LibGuides: E-Books: Music

Overview

Baroque
Blues and Soul
Classical
Composition
Early Music
Folk Music
Gospel Music
History of Music

Baroque

Towards Tonality : Aspects of Baroque Music Theory This is a collection of essays based on lectures presented at the International Orpheus Academy for Music and Theory on 'Historical Theory, Performance, and Meaning in Baroque Music'. The often complex connections and intersections between, e.g., modal and tonal idioms, contrapuntal and harmonic organisation, were considered from various perspectives as to the transition (towards tonality) from the Renaissance to the Baroque era.

Blues and Soul

Barrelhouse Words : A Blues Dialect Dictionary This fascinating compendium explains the most unusual, obscure, and curious words and expressions from vintage blues music. Utilizing both documentary evidence and invaluable interviews with a number of now-deceased musicians from the 1920s and'30s, blues scholar Stephen Calt unravels the nuances of more than twelve hundred idioms and proper or place names found on oft-overlooked 'race records' recorded between 1923 and 1949.
Ramblin' on My Mind : New Perspectives on the Blues This compilation of essays takes the study of the blues to a welcome new level. Distinguished scholars and well-established writers from such diverse backgrounds as musicology, anthropology, musicianship, and folklore join together to examine blues as literature, music, personal expression, and cultural product.
Sitting In : Selected Writings on Jazz, Blues, and Related Topics This collection of essays and poems about the influence of jazz on writing and culture in this country, an expanded edition of the 1986 publication, is a rewarding volume for all those entranced by jazz. Carruth brings his considerable poetic and literary sensibilities to bear on a topic very near to his heart:'Those who are devoted primarily to jazz, to poetry, to all the arts, are also those who contribute more intelligently than others to our practical and moral, political and social, advancement.'
Soul Music : Tracking the Spiritual Roots of Pop From Plato to Motown
The Blues: A Very Short Introduction

Classical

Chamber Music : A Listener's Guide Oxford's highly successful listener's guides--The Symphony, The Concerto, and Choral Masterworks--have been widely praised for their blend of captivating biography, crystal clear musical analysis, and delightful humor. Now James Keller follows these greatly admired volumes with Chamber Music.
Classical Music : A Beginner's Guide What does classical music mean to the Western World? How has it transformed over the centuries? What relevance does it have today? Julian Johnson inspires readers to explore over 1000 years of music, and examines how music is related to some of the big ideas of Western experience including spirituality, emotion, the weight of history, and self identity.
Mozart's Grace It is a common article of faith that Mozart composed the most beautiful music we can know. But few of us ask why. Why does the beautiful in Mozart stand apart, as though untouched by human hands? In Mozart's Grace, Scott Burnham probes a treasury of passages from many different genres of Mozart's music, listening always for the qualities of Mozartean beauty
Planet Beethoven : Classical Music at the Turn of the Millennium In Planet Beethoven, Mina Yang makes the compelling case that classical music in the twenty-first century is just as vibrant and relevant as ever—but with significant changes that give us insight into the major cultural shifts of our day.
Playing with Signs: A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music : A Semiotic Interpretation of Classic Music Of all the repertories of Western Art music, none is as explicitly listener-oriented as that of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Yet few attempts to analyze the so-called Classic Style have embraced the semiotic implications of this condition. Playing with Signs proposes a listener-oriented theory of Classic instrumental music that encompasses its two most fundamental communicative dimensions: expression and structure.
Richard Wagner : A Short Biography This short biography of the famous composer Richard Wagner details his life, his works and gives the reader an interesting guide to the style that defined this master of operas and other musical works. This version has been specifically edited and formatted for today's e-readers, and makes an excellent addition to any music-related book collection.
Semiotics of Classical Music : How Mozart, Brahms and Wagner Talk to Us Works from symphonies, lied, chamber music to opera are approached and studied here with methods of semiotic inspiration. Its analyses stem from systematic methods in the author's previous work, yet totally new analytic concepts are also launched in order to elucidate profound musical significations verbally. The book reflects the new phase in the author's semiotic approach, the one characterized by the so-called 'existential semiotics' elaborated on the basis of philosophers from Kant, Hegel and Kierkegaard to Jaspers, Heidegger, Sartre and Marcel.
The World's Great Men Of Music

Composition

Composing for the Jazz Orchestra 'Although it will be of primary interest to those who are engaged in composition themselves, [this] book is also recommended for readers who may wish to gain further insight into just what makes jazz composition so different from traditional approaches
Composing Under the Skin : The Music-making Body at the Composer's Desk Composer Paul Craenen explores ways in which the musician's body is revealed in musical performance. He leads us from Cage, Lachenmann, Kagel and their contemporaries to a discussion of how today's generation of young composers is writing a body paradigm into composition itself.
The Muse That Sings : Composers Speak About the Creative Process The Muse That Sings is a unique behind-the-scenes look at both twentieth-century music and the nuts and bolts of creative work. Here, twenty-five of America's leading composers--from Adams to Zorn, from Bolcom to Vierk--talk candidly about their craft, their motivations, their difficulties, and how they how proceed from musical idea to finished composition.

Early Music

Early Music: A Very Short Introduction In this Very Short Introduction, Thomas Forrest Kelly provides not only a compact overview of the music itself, but also a lively look at the many attempts over the last two centuries to revive it.
Improvising Early Music In this book three experts give their view on aspects of musical improvisation in the late medieval, renaissance, and early baroque periods.

