political Beethoven Nicholas Mathew returns to the musical and social contexts of the composer's...

Analysis of 18th- and 19th-Century Musical Works in the Classical Tradition is a textbook for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in music analysis. It outlines a process of analyzing works in the Classical tradition by uncovering the construction of a piece of music-the formal,...

When Freddie Bulsara arrived in England in 1964, fleeing with his family from a bloody revolution on the streets of his homeland Zanzibar, he already knew that he wanted to be a rock'n'roll star. But before that dream could become a reality, there were...

Schöffer's Cantiones tell a fascinating story of South-North, Catholic-Protestant co-operation. The Cantiones quinque vocum selectissim (Strasbourg: Peter Schöffer the Younger, 1539) are a collection of 28 Latin five-voice motets by composers including Gombert, Willaert, and Jacquet of Mantua. This was Schöffer's first book of...

A downright revolutionary 30th-anniversary deluxe edition of the iconic bestselling biography of Nirvana, updated with exclusive new content exploring the personal and cultural forces that inspired the music, the author's friendship with Kurt Cobain and why multiple generations remain fascinated by the 1990s. "Just...

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States,...

Life of Henriette Sontag, Countess de Rossi.: with Interesting Sketches by Scudo, Hector Berlioz, Louis Boerne, Adolphe Adam, Marie Aycard, Julie de Margueritte, Prince Puckler-Muskau & Theophile Gautier., has been acknowledged as a major work throughout human history, and we have taken precautions to...

Factory Records has become the stuff of legend. The histories of the label have been told from many perspectives, from visual catalogues and memoirs to exhibitions. Yet no in-depth history has ever been told from the perspectives of the women who were integral to...

This collection brings fresh perspectives to bear upon key questions surrounding the composition, performance and reception of musical modernism.Author: Erling E. GuldbrandsenISBN-10: 1107566096ISBN-13: 9781107566095Publisher: Cambridge University PressLanguage: EnglishPublished: 05/11/2023Pages: 367Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.29lbsSize: 9.61h x 6.69w x 0.76d

The tensions between utopian dreams and dystopian anxieties permeate science fiction as a genre, and nowhere is this tension more evident than in Star Trek. This book breaks new ground by exploring music and sound within the Star Trek franchise across decades and media,...

Picture yourself in a darkened movie theater, or soothed by the pleasing glow of a television screen. You are watching as a history of the moving image unfolds onscreen, but this history will not take note of D.W. Griffith or Jean Renoir, nor will...

The Oxford Handbook of Computer Music offers a state-of-the-art cross-section of the most field-defining topics and debates in computer music today. A unique contribution to the field, it situates computer music in the broad context of its creation and performance across the range of...

Provides basic musicological information about a vast variety of Middle Eastern musical genres within an ethnomusical context. The story of music told in this book begins in pre-Islamic times with musical forms that bear strong imprints of the Bedouin's tribal way of life. Pre-Islamic...

In the words of Alfred Einstein, this classic study of Mozart's piano concertos is 'full of penetrating remarks not only about the piano concerto but about Mozart's art in general'. It is reissued here with a new introduction by noted Mozart scholar Cliff Eisen...

This book contains the first complete translation in English of E. T. A. Hoffmann's major musical writings, complementing the well-known Tales. It offers, therefore, a long-awaited opportunity to assess the thought and influence of one of the most famous of all writers on music...

(Book). Now in Paperback To mark the 30th-anniversary of the world's best-loved drum magazine, Modern Drummer, here is the first book to tell the complete tale of the modern drumset masters. A century of drumming is covered: from the founding fathers of jazz, to...

The Cambridge Companion to the Piano is an informative and practical guide to one of the world's most popular instruments. This collection of specially commissioned essays offers an accessible introduction to the history of the piano, performance styles, and its vast repertoire. Part 1...

During the Cold War, thousands of musicians from the United States traveled the world, sponsored by the U.S. State Department's Cultural Presentations program. Performances of music in many styles--classical, rock 'n' roll, folk, blues, and jazz--competed with those by traveling Soviet and mainland Chinese...

This is the first complete publication of the late composer and scholar Ruth Crawford Seeger's major work on American folksongs. It preserves them as well as demonstrates how they should be played so that they remain a living partof the American musical tradition. This...

