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Stance: Ideas about Emotion, Style, and Meaning for the Study of Expressive Culture (Music Culture)
By Harris M. Berger. 1997
Why does music move us? How do the immediate situation and larger social contexts influence the meanings that people find…
in stories, rituals, or films? How do people engage with the images and sounds of a performance to make them come alive in sensuous, lived experience? Exploring these questions, Stance presents a major new theory of emotion, style, and meaning for the study of expressive culture. In clear language, the book reveals dimensions of lived experience that everyone is aware of but that scholars rarely account for.Though music is at the heart of the book, its arguments are illustrated with a wide range of clear examples--from the heavy metal concert to the recital hall, from festivals to dance, stand-up comedy, the movies, and beyond. Helping ethnographers get closer to the experiences of the people with whom they work, this book will be of immediate interest to anyone in ethnomusicology, folklore, popular music studies, anthropology, or performance studies.The Place Where You Go to Listen: In Search of an Ecology of Music
By John Luther Adams, Alex Ross. 2009
Did Alaska create the music of John Luther Adams, or did the music create his Alaska? For the past thirty…
years, the vastness of Alaska has swept through the distant reaches of the composer's imagination and every corner of his compositions. In this new book Adams proposes an ideal of musical ecology, the philosophical foundation on which his largest, most complex musical work is based. This installation, also called The Place Where You Go to Listen, is a sound and light environment that gives voice to the cycles of sunlight and darkness, the phases of the moon, the seismic rhythms of the earth, and the dance of the aurora borealis. Adams describes this work as "a place for hearing the unheard music of the world around us." The book includes two seminal essays, the composer's journal telling the story of the day-to-day emergence of The Place, as well as musical notations, graphs and illustrations of geophysical phenomena.Among the Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in Contemporary Syria (Music Culture)
By Jonathan Holt Shannon. 2006
How does a Middle Eastern community create a modern image through its expression of heritage and authenticity? In Among the…
Jasmine Trees: Music and Modernity in Contemporary Syria, Jonathan H. Shannon investigates expressions of authenticity in Syria's musical culture, which is particularly known for embracing and preserving the Arab musical tradition, and which has seldom been researched in depth by Western scholars. Music plays a key role in the process of self-imaging by virtue of its ability to convey feeling and emotion, and Shannon explores a variety of performance genres, Sufi rituals, song lyrics, melodic modes, and aesthetic criteria. Shannon shows that although the music may evoke the old, the traditional, and the local, these are re-envisioned as signifiers of the modern national profile. A valuable contribution to the study of music and identity and to the ethnomusicology of the modern Middle East, Among the Jasmine Trees details this music and its reception for the first time, offering an original theoretical framework for understanding contemporary Arab culture, music, and society.Some Liked It Hot: Jazz Women in Film and Television, 1928–1959 (Music Culture)
By Kristin A Mcgee. 2009
Women have been involved with jazz since its inception, but all too often their achievements were not as well known…
as those of their male counterparts. Some Liked It Hot looks at all-girl bands and jazz women from the 1920s through the 1950s and how they fit into the nascent mass culture, particularly film and television, to uncover some of the historical motivations for excluding women from the now firmly established jazz canon. This well-illustrated book chronicles who appeared where and when in over 80 performances, captured in both popular Hollywood productions and in relatively unknown films and television shows.As McGee shows, these performances reflected complex racial attitudes emerging in American culture during the first half of the twentieth century. Her analysis illuminates the heavily mediated representational strategies that jazz women adopted, highlighting the role that race played in constituting public performances of various styles of jazz from "swing" to "hot" and "sweet." The International Sweethearts of Rhythm, Hazel Scott, the Ingenues, Peggy Lee, and Paul Whiteman are just a few of the performers covered in the book, which also includes a detailed filmography.The Classical Music Lover's Companion to Orchestral Music
By Robert Philip. 2018
An invaluable guide for lovers of classical music designed to enhance their enjoyment of the core orchestral repertoire from 1700…
to 1950 Robert Philip, scholar, broadcaster, and musician, has compiled an essential handbook for lovers of classical music, designed to enhance their listening experience to the full. Covering four hundred works by sixty-eight composers from Corelli to Shostakovich, this engaging companion explores and unpacks the most frequently performed works, including symphonies, concertos, overtures, suites, and ballet scores. It offers intriguing details about each piece while avoiding technical terminology that might frustrate the non-specialist reader. Philip identifies key features in each work, as well as subtleties and surprises that await the attentive listener, and he includes enough background and biographical information to illuminate the composer’s intentions. Organized alphabetically from Bach to Webern, this compendium will be indispensable for classical music enthusiasts, whether in the concert hall or enjoying recordings at home.Complete Works for Pianoforte Solo: Volume II
By Felix Mendelssohn.
