Music-History & Criticism

Over the centuries, the piano trio has gained a repertoire of exceptional size and richness; works written for this genre include some of the greatest of all chamber works. The first study devoted solely to the piano trio, this book reviews the development of...

The name "mandolin" was used to refer to two quite different instruments: the gut-stringed mandolino, played with the fingers, and the later metal-stringed Neapolitan mandoline, which was played with a plectrum. This is the first book devoted exclusively to these two early instruments about...

An introduction to the principal forms and orders of Western liturgy between about 900 and 1700, this book explains their nature and basic historical origin, and presents in detail the contents and orders of principal services as well as additional and special forms of...

The role of popular music is widely recognized in giving voice to radical political views, the plight of the oppressed, and the desire for social change. Avant-garde music, by contrast, is often thought to prioritize the pursuit of new technical or conceptual territory over...

Joni Mitchell is one of the foremost singer-songwriters of the late twentieth century. Yet despite her reputation, influence, and cultural importance, a detailed appraisal of her musical achievement is still lacking. Whitesell presents a through exploration of Mitchell's musical style, sound, and structure in...

Across the United States, Jews come together every week to sing and pray in a wide variety of worship communities. Through this music, made by and for ordinary folk, these worshippers define and re-define their relationship to the continuity of Jewish tradition and the...

"Klezmer" is a Yiddish word for professional folk instrumentalist-the flutist, fiddler, and bass player that made brides weep and guests dance at weddings throughout Jewish eastern Europe before the culture was destroyed in the Holocaust, silenced under Stalin, and lost out to assimilation in...

An accessible exploration of an important and understudied music theory topic, Swain's book examines the dimensional technique of analyzing harmonic rhythm. Simply defined, harmonic rhythm is the relationship between changes in harmony and perceived changes in rhythm. This phenomenon plays a large role in...

Bach's St. John Passion is surely one of the monuments of Western music, yet performances of it are inevitably controversial. In large part, this is because of the combination of the powerful and highly emotional music and a text that includes passages from a...

Few styles of popular music have generated as much controversy as progressive rock, a musical genre best remembered today for its gargantuan stage shows, its fascination with epic subject matter drawn from science fiction, mythology, and fantasy literature, and above all for its attempts...

In this third edition of the classic Verdi, renowned authority Julian Budden offers a comprehensive overview of Verdi the man and the artist, tracing his ascent from humble beginnings to the status of a cultural patriarch of the new Italy, whose cause he had...

Purcell's Dido and Aeneas stands as the greatest operatic achievement of seventeenth-century England, and yet, despite its global renown, it remains cloaked in mystery. The date and place of its first performance cannot be fixed with precision, and the absolute accuracy of the surviving...

As this comprehensive and multidisciplinary book makes clear, virtuality has a pedigree that pre-dates the computer age and modern virtual worlds, a pedigree that can be traced back to classical mythology and beyond. Equally, the concept of virtuality is not the province of one...

The early years of the Franco regime saw the formation of a strong governmental propaganda apparatus. Through expansive press laws that solidified state control over public and private media outlets alike, the Franco government directly influenced what information was made available to the public....

As an integral figure in twentieth-century music, Pierre Boulez innovated new musical ideas through extraordinary creative processes. His formative years tracked his compositional development from his confrontations with serialism to drafting one of his major works, Pli selon pli, in the early 1960s. Part...

An acclaimed rock-and-roll journalist evokes the legacy of the Rolling Stones--iconic, granitic, commercially unstoppable as a collective, and fascinating, contradictory, and occasionally disturbing as individuals.On July 12, 1962, the Rollin' Stones performed their first-ever gig at London's Marquee jazz club. Down the line, a...

Shortlisted for the Plutarch Award for best biography The mysterious true story of Connie Converse--a mid-century New York City songwriter, singer, and composer whose haunting music never found broad recognition--and one writer's quest to understand her life This is the mesmerizing story of an...

Interdisciplinary essays on music psychology that integrate scientific, humanistic, and artistic ways of knowing in transformative ways. Researchers using scientific methods and approaches to advance our understanding of music and musicality have not yet grappled with some of the perils that humanistic fields concentrating...

In Voices of the Jazz Age, Chip Deffaa interviews eight musicians who rose to popularity during the 1920s. Sam Wooding, Benny Waters, Bix Beiderbecke, Joe Tarto, Bud Freeman, Jimmy McPartland, Freddie Moore, Jabbo Smith bring the Jazz Age back to life with vivid memories,...

A biography of composer Sergei Rachmaninoff, published in collaboration with the Bard Music Festival. One of the most popular classical composers of all time, Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) has often been dismissed by critics as a conservative, nostalgic holdover of the nineteenth century and a...

The first book devoted to the composers, instrument makers and amateur players who advanced the great guitar vogue throughout Western Europe during the early decades of the nineteenth century. Contemporary critics viewed the fashion for the guitar with sheer hostility, seeing in it a...

Brings new insights to the music of well-known European composers by telling a fascinating, little-known story about French music publishing, specifically through the lens of Jacques Durand's Édition Classique. French composers, performers and musicologists acted as editors of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European 'classics', primarily...

Out of the dozen different line-ups since Fleetwood Mac formed in 1967, there's only one incarnation that truly matters for most listeners. During their time together, Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Christine McVie, Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham created some of popular music's most enduring...

In 1973, the Allman Brothers Band were one of the most popular in America: they headlined the Watkins Glen Summer Jam, attended by an estimated 600,000 people and their album Brothers and Sisters was a number one for five weeks on the Billboard listings...

A history of the legendary music studio behind Queen, Oasis, and more--updated with new chapters about the last twenty years. Rockfield is a recording studio that lives up to its name. Over the past fifty years, this rural Monmouthshire locale has played host to...