Folk Music

A Passion for Polka : Old-Time Ethnic Music in America Lending star quality to the ethnic music of Poles, Italians, Slovaks, Jews, and Scandinavians, luminaries like Frankie Yankovic, the Polka King, and 'Whoopee John' Wilfart became household names to millions of Americans. In this vivid and engaging book, Victor Greene uncovers a wonderful corner of American social history as he traces the popularization of old-time ethnic music from the turn of the century to the 1960s.
Everyday Music From 1983 to 1988, Alan Govenar traveled more than 35,000 miles around Texas, interviewing, recording, and photographing the vast cultural landscape of the state. In Everyday Music, he compares his experiences then with his attempts to reconnect with the people and traditions that he had originally documented
Folk Music in the United States : An Introduction Folk Music in the United States gives readers a broad overview of many kinds of folk music found in this country, from the songs of rural Appalachia an d New England through the indigenous music of the American Indians and the African music brought by slaves
In It for the Long Run : A Musical Odyssey In It for the Long Run: A Musical Odyssey is Rooney's kaleidoscopic first-hand account of more than five decades of success as a performer, concert promoter, songwriter, music publisher, engineer, and record producer.
Learning, Teaching, and Musical Identity : Voices Across Cultures
Reds, Whites, and Blues: Social Movements, Folk Music, and Race in the United States : Social Movements, Folk Music, and Race in the United States Music, and folk music in particular, is often embraced as a form of political expression, a vehicle for bridging or reinforcing social boundaries, and a valuable tool for movements reconfiguring the social landscape. Reds, Whites, and Blues examines the political force of folk music, not through the meaning of its lyrics, but through the concrete social activities that make up movements.
Roots of the Revival : American and British Folk Music in the 1950s In Roots of the Revival: American and British Folk Music in the 1950s, Ronald D. Cohen and Rachel Clare Donaldson present a transatlantic history of folk's midcentury resurgence that juxtaposes the related but distinct revivals that took place in the United States and Great Britain.
Singing Out : An Oral History of America's Folk Music Revivals Intimate, anecdotal, and spell-binding, Singing Out offers a fascinating oral history of the North American folk music revivals and folk music. Culled from more than 150 interviews recorded from 1976 to 2006, this captivating story spans seven decades and cuts across a wide swath of generations and perspectives, shedding light on the musical, political, and social aspects of this movement.
Slave Songs of the United States First published in 1867, Slave Songs of the United States represents the work of its three editors, all of whom collected and annotated these songs while working in the Sea Islands of South Carolina during the Civil War, and also of other collectors who transcribed songs sung by former slaves in other parts of the country.
The Beautiful Music All Around Us : Field Recordings and the American Experience The Beautiful Music All Around Us presents the extraordinarily rich backstories of thirteen performances captured on Library of Congress field recordings between 1934 and 1942 in locations reaching from Southern Appalachia to the Mississippi Delta and the Great Plains.
The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture Southern folklife is the heart of southern culture. Looking at traditional practices still carried on today as well as at aspects of folklife that are dynamic and emergent, contributors to this volume of The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture examine a broad range of folk traditions.
This Land Is Your Land : Woody Guthrie and the Journey of an American Folk Song This Land Is Your Land is a remarkably detailed account of the journey of America's most celebrated folk song. It also details Guthrie's legendary journey from Oklahoma across the Heartland to New York City, where he wrote many of his works including This Land Is Your Land.

Gospel Music

A City Called Heaven : Chicago and the Birth of Gospel Music In A City Called Heaven, gospel announcer and music historian Robert Marovich shines a light on the humble origins of a majestic genre and its indispensable bond to the city where it found its voice: Chicago. Marovich follows gospel music from early hymns and camp meetings through the Great Migration that brought it to Chicago
Singing in My Soul : Black Gospel Music in a Secular Age. Black gospel music grew from obscure nineteenth-century beginnings to become the leading style of sacred music in black American communities after World War II. Jerma A. Jackson traces the music's unique history, profiling the careers of several singers--particularly Sister Rosetta Tharpe--and demonstrating the important role women played in popularizing gospel.
Then Sings My Soul : The Culture of Southern Gospel Music. In this ambitious book on southern gospel music, Douglas Harrison reexamines the music's historical emergence and its function as a modern cultural phenomenon.