Mendelssohn's complete works for pianoforte solo are now contained in this two-volume republication of the outstanding Breitkopf & Härtel edition.…
Included in Volume One are: "Capriccio in F-sharp Minor" (1825), "Sonata in E Major" (1826), Seven Characteristic Pieces," "Rondo Capriccioso in E Major" (1824), "Fantasy in F-sharp Minor" (1835), "Andante cantabile e Presto agitato in B Major" (1838), "Etude in F Minor" (1836), "Scherzo in B Minor," "Gondola Song in A Major" (1837), "Scherzo a Capriccio in F-sharp Minor," "Three Caprices" (1833-1835), "Six Preludes and Fugues" (1827-1837), "Variations Sérieuses in D Minor" (1841), "Six Pieces for Children" (c. 1842), "Variations in E-flat Major" (1841), and Variations in B-flat Major."Volume Two contains: "Three Predules" (1836), "Three Etudes" (1834-1838), "Sonata in G Minor" (1821), "Sonata in B-flat Major" (1827), "Album Leaf (Song Without Words) in E Minor," "Capriccio in E Major/Minor" (1837), "Perpetuum Mobile in C Major," "Prelude and Fugue in E Minor" (1827, 1841), "Two Pieces," and "Song Without Words" [48 pieces in 8 books].Noteheads have been reproduced in a size large enough to be read easily at the keyboard. Margins and spaces between staves are generous, permitting insertion of written notes, analysis, fingerings, running measure numbers, etc. For playing, study, or just listening to records, this work will be an admirable addition to your music library.Dreams of Germany: Musical Imaginaries from the Concert Hall to the Dance Floor (Spektrum: Publications of the German Studies Association #18)
By Neil Gregor, Thomas Irvine. 2019
For many centuries, Germany has enjoyed a reputation as the ‘land of music’. But just how was this reputation established…
and transformed over time, and to what extent was it produced within or outside of Germany? Through case studies that range from Bruckner to the Beatles and from symphonies to dance-club music, this volume looks at how German musicians and their audiences responded to the most significant developments of the twentieth century, including mass media, technological advances, fascism, and war on an unprecedented scale.Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues: A Musical Journey
By Holly George-Warren, Robert Santelli, Peter Guralnick. 2010
A companion to the groundbreaking PBS documentary series, this volume is a unique and timeless celebration of the blues, from…
writers and artists as esteemed and revered as the music that moved them. Included in this stunning collection are Essays by David Halberstam, Hilton Als, Suzan-Lori Parks, Elmore Leonard, Luc Sante, John Edgar Wideman, and many others Timeless archival pieces by writers such as Stanley Booth, Paul Oliver, and Mack McCormick Evocative color illustrations and rare vintage photography Illuminating and in-depth conversations and portraits of musicians, ranging from Robert Johnson and Bessie Smith to John Lee Hooker and Eric Clapton Lyrics of legendary blues compositions Personal essays by the series directors Martin Scorsese, Charles Burnett, Richard Pearce, Wim Wenders, Marc Levin, Mike Figgis, and Clint Eastwood Excerpts from literary masters James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison, Eudora Welty, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and William Faulkner Tracing the art form's path from juke joints, house parties, and recording studios to musicians such as Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, and The Beatles, Martin Scorsese Presents The Blues proves, in the words of Willie Dixon, "The blues are the roots; every-thing else is the fruits."Guitar for Kids: First Steps in Learning to Play Guitar with Audio & Video
By Gareth Evans. 2013
“Gareth has written a really well thought out first book for teaching young children how to play. This one is…
definitely the one I'll be using.” Bob Lucas - Bob Lucas Guitar Studios (Missouri US)Guitar For Kids is a fun all-colour guide on the first steps of learning to play Guitar with over 70 photographic examples, purpose-made diagrams and cartoons. Starting with advice on buying your first guitar, how to hold the guitar and how to tune it, the music then begins with easy-to-play melodies using only open strings (open strings means only the plucking hand is used), before moving to simple pieces in which the fretting hand is also used. The book goes into detail for some basic techniques because you're better off getting it right from the start rather than develop bad habits.Tablature Based - Guitar for Kids uses mostly guitar tablature making this popular instrument more easily accessible for beginners (as do most adult guitar method books). The rhythmical aspect of Sight-reading is covered within the Chords section which eases-in the later Sight-reading section because the only new thing to learn will be reading different notes from the musical staff.Audio Tracks - Guitar for Kids comes with 47 downloadable audio tracks with musical pieces in styles such as Rock, Blues, Pop, Flamenco, Jazz and Reggae. Each piece has a full band demo track and accompanying backing track with guitar part removed for you to play over.What Else? - EZ chords are covered (easy chords with less notes) and are accompanied with diagrams of the full versions for later on, or if you feel like a challenge. There’s an introduction to Power chords with Rock pieces to play named after healthy greens “Broccolli Rockilly” and “Rocket Salad”. There's a Blues and Rock duet with backing band tracks to play with a friend, and at the end there is a Quiz, no cheating!Grab a copy today!Please Note: The eBook includes musical pieces so is not suitable for smaller screens.