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The Jazz Scene

by Eric Hobsbawm

From 1955-65 the historian Eric Hobsbawm took the pseudonym 'Francis Newton' and wrote a monthly column for the New Statesman on jazz - music he had loved ever since discovering it as a boy in 1933 ('the year Adolf Hitler took power in Germany'). Hobsbawm's column led to his writing a critical history, The Jazz Scene (1959). This enhanced edition from 1993 adds later writings by Hobsbawm in which he meditates further 'on why jazz is not only a marvellous noise but a central concern for anyone concerned with twentieth-century society and the twentieth-century arts.' 'All the greats are covered in passing (Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday), while further space is given to Duke Ellington, Ray Charles, Thelonious Monk, Mahalia Jackson, and Sidney Bechet ... Perhaps Hobsbawm's tastiest comments are about the business side and work ethics, where his historian's eye strips the jazz scene down to its commercial spine.' Kirkus Reviews

Making Master Guitars

by Roy Courtnall

Making Master Guitars is a craftsman's handbook about the exciting and challenging pursuit of making classical guitars, a craft that the author reveals to be surprisingly accessible by following his instructions. The book is unique in that it includes nine separate detailed plans of instruments constructed by internationally famous guitar-makers. The author has had the rare opportunity of examining these instruments in detail, and has made many replicas of each one. Superbly illustrated by Adrian Lucas. Part one: The Master Makers and their Guitars is devoted to separate chapters on each famous maker, including Antonio de Torres, Hermann Hauser, Santos Hernandez y Aguado, Ignacio Fleta, Robert Bouchet, Daniel Friederich and Jose Romanillos. The reader will find historical information about the life of and influences on each makers, as well as detailed sets of working drawings for their guitars. Also included are rare photographs of the guitars. Part two: Workshop, Tools and Materials provides essential information about the tools, working environment and material needed by the guitar-maker. Part three: Guitar Construction - The Spanish Method comprises a step-by-step method of guitar construction, illustrated by numerous photographs and drawings. The method of making a guitar is presented with great clarity. So that even the newcomer to this fascinating craft will be able to produce a superb instrument. This book will be essential for the guitar-maker and the historian, providing as it does a unique record of the different methods of guitar design and strutting systems that have evolved since Antonio de Torres first defined the essential characteristics of the modern classical guitar in the 1850s.

Mensuration And Proportion Signs: Origins And Evolution (Oxford Monographs On Music)

by Anna Maria Busse Berger

Counter In the fourteenth century composers and theorists invented mensuration and proportion signs that allowed them increased flexibility and precision in notating a wide range of rhythmic and metric relationships. The origin and interpretation of these signs is one of the least understood and most complex issues in music history. This study represents the first attempt to see the origin of musical mensuration and proportion signs in the context of other measuring systems of the fourteenth century. Berger analyzes the exact meaning of every mensuration and proportion sign in music and theory from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, and offers revisions of many currently-held views concerning the significance and development of early time signatures.

Metzler Musik Chronik: Vom frühen Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart

by Arnold Feil

Die "Metzler Musik Chronik" informiert über 1000 musikalische Werke vom frühen Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Sie gibt Auskunft über eine Vielzahl von Komponisten und charkterisiert deren Werke. Große Aufmerksamkeit wird dabei den einzelnen Werkgeschichten geschenkt. Diese Chronik verbindet die Vorzüge einer Musikgeschichte mit denen eines Werklexikons.

Modern Times: From World War I To The Present (Man & Music)

by Robert P. Morgan

Moving Away from Silence: Music of the Peruvian Altiplano and the Experience of Urban Migration (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology)

by Thomas Turino

Increasingly popular in the United States and Europe, Andean panpipe and flute music draws its vitality from the traditions of rural highland villages and of rural migrants who have settled in Andean cities. In Moving Away from Silence, Thomas Turino describes panpipe and flute traditions in the context of this rural-urban migration and the turbulent politics that have influenced Peruvian society and local identities throughout this century. Turino's ethnography is the first large-scale study to concentrate on the pervasive effects of migration on Andean people and their music. Turino uses the musical traditions of Conima, Peru as a unifying thread, tracing them through the varying lives of Conimeos in different locales. He reveals how music both sustains and creates meaning for a people struggling amid the dramatic social upheavals of contemporary Peru. Moving Away from Silence contains detailed interpretations based on comparative field research of Conimeo musical performance, rehearsals, composition, and festivals in the highlands and Lima. The volume will be of great importance to students of Latin American music and culture as well as ethnomusicological and ethnographic theory and method.