History of Music

Battle Hymns : The Power and Popularity of Music in the Civil War Drawing on an array of published and archival sources, Christian McWhirter analyzes the myriad ways music influenced popular culture in the years surrounding the war and discusses its deep resonance for both whites and blacks,
God Bless America : Tin Pan Alley Goes to War
Histories and Narratives of Music Analysis This volume offers a cross section of current directions in the broad field of music analysis as practiced by a transnational community of scholars. Music analysis is presented as a vibrant multi-faceted field of research which constantly re-examines its own postulates, while also establishing dialogues with a large number of other disciplines.
In Tune : Charley Patton, Jimmie Rodgers, and the Roots of American Music Born into poverty in Mississippi at the close of the nineteenth century, Charley Patton and Jimmie Rodgers established themselves among the most influential musicians of their era. In Tune tells the story of the parallel careers of these two pioneering recording artists -- one white, one black -- who moved beyond their humble origins to change the face of American music.
Jelly Roll, Bix, and Hoagy, Revised and Expanded Edition : Gennett Records and the Rise of America's Musical Grassroots While Gennett Records was overshadowed by competitors such as Victor and Columbia, few record companies documented the birth of America's grassroots music as thoroughly as this small-town label. In this newly revised and expanded edition of Jelly Roll, Bix, and Hoagy, Rick Kennedy shares anecdotes from musicians, employees, and family members to trace the colorful history of one of America's most innovative record companies
Making Music in Los Angeles : Transforming the Popular In this fascinating social history of music in Los Angeles from the 1880s to 1940, Catherine Parsons Smith ventures into an often neglected period to discover that during America's Progressive Era, Los Angeles was a center for making music long before it became a major metropolis.
Modern Music and After This new edition of Modern Music and After discusses not only the music of the fifteen years that have passed since the previous edition, but also the recent explosion of scholarly interest in the latter half of the twentieth century.
Music in Ancient Greece and Rome Music in Ancient Greece and Rome provides a comprehensive introduction to the history of music from Homeric times to the Roman emperor Hadrian, presented in a concise and user-friendly way.
Rock Star : The Making of Musical Icons From Elvis to Springsteen Shumway looks at the careers and cultural legacies of seven rock stars in the context of popular music and culture—Elvis Presley, James Brown, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead, Joni Mitchell, and Bruce Springsteen.
Selling Sounds From Tin Pan Alley to grand opera, player-pianos to phonograph records, David Suisman explores the rise of music as big business and the creation of a radically new musical culture. Provocative, original, and lucidly written, Selling Sounds reveals the commercial architecture of America's musical life.
The American Musical and the Performance of Personal Identity This book addresses a variety of specific themes in musicals that serve this general function: fairy tale and fantasy, idealism and inspiration, gender and sexuality, and relationships, among others. It also considers three overlapping genres that are central, in quite different ways, to the projection of personal identity: operetta, movie musicals, and operatic musicals
The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera
They Came to Nashville In They Came to Nashville, Chapman records the personal stories of musicians shaping the modern history of music in Nashville, from the mouths of the musicians themselves.

Overview

Jazz
Medieval Music
Music Education
Musicology
Music Therapy
Opera
Philosophy of Music
Popular Music
Ragtime
Renaissance Music
Rock and Roll
Society and Music
Theory of Music

Jazz

At the Jazz Band Ball : Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene Hentoff has been a tireless advocate for the neglected parts of jazz history, including forgotten sidemen and -women. This volume includes his best recent work—short essays, long interviews, and personal recollections.
Classic Jazz : A Personal View of the Music and the Musicians Floyd Levin, an award-winning jazz writer, has personally known many of the jazz greats who contributed to the music's colorful history. In this collection of his articles, published mostly in jazz magazines over a fifty-year period, Levin takes us into the nightclubs, the recording studios, the record companies, and, most compellingly, into the lives of the musicians who made the great moments of the traditional jazz and swing eras.
Jazz and Culture in a Global Age Noted jazz scholar, biographer, and critic Stuart Nicholson has written an entertaining and enlightening consideration of the music's global past, present, and future.
Jazz Makers : Vanguards of Sound Jazz Makers gathers together short biographies of more than 50 of jazz's greatest stars, from its early beginnings to the present. The stories of these innovative instrumentalists, bandleaders, and composers reveal the fascinating history of jazz
Jazz Matters : Sound, Place, and Time Since Bebop In this engrossing new book, David Ake expands on the discussion he began in Jazz Cultures, lending his engaging, thoughtful, and stimulating perspective to post-1940s jazz. Ake investigates such issues as improvisational analysis, pedagogy, American exceptionalism, and sense of place in jazz.
Jazz/Not Jazz : The Music and Its Boundaries Jazz/Not Jazz explores some of the musicians, concepts, places, and practices which, while deeply connected to established jazz institutions and aesthetics, have rarely appeared in traditional histories of the form. David Ake, Charles Hiroshi Garrett, and Daniel Goldmark have assembled a stellar group of writers to look beyond the canon of acknowledged jazz greats and address some of the big questions facing jazz today.
Jelly Roll, Bix, and Hoagy, Revised and Expanded Edition : Gennett Records and the Rise of America's Musical Grassroots While Gennett Records was overshadowed by competitors such as Victor and Columbia, few record companies documented the birth of America's grassroots music as thoroughly as this small-town label. In this newly revised and expanded edition of Jelly Roll, Bix, and Hoagy, Rick Kennedy shares anecdotes from musicians, employees, and family members to trace the colorful history of one of America's most innovative record companies.
John Coltrane and Black America's Quest for Freedom : Spirituality and the Music Edited by prominent musician and scholar Leonard Brown, John Coltrane and Black America's Quest for Freedom: Spirituality and the Music is a timely exploration of Coltrane's sound and its spiritual qualities that are rooted in Black American music-culture and aspirations for freedom. A wide-ranging collection of essays and interviews featuring many of the most eminent figures in Black American music and jazz studies and performance
Monk’s Music : Thelonious Monk and Jazz History in the Making This pathbreaking study combines cultural theory, biography, and musical analysis to shed new light on Monk's music and on the jazz canon itself. Gabriel Solis shows how the work of this stubbornly nonconformist composer emerged from the jazz world's fringes to find a central place in its canon.
Shaping Jazz : Cities, Labels, and the Global Emergence of an Art Form There are over a million jazz recordings, but only a few hundred tunes have been recorded repeatedly. Why did a minority of songs become jazz standards? Why do some songs--and not others--get rerecorded by many musicians? Shaping Jazz answers this question and more
Sitting In : Selected Writings on Jazz, Blues, and Related Topics This collection of essays and poems about the influence of jazz on writing and culture in this country, an expanded edition of the 1986 publication, is a rewarding volume for all those entranced by jazz. Carruth brings his considerable poetic and literary sensibilities to bear on a topic very near to his heart:'Those who are devoted primarily to jazz, to poetry, to all the arts, are also those who contribute more intelligently than others to our practical and moral, political and social, advancement.'
The Ellington Century 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 in terms of broad ideas such as rhythm, melody, and harmony.
The Jazz Revolution : Twenties America and the Meaning of Jazz
Uptown Conversation : The New Jazz Studies
Visions of Jazz : The First Century Poised to become a classic of jazz literature, Visions of Jazz: The First Century offers seventy-nine chapters illuminating the lives of virtually all the major figures in jazz history. From Louis Armstrong's renegade-style trumpet playing to Sarah Vaughan's operatic crooning, and from the swinging elegance of Duke Ellington to the pioneering experiments of Ornette Coleman, jazz critic Gary Giddins continually astonishes the reader with his unparalleled insight.
Why Jazz Happened Why Jazz Happened is the first comprehensive social history of jazz. It provides an intimate and compelling look at the many forces that shaped this most American of art forms and the many influences that gave rise to jazz's post-war styles.