“I looked through Guitar for Kids thoroughly when I received it and I think its great. I will be recommending that my students buy one.” Chris Nastri, Bachelor of Education (B.Ed) Phoenix Arizona US"It looks like Gareth spent a lot of time writing Guitar for Kids. I think the illustrations are very helpful in keeping people's minds interested and engaged." Tim Woosley - Music Director, Lincoln School of Music (Nebraska)Die Praxis der Popmusik: Soziologische Perspektiven
By Frank Hillebrandt, Anna Daniel. 2019
Der Band wendet sich dem Gegenstand Popmusik aus einer explizit praxissoziologischen Perspektive zu. Dies ermöglicht nicht nur eine multiperspektivische Betrachtungsweise…
der Popmusik. Mit der Praxissoziologie lassen sich zudem herkömmliche analytische Gegenüberstellungen und Engführungen wie Produktion und Rezeption, Subversion und Mainstream überwinden. Indem sich eine Soziologie der Praxis gleichermaßen sensibel für die Dynamiken und die Beharrlichkeit der popmusikalischen Praxisformation zeigt, entsteht eine ganz neue Weise, Popmusik historisch und analytisch zu beschreiben. Vom historischen Pop-Ereignis über lokale Ausprägungen des Pop bis hin zu grundlegenden Theorievorschlägen zur Analyse von Popmusik versammelt der Band sehr vielfältige Beiträge, die den Mehrwert der praxissoziologischen Analyseperspektive auf je eigene Weise verdeutlichen.Stravinsky in the Americas explores the “pre-Craft” period of Igor Stravinsky’s life, from when he first landed on American shores…
in 1925 to the end of World War II in 1945. Through a rich archival trove of ephemera, correspondence, photographs, and other documents, eminent musicologist H. Colin Slim examines the twenty-year period that began with Stravinsky as a radical European art-music composer and ended with him as a popular figure in American culture. This collection traces Stravinsky’s rise to fame—catapulted in large part by his collaborations with Hollywood and Disney and marked by his extra-marital affairs, his grappling with feelings of anti-Semitism, and his encounters with contemporary musicians as the music industry was emerging and taking shape in midcentury America. Slim’s lively narrative records the composer’s larger-than-life persona through a close look at his transatlantic tours and domestic excursions, where Stravinsky’s personal and professional life collided in often-dramatic ways.Smash!: Green Day, The Offspring, Bad Religion, NOFX, and the '90s Punk Explosion
By Ian Winwood. 2018
A group biography of '90s punk rock told through the prism of Green Day, The Offspring, NOFX, Rancid, Bad Religion,…
Social Distortion, and moreTwo decades after the Sex Pistols and the Ramones birthed punk music into the world, their artistic heirs burst onto the scene and changed the genre forever. While the punk originators remained underground favorites and were slow burns commercially, their heirs shattered commercial expectations for the genre. In 1994, Green Day and The Offspring each released their third albums, and the results were astounding. Green Day's Dookie went on to sell more than 15 million copies and The Offspring's Smash remains the all-time bestselling album released on an independent label. The times had changed, and so had the music.While many books, articles, and documentaries focus on the rise of punk in the '70s, few spend any substantial time on its resurgence in the '90s. Smash! is the first to do so, detailing the circumstances surrounding the shift in '90s music culture away from grunge and legitimizing what many first-generation punks regard as post-punk, new wave, and generally anything but true punk music.With astounding access to all the key players of the time, including members of Green Day, The Offspring, NOFX, Rancid, Bad Religion, Social Distortion, and many others, renowned music writer Ian Winwood at last gives this significant, substantive, and compelling story its due. Punk rock bands were never truly successful or indeed truly famous, and that was that--until it wasn't. Smash! is the story of how the underdogs finally won and forever altered the landscape of mainstream music.Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop
By Questlove, Vikki Tobak. 2018
An inside look at the work of hip-hop photographers told through their most intimate diaries—their contact sheets. Featuring rare outtakes…