Moving Away from Silence: Music of the Peruvian Altiplano and the Experience of Urban Migration (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology)

by Thomas Turino

Increasingly popular in the United States and Europe, Andean panpipe and flute music draws its vitality from the traditions of rural highland villages and of rural migrants who have settled in Andean cities. In Moving Away from Silence, Thomas Turino describes panpipe and flute traditions in the context of this rural-urban migration and the turbulent politics that have influenced Peruvian society and local identities throughout this century. Turino's ethnography is the first large-scale study to concentrate on the pervasive effects of migration on Andean people and their music. Turino uses the musical traditions of Conima, Peru as a unifying thread, tracing them through the varying lives of Conimeos in different locales. He reveals how music both sustains and creates meaning for a people struggling amid the dramatic social upheavals of contemporary Peru. Moving Away from Silence contains detailed interpretations based on comparative field research of Conimeo musical performance, rehearsals, composition, and festivals in the highlands and Lima. The volume will be of great importance to students of Latin American music and culture as well as ethnomusicological and ethnographic theory and method.

Moving Away from Silence: Music of the Peruvian Altiplano and the Experience of Urban Migration (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology)

by Thomas Turino

Increasingly popular in the United States and Europe, Andean panpipe and flute music draws its vitality from the traditions of rural highland villages and of rural migrants who have settled in Andean cities. In Moving Away from Silence, Thomas Turino describes panpipe and flute traditions in the context of this rural-urban migration and the turbulent politics that have influenced Peruvian society and local identities throughout this century. Turino's ethnography is the first large-scale study to concentrate on the pervasive effects of migration on Andean people and their music. Turino uses the musical traditions of Conima, Peru as a unifying thread, tracing them through the varying lives of Conimeos in different locales. He reveals how music both sustains and creates meaning for a people struggling amid the dramatic social upheavals of contemporary Peru. Moving Away from Silence contains detailed interpretations based on comparative field research of Conimeo musical performance, rehearsals, composition, and festivals in the highlands and Lima. The volume will be of great importance to students of Latin American music and culture as well as ethnomusicological and ethnographic theory and method.

Mozart: The 'jupiter' Symphony (Master Musicians Series)

by Julian Rushton

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is one of the great icons of Western music. An amazing prodigy--he toured the capitals of Europe while still a child, astonishing royalty and professional musicians with his precocious skills--he wrote as an adult some of the finest music in the entire European tradition. Julian Rushton offers a concise and up-to-date biography of this musical genius, combining a well-researched life of the composer with an introduction to the works--symphonic, chamber, sacred, and theatrical--of one of the few musicians in history to have written undisputed masterpieces across every genre of his time. Rushton offers a vivid portrait of the composer, ranging from Mozart the Wunderkind--travelling with his family from Salzburg to Vienna, Paris, London, Rome, and Milan--to the mature author of such classic works as "The Marriage of Figaro", "Don Giovanni", and "The Magic Flute". During the past half-century, scholars have thoroughly explored Mozart's life and music, offering new interpretations of his compositions based on their historical context and providing a factual basis for confirming or, more often, debunking fanciful accounts of the man and his work. Rushton takes full advantage of these biographical and musical studies as well as the definitive New Mozart Edition to provide an accurate account of Mozart's life and, equally important, an insightful look at the music itself, complete with musical examples. An engaging biography for general readers that will also be an informative resource for scholars, this new addition to the prestigious Master Musicians series offers an authoritative portrait of one of the defining figures of European culture.