Medieval Music

Early Music: A Very Short Introduction From Gregorian chant to Bach's Brandenburg Concerti, the music of the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods is both beautiful and intriguing, expanding our horizons as it nourishes our souls. In this Very Short Introduction, Thomas Forrest Kelly provides not only a compact overview of the music itself, but also a lively look at the many attempts over the last two centuries to revive it.
Medieval Music and the Art of Memory This bold challenge to conventional notions about medieval music disputes the assumption of pure literacy and replaces it with a more complex picture of a world in which literacy and orality interacted. Asking such fundamental questions as how singers managed to memorize such an enormous amount of music and how music composed in the mind rather than in writing affected musical style, Anna Maria Busse Berger explores the impact of the art of memory on the composition and transmission of medieval music.
The Flower of Paradise : Marian Devotion and Secular Song in Medieval and Renaissance Music The Flower of Paradise examines the interplay of Marian devotional and secular poetics within polyphonic music from ca. 1200 to ca. 1500. Through case studies of works that demonstrate a specific symbolic resonance between Marian devotion and secular song, the book illustrates the distinctive ethos of this period in European culture.

Music Education

Bringing Music to Life
Diverse Methodologies in the Study of Music Teaching and Learning As a set of studies, Diverse Methodologies represents and reflects the music education research community at a truly unique moment. The collection demonstrates the profession's increased motivation, willingness, and desire to expand and enhance the research base and traditions in the study and practice of music education.
From the Stage to the Studio : How Fine Musicians Become Great Teachers From the Stage to the Studio speaks directly to the performing musician, highlighting the significant advantages of becoming distinguished both as a performer and a pedagogue. Drawing on over sixty years of combined experience, authors Cornelia Watkins and Laurie Scott provide the guidance and information necessary for any musician to translate his or her individual approach into productive and rewarding teacher-student interactions.
Making Music and Enriching Lives : A Guide for All Music Teachers
Musical Development and Learning This unique survey, written by an international team of experts, not only provides a global perspective on musical education and development but also a comparative framework designed to enable teachers, parents and researchers to learn from practice and policy in other countries.
Navigating Music and Sound Education Navigating Music and Sound Education has been specifically written for pre-service teachers who are studying music education curriculum or pedagogy subjects. It features the voices of leading international academics in the field to illuminate issues of importance in preparing pre-service teacher education students.
Research Perspectives : Thought and Practice in Music Education Perspectives: Thought and Practice in Music Education calls attention to various theoretical and methodological aspects within the expanding field of research in music education. Perspectives presented in this volume offer readers a host of ideas and practices that range from international and historical to empirical and philosophical.
The Art of Teaching Music The Art of Teaching Music takes up important aspects of the art of music teaching ranging from organization to serving as conductor to dealing with the disconnect between the ideal of university teaching and the reality in the classroom. Writing for both established teachers and instructors on the rise, Estelle R. Jorgensen opens a conversation about the life and work of the music teacher.
The Music Teaching Artist's Bible : Becoming a Virtuoso Educator Filled with practical advice on the most critical issues facing the music teaching artist today--from economic and time-management issues of being a musician and teacher to communicating effectively with students--The Music Teaching Artist's Bible uncovers the essentials that every musician needs in order to thrive in this role.
Transforming Music Education This quintet of essays examines the reasons why music education should be transformed, investigates the nature of education and musical transformation, and suggests alternative educational models and strategies. Estelle Jorgensen frames her argume.