from over 100 photoshoots alongside interviews and essays from industry legends, Contact High: A Visual History of Hip-Hop takes readers on a chronological journey from old-school to alternative hip-hop and from analog to digital photography. The ultimate companion for music and photography enthusiasts, Contact High is the definitive history of hip-hop’s early days, celebrating the artists that shaped the iconic album covers, t-shirts and posters beloved by hip-hop fans today. With essays from BILL ADLER, RHEA L. COMBS, FAB 5 FREDDY, MICHAEL GONZALES, YOUNG GURU, DJ PREMIER, and RZAPicturing Prince: An Intimate Portrait
By Steve Parke. 2017
PICTURING PRINCE sees the late icon's former art director, STEVE PARKE, revealing stunning intimate photographs of the singer from his…
time working at Paisley Park. At least half of the images in the book are exclusively published here for the first time; most other images in the book are rare to the public eye.Alongside these remarkable images are fifty engaging, poignant and often funny written vignettes by Parke, which reveal the very human man behind the reclusive superstar: from shooting hoops to renting out movie theatres at 4am; from midnight requests for camels to meaningful conversations that shed light on Prince as a man and artist. STEVE PARKE started working with Prince in 1988, after a mutual friend showed Prince some of Steve's photorealistic paintings. He designed everything from album covers and merchandise to sets for Prince's tours and videos. Somewhere in all of this, he became Paisley Park's official art director. He began photographing Prince at the request of the star himself, and continued to do so for the next several years. The images in this book are the arresting result of this collaboration.The author presents Probatio, a toolkit for building functional DMI (digital musical instruments) prototypes, artifacts in which gestural control and…
sound production are physically decoupled but digitally mapped. He uses the concept of instrumental inheritance, the application of gestural and/or structural components of existing instruments to generate ideas for new instruments. To support analysis and combination, he then leverages a traditional design method, the morphological chart, in which existing artifacts are split into parts, presented in a visual form and then recombined to produce new ideas. And finally he integrates the concept and the method in a concrete object, a physical prototyping toolkit for building functional DMI prototypes: Probatio. The author's evaluation of this modular system shows it reduces the time required to develop functional prototypes. The book is useful for researchers, practitioners, and graduate students in the areas of musical creativity and human-computer interaction, in particular those engaged in generating, communicating, and testing ideas in complex design spaces.Does it make sense to refer to bird song—a complex vocalization, full of repetitive and transformative patterns that are carefully…
calculated to woo a mate—as art? What about a pack of wolves howling in unison or the cacophony made by an entire rain forest? Redefining music as “the art of possibly animate things,” Musical Vitalities charts a new path for music studies that blends musicological methods with perspectives drawn from the life sciences. In opposition to humanist approaches that insist on a separation between culture and nature—approaches that appear increasingly untenable in an era defined by human-generated climate change—Musical Vitalities treats music as one example of the cultural practices and biotic arts of the animal kingdom rather than as a phenomenon categorically distinct from nonhuman forms of sonic expression. The book challenges the human exceptionalism that has allowed musicologists to overlook music’s structural resemblances to the songs of nonhuman species, the intricacies of music’s physiological impact on listeners, and the many analogues between music’s formal processes and those of the dynamic natural world. Through close readings of Austro-German music and aesthetic writings that suggest wide-ranging analogies between music and nature, Musical Vitalities seeks to both rekindle the critical potential of nineteenth-century music and rejoin the humans at the center of the humanities with the nonhumans whose evolutionary endowments and planetary fates they share.Mi Ukelele para Niños: Cómo Tocar el Ukelele para Niños
By Rudolph D White. 2018
Este libro es la perfecta introducción al Ukelele para niños de todas las edades. Sin partituras, los niños pueden seguir…
fácilmente los claros y simples diagramas y fotos para aprender sus primeros acordes, tocar canciones divertidas y ganar confianza tocando su primer ukelele! •Instrucciones e ilustraciones fáciles de seguir. •Ejercicios simples para seguir y practicar. •Aprenden a su propio ritmo. •Canciones fáciles y divertidas, acordes y ritmos para tocar. •Simplemente sigue las instrucciones en el libro y los niños estarán tocando ukelele en poco tiempo. Compra este libro ahoraArtists today are at a crossroads. With funding for the arts and humanities endowments perpetually under attack, and school districts…