In 1972, a group of creative Brazilian musicians and poets informally led by singer-songwriter Milton Nascimento recorded a landmark double-LP titled Clube da Esquina (Corner Club). The album saw highly original songs by Milton, already an award-winning international star, sharing vinyl with those of...

Breaking down walls between genres that are usually discussed separately--classical, jazz, and popular--this highly engaging book offers a compelling new integrated view of twentieth-century music. Placing Duke Ellington (1899-1974) at the center of the story, David Schiff explores music written during the composer's lifetime...

Leadbelly, Robert Johnson, Charley Patton-we are all familiar with the story of the Delta blues. Fierce, raw voices; tormented drifters; deals with the devil at the crossroads at midnight. In this extraordinary reconstruction of the origins of the Delta blues, historian Marybeth Hamilton demonstrates...

Called by Entertainment Weekly The best book on Hendrix, Crosstown Traffic rode their A-list for over two months and won the prestigious Ralph J. Gleason Music Book Award. Roots-savvy British critic Charles Shaar Murray assesses the lifework of guitarist Jimi Hendrix in the context...

Born from extensive international research, Global Tribe documents a little understood global dance culture that has mushroomed all over the world since its beginnings in diverse psychedelic music scenes flourishing in Goa, India, in the 1970s and 1980s. From small parties to major international...

Song, Landscape, and Identity in Medieval Northern France offers a new perspective on how medieval song expressed relationships between people and their environments. Informed by environmental history and harnessing musicological and ecocritical approaches, author Jennifer Saltzstein draws connections between the nature imagery that pervades...

In the 1940s and '50s, Richard Dyer-Bennet (1913-1991) was among the best known and most respected folk singers in America. Paul O. Jenkins tells, for the first time, the story of Dyer-Bennet, often referred to as the "Twentieth-Century Minstrel." Dyer-Bennet's approach to singing sounded...

An updated edition celebrating more than 50 years of the ground-breaking Atom Heart Mother By the late 1960s, popular British prog-rock outfit Pink Floyd were experiencing a creative voltage drop, so they turned to composer Ron Geesin for help in writing their next album....

Drawing on extensive field research conducted over the course of two decades, Bode Omojola examines traditional and contemporary Yorùbá genres of music. From the primeval age of Ayànàgalú (the Yorùbá pioneer-drummer-turned-deity-of-drumming) to the modern era, Yorùbá musical traditions have been shaped by individual performers:...

Ancient sages spoke of secret music, purposely hidden from the ears of most mortals. Researchers say the enlightened philosopher, Pythagoras, could hear this music. He perceived it, even while in the immediate presence of those who couldn't.Pythagoras and others believed that all things were...

The first-born of the four composer sons of Johann Sebastian Bach, Wilhelm Friedemann was often considered the most brilliant. Yet he left relatively few works and died in obscurity. This monograph, the first on the composer in nearly a century, identifies the unique features...

Almost 20 years ago Michael Brocken created from his doctoral research, what became both a seminal and contested volume concerning the social mores surrounding the British Folk Revival up to that point in time: The British Folk Revival 1944-2002. In this long-overdue second edition...

Music: An Art and a Language, by Walter Raymond Spalding, is a classic music guide that concerns itself with music as music. It is assumed that, if anyone really loves this art, he is willing and glad to do serious work to quicken his...

When did Russia become "modern?" Historians of Russia - including even many Russian historians - have long tried to identify Russia's "modern" moment. While most scholars have looked to economic or ideological transitions, noted historian and critic Paul du Quenoy approaches the problem through...

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...

The first scholarly discussion on the band, Pearl Jam and Philosophy examines both the songs (music and lyrics) and the activities (live performances, political commitments) of one of the most celebrated and charismatic rock bands of the last 30 years. The book investigates the...

This volume contains a fascinating treatise on the material of musical composition, its gradual growth, and its elementary use. Although old, much of the information in this book is still relevant and will be of considerable utility to those with an interest in music...

1976, Rio de Janeiro. Revered Brazilian pop musician Jorge Ben Jor, known for his 'samba-rock' fusions and hits such as 'Pa s Tropical' and 'Mas que Nada', picks up the electric guitar and records the album frica Brasil. With grooves structured around guitar and...

Until the nineteenth century, music occupied a marginal place in British universities. Degrees were awarded by Oxford and Cambridge, but students (and often professors) were not resident, and there were few formal lectures. It was not until a benefaction initiated the creation of a...