Musicology

Musicology and Difference : Gender and Sexuality in Music Scholarship Addressing Western and non-Western music, composers from Francesca Caccini to Charles Ives, and musical communities from twelfth-century monks to contemporary opera queens, these essays explore questions of gender and sexuality. Musicology and Difference brings together some of the freshest and most challenging voices in musicology today on a question of importance to all the humanistic disciplines.
Studies in Music History : Essays for Oliver Strunk A wide variety of essays by colleagues and former students reflect Professor Strunk's particular role as music historian, teacher, and a pre-eminent musicologist. Donald Grout provides the introduction and outlines the problems confronting musicology today.
Systematic Musicology : Empirical and Theoretical Studies This volume contains articles most of which present empirical studies in the field of systematic musicology. Contributions in particular deal with aspects of melody including modeling and computer-assisted analysis as well as with various issues in sound
The Illiterate Listener : On Music Cognition, Musicality and Methodology
The Origins of Music The book can be viewed as representing the birth of evolutionary biomusicology -- the study of which will contribute greatly to our understanding of the evolutionary precursors of human music, the evolution of the hominid vocal tract, localization of brain function, the structure of acoustic-communication signals, symbolic gesture, emotional manipulation through sound, self-expression, creativity, the human affinity for the spiritual, and the human attachment to music itself.
Guidelines for Music Therapy Practice in Developmental Health
Guidelines for Music Therapy Practice in Mental Health

Music Therapy

Clinical Improvisation Techniques in Music Therapy : A Guide for Students, Clinicians and Educators Clinical Improvisation Techniques in Music Therapy: A Guide for Students, Clinicians and Educators provides a clear and systematic approach to understanding and applying improvisational techniques. It is inspired by the taxonomy of clinical improvisation techniques as described by Kenneth Bruscia in his book, Improvisational Models of Music Therapy.
Defining Music Therapy
Guidelines for Music Therapy Practice in Adult Medical Care
Guidelines for Music Therapy Practice in Pediatric Care
International Perspectives in Music Therapy Education and Training : Adapting to a Changing World International Perspectives in Music Therapy Education and Training: Adapting to a Changing World, is the first anthology of its kind. Edited by Professor Karen D. Goodman, it is a natural sequel to her 2011 work, the widely distributed and successful Music Therapy Education and Training: From Theory to Practice, now circulating in over 60 countries.
Music : Social Impacts, Health Benefits and Perspectives
Music Therapy : A Perspective From the Humanities In this book, Even Ruud argues for the value of humanities as a basis for the theory and practice of music therapy. With the humanities he includes a broad range of academic disciplines, such as those from the social sciences as well as from philosophy, education, and not least, systematic musicology. Through ten chapters, the author discusses some basic principles of a humanistic outlook and how these may affect music therapy.
Music Therapy and Addictions This research-based, practical book demonstrates how music and music therapy can be applied in a variety of treatment settings to bring about therapeutic change. Addictions such as alcohol, gambling and drugs are all covered in this interdisciplinary text
Music Therapy Education and Training : From Theory to Practice Written by a Senior Clinician and Educator in Order to Meet the Needs of Prospective and Current Educators, Clinical Supervisors and Students of Music Therapy, This Book Provides an Overview and Detailed Commentary About All Aspects of Undergraduate and Graduate Education and Training in Music Therapy.
Music Therapy in Action
Music Therapy In Principle And Practice Music Therapy in Principle and Practice followed in 2005 with coauthor Joseph Pinson and the authors offer here an important updated and expanded new edition. The book combines valuable information from research as a basis for principles along with the realities of hands-on experience as a basis for practice.
Readings on Music Therapy Theory

Opera

A History of Opera : Milestones and Metamorphoses
Believing in Opera This work is a unique tribute to the most distinctive and adventurous achievements in the theatrical interpretation of opera as it has developed in recent decades. Readers will find descriptions of the most original and successful avant-garde opera productions in Britain, Europe, and America
Divas and Scholars : Performing Italian Opera Divas and Scholars is a dazzling and beguiling account of how opera comes to the stage, filled with Philip Gossett's personal experiences of triumphant—and even failed—performances and suffused with his towering and tonic passion for music.
In Search of Opera In her new book, Carolyn Abbate considers the nature of operatic performance and the acoustic images of performance present in operas from Monteverdi to Ravel. Paying tribute to music's realization by musicians and singers, she argues that operatic works are indelibly bound to the contingency of live singing, playing, and staging.
The Magic of Beverly Sills An unlikely pop culture phenomenon, Sills was equally at ease on talk shows, on the stage, and in the role of arts advocate and administrator. Merging archival research with her own love of Sills's music, Nancy Guy examines the singer-actress's artistry alongside the ineffable aspects of performance that earned Sills a passionate fandom
Making Theatre : From Text to Performance The reality of a play is in its performance. Making Theatre focuses on the processes by which performance is realized, analyzing three major areas:'Words'and the interpretation of text;'Vision'including scenery, costume and lighting; and'Music'which illustrates the importance of music in all stage action.The forms of theater covered include straight drama, the musical and opera.
Metaphysical Song: An Essay on Opera : An Essay on Opera In this bold recasting of operatic history, Gary Tomlinson connects opera to shifting visions of metaphysics and selfhood across the last four hundred years. The operatic voice, he maintains, has always acted to open invisible, supersensible realms to the perceptions of its listeners. In doing so, it has articulated changing relations between the self and metaphysics.
Monstrous Opera: Rameau and the Tragic Tradition : Rameau and the Tragic Tradition One of the foremost composers of the French Baroque operatic tradition, Rameau is often cited for his struggle to steer lyric tragedy away from its strict Lullian form, inspired by spoken tragedy, and toward a more expressive musical style. In this fresh exploration of Rameau's compositional aesthetic
Opera and Video : Technology and Spectatorship The contributions in this volume reflect the efforts of musicology to understand a hybrid area with a fascinating evolution. They aim to address the relationship between opera and audiovisual technology from its origins to today by offering the results of a balanced critical and innovative approach.
Selected Essays on Opera
The Legacy of Opera : Reading Music Theatre As Experience and Performance The Legacy of Opera: Reading Music Theatre as Experience and Performance is the first volume in a series of books compiled by the Music Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. The series explores the widening of the meaning of the term ''music theatre'' to reflect new ways of thinking about this creative practice beyond the genres circumscribed by discourses of theatre studies and musicology.
The Oxford Illustrated History of Opera