Music In Renaissance Magic: Toward A Historiography Of Others

by Gary Tomlinson

Magic enjoyed a vigorous revival in sixteenth-century Europe, attaining a prestige lost for over a millennium and becoming, for some, a kind of universal philosophy. Renaissance music also suggested a form of universal knowledge through renewed interest in two ancient themes: the Pythagorean and Platonic "harmony of the celestial spheres" and the legendary effects of the music of bards like Orpheus, Arion, and David. In this climate, Renaissance philosophers drew many new and provocative connections between music and the occult sciences. In Music in Renaissance Magic, Gary Tomlinson describes some of these connections and offers a fresh view of the development of early modern thought in Italy. Raising issues essential to postmodern historiography--issues of cultural distance and our relationship to the others who inhabit our constructions of the past --Tomlinson provides a rich store of ideas for students of early modern culture, for musicologists, and for historians of philosophy, science, and religion. "A scholarly step toward a goal that many composers have aimed for: to rescue the idea of New Age Music--that music can promote spiritual well-being--from the New Ageists who have reduced it to a level of sonic wallpaper."--Kyle Gann, Village Voice "An exemplary piece of musical and intellectual history, of interest to all students of the Renaissance as well as musicologists. . . . The author deserves congratulations for introducing this new approach to the study of Renaissance music."--Peter Burke, NOTES "Gary Tomlinson's Music in Renaissance Magic: Toward a Historiography of Others examines the 'otherness' of magical cosmology. . . . [A] passionate, eloquently melancholy, and important book."--Anne Lake Prescott, Studies in English Literature

Music Theory and the Exploration of the Past

by Christopher Hatch David W. Bernstein

In recent decades, increased specialization has sharply separated music theory from historical musicology. Music Theory and the Exploration of the Past brings together a group of essays—written by theorists and musicologists—that seek to bridge this gap. This collection shows that music theory can join forces with historical musicology to produce a more humanistic form of musical scholarship. In nineteen essays dealing with musical theories from the twelfth to the twentieth century, two recurring themes emerge. One is the need to understand the historical circumstances of the writing and reception of theory, a humanistic approach that gives theory a place within social and intellectual history. The other is the advantages of applying contemporaneous theory to the music of a given period, thus linking theory to the history of musical styles and structures. The periods given principal attention in these essays are the Renaissance, the years around 1800, and the twentieth century. Abundantly illustrated with musical examples, Music Theory and the Exploration of the Past offers models of new practical applications of theory to the analysis of music. At the same time, it raises the broader question of how historical knowledge can deepen the understanding of an art and of systematic writings about that art.

Musorgsky: Eight Essays and an Epilogue

by Richard Taruskin

"It is [a] fully illuminated story that Richard Taruskin, in the path-breaking essays collected here, unfolds around Modest Musorgsky, Russia's greatest national composer.... [Taruskin's] tour de force comes with a frontal attack on all the Soviet-bred truisms that for a century have refashioned Musorgsky from what the evidence suggests he was--an aristocrat with an early clinical interest in true-to-life musical portraiture and a later penchant for drinking partners who were both folklore buffs and political reactionaries democrat."--From the foreword Incorporating both new and now-classic essays, this book for the first time sets the vocal works of Modest Musorgsky in a fully detailed cultural, political, and historical context. From this perspective Richard Taruskin revises fundamentally the composer's historical and artistic image, in particular debunking the century-old dogmas of Vladimir Stasov, Musorgsky's first biographer. Here the author offers the most complete explanation of the revision of the opera Boris Godunov, compares it to contemporaneous operas by Chaikovsky and Rimsky-Korsakov, advances a revisionary characterization of Khovanshchina as an aristocratic tragedy informed by a pessimistic view of history, discusses Musorgsky's use of folklore, and, focusing on Sorochintsi Fair, brings to a climax his refutation of Musorgsky as a protorevolutionary populist. The epilogue is a survey of revisionary productions of Musorgsky's works at home during the Gorbachev era.