all over the United States scrapping their art curricula altogether, the place of the arts in our civic future is uncertain to say the least. At the same time, faced with the problems of the modern world—from water shortages and grave health concerns to global climate change and the now constant threat of terrorism—one might question the urgency of this waning support for the arts. In the politically fraught world we live in, is the “felt” experience even something worth fighting for? In this soul-searching collection of vignettes, Patrick Summers gives us an adamant, impassioned affirmative. Art, he argues, nurtures freedom of thought, and is more necessary now than ever before. As artistic director of the Houston Grand Opera, Summers is well positioned to take stock of the limitations of the professional arts world—a world where the conversation revolves almost entirely around financial questions and whose reputation tends toward elitism—and to remind us of art’s fundamental relationship to joy and meaning. Offering a vehement defense of long-form arts in a world with a short attention span, Summers argues that art is spiritual, and that music in particular has the ability to ask spiritual questions, to inspire cathartic pathos, and to express spiritual truths. Summers guides us through his personal encounters with art and music in disparate places, from Houston’s Rothko Chapel to a music classroom in rural China, and reflects on musical works he has conducted all over the world. Assessing the growing canon of new operas performed in American opera houses today, he calls for musical artists to be innovative and brave as opera continues to reinvent itself. This book is a moving credo elucidating Summers’s belief that the arts, especially music, help us to understand our own humanity as intellectual, aesthetic, and ultimately spiritual.The Indispensable Composers: A Personal Guide
By Anthony Tommasini. 2018
An exploration into the question of greatness from the Chief Classical Music Critic of the New York TimesWhen he began…
to listen to the great works of classical music as a child, Anthony Tommasini had many questions. Why did a particular piece move him? How did the music work? Over time, he realized that his passion for this music was not enough. He needed to understand it. Take Bach, for starters. Who was he? How does one account for his music and its unshakeable hold on us today? As a critic, Tommasini has devoted particular attention to living composers and overlooked repertory. But, like all classical music lovers, the canon has remained central for him. In 2011, in his role as the Chief Classical Music Critic for the New York Times, he wrote a popular series in which he somewhat cheekily set out to determine the all-time top ten composers. Inviting input from readers, Tommasini wrestled with questions of greatness. Readers joined the exercise in droves. Some railed against classical music’s obsession with greatness but then raged when Mahler was left off the final list. This intellectual game reminded them why they loved music in the first place. Now in THE INDISPENSABLE COMPOSERS, Tommasini offers his own personal guide to the canon--and what greatness really means in classical music. What does it mean to be canonical now? Who gets to say? And do we have enough perspective on the 20th century to even begin assessing it? To make his case, Tommasini draws on elements of biography, the anxiety of influence, the composer's relationships with colleagues, and shifting attitudes toward a composer's work over time. Because he has spent his life contemplating these titans, Tommasini shares impressions from performances he has heard or given or moments when his own biography proves revealing. As he argues for his particular pantheon of indispensable composers, Anthony Tommasini provides a masterclass in what to listen for and how to understand what music does to us.This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
By Daniel J. Levitin. 2006
What can music teach us about the brain? What can the brain teach us about music? And what can both…
teach us about ourselves? In this groundbreaking union of art and science, rocker-turned-neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin (The World in Six Songs and The Organized Mind) explores the connection between music - its performance, its composition, how we listen to it, why we enjoy it - and the human brain. Drawing on the latest research and on musical examples ranging from Mozart to Duke Ellington to Van Halen, Levitin reveals:How composers produce some of the most pleasurable effects of listening to music by exploiting the way our brains make sense of the worldWhy we are so emotionally attached to the music we listened to as teenagers, whether it was Fleetwood Mac, U2, or Dr. DreThat practice, rather than talent, is the driving force behind musical expertiseHow those insidious little jingles (called earworms) get stuck in our headTaking on prominent thinkers who argue that music is nothing more than an evolutionary accident, Levitin poses that music is fundamental to our species, perhaps even more so than language. A Los Angeles Times Book Award finalist, This Is Your Brain on Music will attract readers of Oliver Sacks and David Byrne, as it is an unprecedented, eye-opening investigation into an obsession at the heart of human nature.