Philosophy of Music

Interpreting Music Interpreting Music is a comprehensive essay on understanding musical meaning and performing music meaningfully—'interpreting music'in both senses of the term. Synthesizing and advancing two decades of highly influential work, Lawrence Kramer fundamentally rethinks the concepts of work, score, performance, performativity, interpretation, and meaning—even the very concept of music—while breaking down conventional wisdom and received ideas.
Music, Analysis, Experience : New Perspectives in Musical Semiotics Music, Analysis, Experience brings together contributions by semioticians, performers, and scholars from cognitive sciences, philosophy, and cultural studies, and deals with these fundamental questionings.
Philosophical and Cultural Theories of Music This collection brings together philosophers, sociologists, musicologists and students of culture who theorize music through cultural practices as diverse as opera and classical music, jazz and pop, avant-garde and DIY musical cultures, music festivals and isolated listening through the iPod, rock in urban heritage and the piano in East Asia.
Reverberations : The Philosophy, Aesthetics and Politics of Noise Noise permeates our highly mediated and globalised cultures. Noise as art, music, cultural or digital practice is a way of intervening so that it can be harnessed for an aesthetic expression not caught within mainstream styles or distribution.This wide-ranging book examines the concept and practices of noise, treating noise not merely as a sonic phenomenon but as an essential component of all communication and information systems.
Approaches to Meaning in Music
Humanism, Love and Music «Music is no mere play of sound, no mere tonal texture, but has a significant psychic, spiritual/intellectual and social dimension. In other words: a musical art work is not merely an autonomous artifact but also document humain.» With this thesis - and w
Music and Esotericism This book analyzes the relationships that exist between esotericism and music from Antiquity to the 20th century, investigating ways in which magic, astrology, alchemy, divination, and cabbala interact with music.
Music, Language, and Cognition : And Other Essays in the Aesthetics of Music Music, Language, and Cognition is the third collection of Peter Kivy's seminal papers in the philosophy of music. In essays which span his earliest work in the field and his more recent contributions to journals, anthologies, and conference proceedings, Kivy considers the origin of music, the medium of expression in opera, the role of music in film, the nature of an 'ideal' performance, and the question of whether absolute music has a meaning, among other issues.
Music, Meaning and Transformation Music, Meaning and Transformation: meaningful music making for life, examines the musical experiences that students find meaningful and the ways in which teachers, parents and community music leaders might provide access to meaningful music education. This is particularly relevant today because school music often fails to provide sustainable access to music making for life, health and wellbeing beyond school.
Philosophers on Music : Experience, Meaning, and Work Philosophers on Music: Experience, Meaning, and Work presents significant new contributions to central issues in the philosophy of music, written by leading philosophers working in the analytic tradition.
Platonism, Music and the Listener's Share What is a musical work? What are its identity-conditions and the standards (if any) that they set for a competent, intelligent, and musically perceptive act of performance or audition? Should the work-concept henceforth be dissolved as some New Musicologists would have it into the various, ever-changing socio-cultural or ideological contexts that make up its reception-history to date? Can music be thought of as possessing certain attributes, structural features, or intrinsically valuable qualities that are response-transcendent, i.e., that might always elude or surpass the best state of (current or future) informed opinion? These are some of the questions that Christopher Norris addresses by way of a sustained critical engagement with the New Musicology and other debates in recent philosophy of music
Semiotics of Classical Music : How Mozart, Brahms and Wagner Talk to Us Musical semiotics is a new discipline and paradigm of both semiotics and musicology. In its tradition, the current volume constitutes a radically new solution to the theoretical problem of how musical meanings emerge and how they are transmitted by musical signs even in most 'absolute' and abstract musical works of Western classical heritage. Works from symphonies, lied, chamber music to opera are approached and studied here with methods of semiotic inspiration
The Mission and Message of Music : Building Blocks to the Aesthetics of Music in Our Time This book is an English re-writing of the original Hebrew edition, published by Dvir Publishing House, in 2007, and written jointly with the late Herzl Shmueli.The book probes into the nature and quality of the beauty and meaning of music.
The Music Instinct : How Music Works and Why We Can't Do Without It Now in The Music Instinct, award-winning writer Philip Ball provides the first comprehensive, accessible survey of what is known--and still unknown--about how music works its magic, and why, as much as eating and sleeping, it seems indispensable to humanity.
The Philosophy of Improvisation Improvisation is usually either lionized as an ecstatic experience of being in the moment or disparaged as the thoughtless recycling of clich s. Eschewing both of these orthodoxies, The Philosophy of Improvisation ranges across the arts from music to theater, dance to comedy and considers the improvised dimension of philosophy itself in order to elaborate an innovative concept of improvisation.
Themes in the Philosophy of Music Representing Stephen Davies's best shorter writings, these essays outline developments within the philosophy of music over the last two decades, and summarize the state of play at the beginning of a new century.
Why Classical Music Still Matters Why Classical Music Still Matters affirms the value of classical music—defined as a body of nontheatrical music produced since the eighteenth century with the single aim of being listened to—by revealing what its values are: the specific beliefs, attitudes, and meanings that the music has supported in the past and which, Kramer believes, it can support in the future