New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton's Cultural Critique

by Ronald M. Radano

New Musical Figurations exemplifies a dramatically new way of configuring jazz music and history. By relating biography to the cultural and musical contours of contemporary American life, Ronald M. Radano observes jazz practice as part of the complex interweaving of postmodern culture—a culture that has eroded conventional categories defining jazz and the jazz musician. Radano accomplishes all this by analyzing the creative life of Anthony Braxton, one of the most emblematic figures of this cultural crisis. Born in 1945, Braxton is not only a virtuoso jazz saxophonist but an innovative theoretician and composer of experimental art music. His refusal to conform to the conventions of official musical culture has helped unhinge the very ideologies on which definitions of "jazz," "black music," "popular music," and "art music" are founded. New Musical Figurations gives the richest view available of this many-sided artist. Radano examines Braxton's early years on the South Side of Chicago, whose vibrant black musical legacy inspired him to explore new avenues of expression. Here is the first detailed history of Braxton's central role in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the principal musician-run institution of free jazz in the United States. After leaving Chicago, Braxton was active in Paris and New York, collaborating with Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Frederic Rzewski, and other composers affiliated with the experimental-music movement. From 1974 to 1981, he gained renown as a popular jazz performer and recording artist. Since then he has taught at Mills College and Wesleyan University, given lectures on his theoretical musical system, and written works for chamber groups as well as large, opera-scale pieces. The neglect of radical, challenging figures like Braxton in standard histories of jazz, Radano argues, mutes the innovative voice of the African-American musical tradition. Refreshingly free of technical jargon, New Musical Figurations is more than just another variation on the same jazz theme. Rather, it is an exploratory work as rich in theoretical vision as it is in historical detail.

New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton's Cultural Critique

by Ronald M. Radano

New Musical Figurations exemplifies a dramatically new way of configuring jazz music and history. By relating biography to the cultural and musical contours of contemporary American life, Ronald M. Radano observes jazz practice as part of the complex interweaving of postmodern culture—a culture that has eroded conventional categories defining jazz and the jazz musician. Radano accomplishes all this by analyzing the creative life of Anthony Braxton, one of the most emblematic figures of this cultural crisis. Born in 1945, Braxton is not only a virtuoso jazz saxophonist but an innovative theoretician and composer of experimental art music. His refusal to conform to the conventions of official musical culture has helped unhinge the very ideologies on which definitions of "jazz," "black music," "popular music," and "art music" are founded. New Musical Figurations gives the richest view available of this many-sided artist. Radano examines Braxton's early years on the South Side of Chicago, whose vibrant black musical legacy inspired him to explore new avenues of expression. Here is the first detailed history of Braxton's central role in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the principal musician-run institution of free jazz in the United States. After leaving Chicago, Braxton was active in Paris and New York, collaborating with Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Frederic Rzewski, and other composers affiliated with the experimental-music movement. From 1974 to 1981, he gained renown as a popular jazz performer and recording artist. Since then he has taught at Mills College and Wesleyan University, given lectures on his theoretical musical system, and written works for chamber groups as well as large, opera-scale pieces. The neglect of radical, challenging figures like Braxton in standard histories of jazz, Radano argues, mutes the innovative voice of the African-American musical tradition. Refreshingly free of technical jargon, New Musical Figurations is more than just another variation on the same jazz theme. Rather, it is an exploratory work as rich in theoretical vision as it is in historical detail.