A Variety Best Music Book of 2023 The behind-the-scenes story of the controversial 1960s made-for-tv rock band. The Monkees represent a vital problem for rock and pop: is it the music that matters or the personality and image of the performers? This book explores...

A surprising history of Seattle's Sub Pop Records, pioneer of grunge . . . and champion of losers. This book is a critical history of Sub Pop Records, the Seattle independent rock label that launched the careers of countless influential grunge bands in the...

Wind bands are common around the world, and the small Mediterranean island of Malta is no exception. Their abundance in Malta testifies to the popularity of the wind band tradition among the locals. It is central to everyday life, particularly during the village feast,...

Discover the rich history behind the world's favorite musical instrument in Guitar Family Trees. This striking visual catalog charts the histories of the most prominent and sought after guitars and their manufacturers, including such household names as Gibson, Martin, Rickenbacker, and Fender. From theRickenbacker...

"Not long before embarking on a tour with his own band, author Chris Vondracek discovered the autobiography of Lawrence Welk, the most famous musician to emerge from the Dakotas. This memoir traces Vondracek's attempt to learn from Welk's example and his own family history...

Explores the weird world of lo-fi music to investigate its revolutionary potential and its ability to subvert what we think music can do. Homemade records, tape-hiss worship and a taste for a very peculiar kind of psychedelia have carved themselves a weird niche in...

THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER New York Times bestselling author Alan Paul's in-depth narrative look at the Allman Brothers' most successful album, and a portrait of an era in rock and roll and American history.The Allman Brothers Band's Brothers and Sisters was not...

Celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Backstreet Boys with the ultimate tribute book--filled with amazing tour photography, band-member profiles, fan memories, and more. Since breaking into the scene in 1993, the Backstreet Boys have sold over 100 million records around the globe making them...

Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) was arguably the central musical personality of the twentieth century, whose innovative, uncompromising musical language opened up new possibilities for composers and influenced generations of musicians and listeners. This book presents a clear narrative history of Schoenberg's life, work and cultural...

This limited printing, hardcover 40th anniversary edition includes: -an exclusive new interview with lead singer Simon Le Bon -a Rio timeline-a newly designed book cover by Rio album sleeve designer, Malcolm Garrette-vintage Duran Duran photos and ads -and much more... In the '80s, the...

This unique, visually exciting look at the evolution of nightclubs across America and Europe since the 1960s reveals an unwavering truth about club culture--the one constant is change. Opening with the psychedelic haunts of the 1960s New York pop art scene and closing more...

Author: Joshua John HeeleyISBN-10: 1693902869ISBN-13: 9781693902864Publisher: Independently PublishedLanguage: EnglishPublished: 09/18/2019Pages: 250Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.30lbsSize: 11.00h x 8.50w x 0.53d

"A brilliant and addictive chronicle of a pop explosion that helped shape our moment. An absolute delight to read." --Rob Sheffield, bestselling author of Love is a Mix Tape, Dreaming the Beatles, and other books In extensive interviews with scene pioneers and mainstays including...

When Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) completed the vast opera Saint Fran ois d'Assise in 1983, he was mentally and physically exhausted, and believed that this monumental work would be his final compositional statement. In fact, he completed seven further works, and these form the focus...

Rock and roll-rebellious, individualistic, explosive-seems incongruent with modern Chinese society. Red Rock looks at the people and events that have created Chinese rock's unique identity and tracks the music's long journey from the Mao years to present. After boiling below the surface for over...

Musical semiotics no longer ignores the fundamental challenges raised by cognitive sciences, ethology, or linguistics. Creation, action, and experience play an increasing role in how we understand music, a sounding structure impinging upon our body, our mind, and the world we live in. An...

This book has been considered important throughout the human history, and so that this work is never forgotten we have made efforts in its preservation by republishing this book in a modern format for present and future generations. This whole book has been reformatted,...

Studying improvised music is always a challenge, due to its volatility and unpredictability. But what about studying musical improvisation from before the age of sound recordings? In this book, three experts give their view on aspects of musical improvisation in the late medieval, renaissance,...

This guide provides an introduction to 260 different jazz piano, composition and arrangement textbooks written between 1933 and today.Though this may be hard to believe, there have been just as many, if not more jazz piano textbooks published in Japan as there have been...

The must-read music book of the year--and the first such history bringing together all musical genres to tell the definitive narrative of the birth of Pop from 1900 to the mid-1950s. Pop music didn't begin with the Beatles in 1963, or with Elvis in...

Wars have dominated the history of the United States since its founding, but there has also been a long history of antiwar activity. Peace songs have emerged out of every military conflict involving the United States. "Singing for Peace" vividly portrays this rich antiwar...

In 1958, long before he created and hosted Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, the most dynamic rock-and-roll series in television history, before he developed the Monkees and created the Archies, Don Kirshner was a 23-year-old kid with just a dream in his pocket. Five years...

After the breakup of the Beatles in 1971, Paul McCartney formed Wings with his wife Linda on keyboards, ex-Moody Blues guitarist Denny Laine, and American session drummer Denny Seiwell. For ten dramatic and turbulent years, the band weathered the critics, endured drug busts, survived...

The writer, musician and curator Tot Taylor once observed that the word 'ritual' is already present in the word 'spiritual'. That combination of material practice and the transcendent can be found within the strange combination of records discussed in this publication. With music, one...

What did Tallis and Byrd mean to convey by their use of the word "argument" in their title, Cantiones, quae ab argumento sacrae vocantur? Thomas Tallis's and William Byrd's Cantiones, quae ab argumento sacrae vocantur (songs, which by their argument are called sacred) of...