Popular Music

Before Seattle Rocked : A City and Its Music Seattle is a music town with rich, deep roots that have influenced the culture and identity of its civic life for decades. In a society that appreciates music but is ambivalent toward the profession of making it, the importance and contribution of Seattle's musicians have been routinely overlooked in historical accounts of the city. Kurt Armbruster fills that gap in this far-reaching and entertaining panorama of Seattle music from the 1890s to the 1960s,'before Seattle rocked
God Bless America : Tin Pan Alley Goes to War
In Tune : Charley Patton, Jimmie Rodgers, and the Roots of American Music Born into poverty in Mississippi at the close of the nineteenth century, Charley Patton and Jimmie Rodgers established themselves among the most influential musicians of their era. In Tune tells the story of the parallel careers of these two pioneering recording artists -- one white, one black -- who moved beyond their humble origins to change the face of American music.
Media and Popular Music This book analyses the relationships between music and contemporary media, both via the mediation of music, and music as mediator. It does so through a series of original interviews with key practitioners: musicians, writers, magazine editors, radio presenters and major and independent label bosses.
No Sympathy for the Devil : Christian Pop Music and the Transformation of American Evangelicalism In this cultural history of evangelical Christianity and popular music, David Stowe demonstrates how mainstream rock of the 1960s and 1970s has influenced conservative evangelical Christianity through the development of Christian pop music.
Rock Star : The Making of Musical Icons From Elvis to Springsteen 'All stars are celebrities, but not all celebrities are stars,'states David Shumway in the introduction to Rock Star, an informal history of rock stardom. This deceptively simple statement belies the complex definition and meaning of stardom and more specifically of rock icons.
Sweet Air : Modernism, Regionalism, and American Popular Song Sweet Air rewrites the history of early twentieth-century pop music in modernist terms. Tracking the evolution of popular regional genres such as blues, country, folk, and rockabilly in relation to the growth of industry and consumer culture, Edward P.
The Persistence of Sentiment : Display and Feeling in Popular Music of the 1970s How can we account for the persistent appeal of glossy commercial pop music? Why do certain performers have such emotional power, even though their music is considered vulgar or second rate? In The Persistence of Sentiment, Mitchell Morris gives a critical account of a group of American popular music performers who have dedicated fan bases and considerable commercial success despite the critical disdain they have endured.
Women in American Popular Music Women in American Popular Music features composers, performers, patrons, musical contexts and an expanded view of women in music in America. This enlightening e-book short is a good source of programming ideas for performers and a handy resource for music lovers.
Writing the Record : The Village Voice and the Birth of Rock Criticism During the mid-1960s, a small group of young journalists made it their mission to write about popular music, especially rock, as something worthy of serious intellectual scrutiny. Their efforts not only transformed the perspective on the era's music but revolutionized how Americans have come to think, talk, and write about popular music ever since. In Writing the Record, Devon Powers explores this shift by focusing on The Village Voice, a key publication in the rise of rock criticism.

Ragtime

The Product of Our Souls : Ragtime, Race, and the Birth of the Manhattan Musical Marketplace In this book, David Gilbert explores how Europe and other African American performers, at the height of Jim Crow, transformed their racial difference into the mass-market commodity known as'black music.'Gilbert shows how Europe and others used the rhythmic sounds of ragtime, blues, and jazz to construct new representations of black identity, challenging many of the nation's preconceived ideas about race, culture, and modernity and setting off a musical craze in the process.

Renaissance Music

A Performer's Guide to Renaissance Music Revised and expanded since it first appeared in 1991, the guide features two new chapters on ornamentation and rehearsal techniques, as well as updated reference materials, internet resources, and other new material made available only in the last decade.
Composers at Work : The Craft of Musical Composition 1450-1600 In this revolutionary look at a subject that has fascinated scholars for years, musicologist Jessie Ann Owens offers new and striking evidence that contrary to accepted theory, sixteenth-century composers did not use scores to compose--even to write complex vocal polyphony.
Early Music: A Very Short Introduction From Gregorian chant to Bach's Brandenburg Concerti, the music of the Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque periods is both beautiful and intriguing, expanding our horizons as it nourishes our souls. In this Very Short Introduction, Thomas Forrest Kelly provides not only a compact overview of the music itself, but also a lively look at the many attempts over the last two centuries to revive it.
The Guitar and Its Music : From the Renaissance to the Classical Era Following on from James Tyler's The Early Guitar: A History and Handbook(OUP 1980) tthis collaboration with Paul Sparks (their previous book for OUP, The Early Mandolin, appeared in 1989), presents new ideas and research on the history and development of the guitar and its music from the Renaissance to the dawn of the Classical era.
The Performance of 16th-Century Music : Learning From the Theorists Most modern performers, trained on the performance practices of the Classical and Romantic periods, come to the music of the Renaissance with well-honed but anachronistic ideas. Fundamental differences between 16th-century repertoire and that of later epochs thus tend to be overlooked-yet it is just these differences which can make a performance truly stunning. The Performance of 16th-Century Music will enable the performer to better understand this music and advance their technical and expressive abilities.
The Science and Art of Renaissance Music As a distinguished scholar of Renaissance music, James Haar has had an abiding influence on how musicology is undertaken, owing in great measure to a substantial body of articles published over the past three decades. Collected here for the first time are representative pieces from those years, covering diverse themes of continuing interest to him and his readers: music in Renaissance culture, problems of theory as well as the Italian madrigal in the sixteenth century, the figures of Antonfrancesco Doni and Giovanthomaso Cimello, and the nineteenth century's views of early music