New Musical Figurations: Anthony Braxton's Cultural Critique

by Ronald M. Radano

New Musical Figurations exemplifies a dramatically new way of configuring jazz music and history. By relating biography to the cultural and musical contours of contemporary American life, Ronald M. Radano observes jazz practice as part of the complex interweaving of postmodern culture—a culture that has eroded conventional categories defining jazz and the jazz musician. Radano accomplishes all this by analyzing the creative life of Anthony Braxton, one of the most emblematic figures of this cultural crisis. Born in 1945, Braxton is not only a virtuoso jazz saxophonist but an innovative theoretician and composer of experimental art music. His refusal to conform to the conventions of official musical culture has helped unhinge the very ideologies on which definitions of "jazz," "black music," "popular music," and "art music" are founded. New Musical Figurations gives the richest view available of this many-sided artist. Radano examines Braxton's early years on the South Side of Chicago, whose vibrant black musical legacy inspired him to explore new avenues of expression. Here is the first detailed history of Braxton's central role in the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, the principal musician-run institution of free jazz in the United States. After leaving Chicago, Braxton was active in Paris and New York, collaborating with Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Frederic Rzewski, and other composers affiliated with the experimental-music movement. From 1974 to 1981, he gained renown as a popular jazz performer and recording artist. Since then he has taught at Mills College and Wesleyan University, given lectures on his theoretical musical system, and written works for chamber groups as well as large, opera-scale pieces. The neglect of radical, challenging figures like Braxton in standard histories of jazz, Radano argues, mutes the innovative voice of the African-American musical tradition. Refreshingly free of technical jargon, New Musical Figurations is more than just another variation on the same jazz theme. Rather, it is an exploratory work as rich in theoretical vision as it is in historical detail.

Nico: The Life And Lies Of An Icon

by Richard Witts

Nico was revered as ‘the most beautiful creature who ever lived’. She was Andy Warhol’s femme fatale and the High Preistess of Weird, yet few knew her real name or her wretched origins. When she called herself ‘a Nazi anarchist junkie’, they thought she was joking.Bob Dylan wrote a song about her, Jim Morrison a poem, Jean Baudrillard an essay, Andy Warhol a film, Ernest Hemingway a story – yet she fought against the idolatry of men to assert her independence as a composer of dissident songs.Nico’s contribution as an artist (17 films and 7 LPs) was smothered by gossip of her alleged affairs with men and women, whether Jimi Hendrix or Jeanne Moreau, Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones or Coco Chanel.She drifted through society like a phantom. Each era celebrated a different Nico – the top covergirl of the Fifties, the Siren of the Sixties (as The Times acclaimed her), the Moon Goddess of the Seventies, and the High Priestess of Punk when rock stars like Siouxsie Sioux and Pattie Smith acknowledged her pre-eminence. Ironically, they did so at the lowest point in her life. For behind the Garbo-esque veneer lived a lonely woman trying to stand autonomous in a fast-changing world, seeking to survive her heroin addiction and to cope with her tormented mother and her troubled son, his existence denied by his film-star father.In this pioneer biography, which Nico asked the author to write shortly before her outlandish death in 1988, Richard Witts uncovers the reasons for her subterfuge, and examines the facts surrounding her encounters with terrorist Andreas Baader, the Black Panthers, and the Society for Cutting Up Men. Exclusive contributions from artists such as Jackson Browne, Iggy Pop, Viva, John Cale, David Bailey, Siouxsie Sioux – and many others including her relatives, friends and enemies – make this the definitive biography of an icon who was not only a testament to an era but hitherto unrecognised influence on popular music and style.

Rock And Popular Music: Politics, Policies, Institutions (Culture: Policy and Politics Ser.)

by Tony Bennett Lawrence Grossberg Shepherd Frith Simon Larry Grossberg Simon Frith John Shepherd Graeme Turner

Rock and Popular Music examines the relations between the policies and institutions which regulate contemporary popular music and the political debates, contradictions and struggles in which those musics are involved. International in its scope and conception, this innovative collection explores the reasons for and ways in which governments have sought either to support or prohibit popular music in Canada, Australia and Europe as well as the impact of broadcasting policies in forming and shaping different musical communities. Rock and Popular Music is a unique collection suggesting significant new directions for the study of contemporary popular musics.

Rock and Popular Music: Politics, Policies, Institutions (Culture: Policy and Politics Ser. #(PDF))

by Tony Bennett Lawrence Grossberg Shepherd Frith Simon Larry Grossberg Simon Frith John Shepherd Graeme Turner

Rock and Popular Music examines the relations between the policies and institutions which regulate contemporary popular music and the political debates, contradictions and struggles in which those musics are involved. International in its scope and conception, this innovative collection explores the reasons for and ways in which governments have sought either to support or prohibit popular music in Canada, Australia and Europe as well as the impact of broadcasting policies in forming and shaping different musical communities. Rock and Popular Music is a unique collection suggesting significant new directions for the study of contemporary popular musics.

Schubert's Dramatic Lieder (PDF)

by Marjorie Hirsch

This book explores the way in which Schubert revolutionised the Lied, transforming folk song into art song through the mixture of dramatic and lyrical vocal genres. By introducing dramatic poetry and musical traits within solo song settings, he turned the Lied into a highly expressive musical medium capable of conveying the complexities and nuances of the new Romantic poetry. In so doing, he created an art form which attracted nearly every subsequent composer of the period. Schubert's numerous dramatic songs have baffled critics from his day to our own. Their unusual stylistic characteristics - through composed form, progressive tonal structures, declamatory vocal lines, illustrative accompaniments - fly in the face of traditional conceptions of the Lied. Dr Hirsch's discussion and analysis of selected dramatic Lieder illuminate Schubert's compositional innovation.

The Soul of Mbira: Music and Traditions of the Shona People of Zimbabwe

by Paul F. Berliner

This sensitive, scholarly portrayal of Shona musicians and the African Musical tradition is highly engaging and comprehensive in its range of data. Paul Berliner provides the complete cultural context for the music and an intimate, precise account of the meaning of the instrument and its music. "Paul Berliner's The Soul of Mbira is probably the best ethnography ever written about an African musical tradition. It is a complete classic . . . . I know of no other instrument with the range of the mbira, and the book is equal to the instrument."—John Chernoff "[The Soul of Mbira] illustrates the fact that Shona mbira music in its beauty, subtlety, and virtuosity demands the same kind of respect that we might hold for any other classical music."—David Reck, Parabola "The book is a model of ethnomusicological thinking and investigation and it suggests a specific way of approaching a complex socio-musical system."—John Baily, Popular Music "When next someone asks 'What is ethnomusicology?' or 'What do ethnomusicologists do?' I shall suggest this book. . . . This is a landmark in ethnomusicological literature. Berliner succeeds in conveying both the joy that goes with mbira playing and the mystic relationship between the player and his instrument. In short, this is humanized ethnomusicology."—K.A. Gourlay, Ethnomusicology

Stranger Music: Selected Poems and Songs

by Leonard Cohen

Leonard Cohen's legacy is that of one of the most literate, daring, and affecting poet-songwriters in the world. Stranger Music presents a magnificent cross-section of Cohen's work - including the legendary songs 'Suzanne', 'Joan of Arc' and 'The Chelsea Hotel', and elections from such books as Flowers for Hitler, Beautiful Losers, and Death of a Lady's Man, and eleven previously unpublished poems.Stranger Music brings together Cohen's song lyrics and a generous selection of his poetry and is a celebration of the legendary musician's extraordinary gift for language that speaks with rare clarity, passion and timelessness.'A massive record of the poet's imaginative journey, through beauty, through horror, through the extremes of love and despair, from the deepest abyss of self-abnegation to the rare and necessary moments of ecstasy. The language ranges from the exquisitely beautiful to the darkly obscene, from the romantically inspired to the ironically banal... A poetic record like no other' Toronto Star

Thucydides, Hobbes, and the Interpretation of Realism

by Laurie M. Johnson

This original book has been consistently cited by scholars of international relations who explore the roots of realism in Thucydides's history and the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. While acknowledging that neither thinker fits perfectly within the confines of international relations realism, Laurie M. Johnson proposes Hobbes's philosophy is more closely aligned with it than Thucydides's.

Time in Contemporary Musical Thought (Contemporary Music Review)

by Jonathan D. Kramer

First Published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Time in Contemporary Musical Thought (Contemporary Music Review #Vols. 7, Pts. 2)

by Jonathan D. Kramer

First Published in 1993. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

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