Rock and Roll

A Touch From God : It's Only Rock and Roll The book is an expose of more than fifty rock stars, written by someone who has thirty-five years experience working as an arranger and producer with them in the recording studios. It is an observation of their character and their talent, with humourous sayings, heard whilst working, at the end of each chapter. It is an easy read written in an informal manner, and as a fly-on-the-wall observation,the content is true and unique.
Crossroads : How the Blues Shaped Rock ’n’ Roll (and Rock Saved the Blues) Crossroads tells the myriad stories of the impact and enduring influence of the early-'60s blues revival: stories of the record collectors, folkies, beatniks, and pop culture academics; and of the lucky musicians who learned life-changing lessons from the rediscovered Depression-era bluesmen that found hipster renown by playing at coffeehouses, on college campuses, and at the Newport Folk Festival.
I Don't Sound Like Nobody : Remaking Music in 1950s America
On the History of Rock Music On the History of Rock Music follows the development of rock music from its origins up to the present time. It focuses on the relationship between the sound, improvisations and rhythms in particular styles, and gives specific attention to the development of rhythm.
Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, and Musicals Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll, and Musicals shows how American culture has changed over the twentieth century, from the Roaring Twenties (The Wild Party) to the cultural chaos of the'50s (Grease) and the sexual revolution of the'60s (Hair) and'70s (Rocky Horror), to the rebirth of the art form in the'90s (Bat Boy), and up to the present, exploring where we've been and where we might be heading.
Strange Brew : Metaphors of Magic and Science in Rock Music Strange Brew: Metaphors of Magic and Science in Rock Music traces the evolution of psychedelic music from its roots in rock and roll and the blues to its influence on popular music today, shows how metaphor is used to create the effects of songs and their lyrics, and explores how words and music came together as both a cause and effect of the cultural revolution of the nineteen-sixties.
That Old Black Magic : Louis Prima, Keely Smith and the Golden Age of Las Vegas Both a love story and a tribute to the entertainment mecca, this exploration shines a spotlight on one of the hottest acts in Las Vegas in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The illuminating depiction showcases the unlikely duo—a grizzled, veteran trumpeter and vocalist molded by Louis Armstrong and a meek singer in the church choir—who went on to invent “The Wildest.” Bringing together broad comedy and finger-snapping, foot-stomping music that included early forays into rock and roll, Prima and Smith's act became wildly popular and attracted all kinds of star-studded attention.

Society and Music

Music : Composition, Interpretation and Effects This new and important book gathers the latest research from around the globe in this dynamic field of study and highlights topics such as: rap music and its effect on sexual attitudes, music videos and risky driving, burnout and music use, music memory and the right hippocampus, and others.
Music : Social Impacts, Health Benefits and Perspectives
Music and Conflict This volume charts a new frontier of applied ethnomusicology by highlighting the role of music in both inciting and resolving a spectrum of social and political conflicts in the contemporary world.
Philosophical and Cultural Theories of Music This collection brings together philosophers, sociologists, musicologists and students of culture who theorize music through cultural practices as diverse as opera and classical music, jazz and pop, avant-garde and DIY musical cultures, music festivals and isolated listening through the iPod, rock in urban heritage and the piano in East Asia.
Stop Making Sense : Music From the Perspective of the Real Stop Making Sense offers an original and compelling theory of music'from the perspective of the real'as this term is understood according to the Lacanian orientation in psychoanalysis.

Theory of Music

A Listen To World Music What Kinds Of Music Are Made All Over The World? Learn About The Engaging Sounds From India And The Caribbean. Supports Emphasis On Increasing Steam (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, And Math) Content.
From Scratch : Writings in Music Theory One of the twentieth century's most important musical thinkers, James Tenney did pioneering work in multiple fields, including computer music, tuning theory, and algorithmic and computer-assisted composition. From Scratch is a collection of Tenney's hard-to-find writings arranged, edited, and revised by the self-described'composer/theorist.
Music and Rhythm : Fundamentals, History, Analysis This book sets forth the first really novel theory of rhythm since Hugo Riemann: the components theory. Its approach will be of interest to musicologists and music theoreticians alike as well as to music performers, since it will enable them to describe a
Music Theory and Its Methods : Structures, Challenges, Directions
Philosophical and Cultural Theories of Music This collection brings together philosophers, sociologists, musicologists and students of culture who theorize music through cultural practices as diverse as opera and classical music, jazz and pop, avant-garde and DIY musical cultures, music festivals and isolated listening through the iPod, rock in urban heritage and the piano in East Asia.
Understanding Music Theory : Meaning, Self-conciousness, and Emotional Expressiveness The main objective of this book is to explore and describe the uniqueness of the musical listening experience (listening to the dynamics of musical structure and the nature of the experiences of the elements of music); the dynamic quality of emotional response to music and the exploitation of music's powers to facilitate social interaction; and the fundamental nature of emotional response to music.

Related Subjects

See also Art, Film, Folklore, and Religion in this Subject Guide