A composer and lyricist of enormous innovation and influence, Marc Blitzstein remains one of the most versatile and fascinating figures in the history of American music, his creative output running the gamut from films scores and Broadway operas to art songs and chamber pieces.
In a career that spanned nearly five decades, Dorothy Fields penned the words to more than four hundred songs, among them mega-hits such as "e;On the Sunny Side of the Street,"e; "e;I Can't Give You Anything But Love,"e; "e;The Way You Look Tonight,"e; and "e;If My Friends Could See Me Now.
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.
Although he died in a tragic car accident at twenty-five, Clifford Brown is widely considered one of the most important figures in the history of jazz, a trumpet player who ranks with Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis, and a leading influence on contemporary jazz musicians.
In June of 1964, three young, white blues fans set out from New York City in a Volkswagen, heading for the Mississippi Delta in search of a musical legend.
The case of Terri Schiavo, a young woman who spent 15 years in a persistent vegetative state, has emerged as a watershed in debates over end-of-life care.
Show Tunes fully chronicles the shows, songs, and careers of the major composers of the American musical theatre, from Jerome Kern's earliest interpolations to the latest hits on Broadway.
Mendelssohn and the Organ is the first comprehensive historical-critical study in any language to examine the role of the organ in Mendelssohn's personal and professional career.
Thomas Eakins is widely considered one of the great American painters, an artist whose uncompromising realism helped move American art from the Victorian era into the modern age.
Each entry in this New Grove series of composers and their operas is based on articles in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, that feature information on the lives of individual composers, their works, their librettists and interpreters, and the places where they performed.
Published in its first edition in 1983, Boyd's treatment of this canonical composer is essential reading for students, scholars, and everyone interested in Baroque music.
Gioachino Rossini was one of the most influential, as well as one of the most industrious and emotionally complex of the great nineteenth-century composers.
By the time of his death in 1988, Romare Bearden was most widely celebrated for his large-scale public murals and collages, which were reproduced in such places as Time and Esquire to symbolize and evoke the black experience in America.
Winner of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for BiographyWinner of the 2018 National Book Award for NonfictionA tiny, fastidiously dressed man emerged from Black Philadelphia around the turn of the century to mentor a generation of young artists including Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and Jacob Lawrence and call them the New Negro -- the creative African Americans whose art, literature, music, and drama would inspire Black people to greatness.
In a career that spanned nearly five decades, Dorothy Fields penned the words to more than four hundred songs, among them mega-hits such as "e;On the Sunny Side of the Street,"e; "e;I Can't Give You Anything But Love,"e; "e;The Way You Look Tonight,"e; and "e;If My Friends Could See Me Now.
Clad in white tie and tails, dancing and scatting his way through the "e;Hi-de-ho"e; chorus of "e;Minnie the Moocher,"e; Cab Calloway exuded a sly charm and sophistication that endeared him to legions of fans.
Granddaughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and sister of the composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, Fanny Hensel (1805-1847) was an extraordinary musician who left well over four hundred compositions, most of which fell into oblivion until their rediscovery late in the twentieth century.
Perhaps the most highly regarded French filmmaker after Jean Renoir, Robert Bresson created a new kind of cinema through meticulous refinement of the form's grammatical and expressive possibilities.
Camille Saint-Saens is a memorable figure not only for his successes as a composer of choral and orchestral works, and the eternally popular opera Samson et Dalila, but also because he was a keen observer of the musical culture in which he lived.
Setting the stage for a most intriguing journey into the world of minimalism, Robert Carl's Terry Riley's In C argues that the work holds its place in the canon because of the very challenges it presents to "e;classical"e; 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.
In Meeting Jimmie Rodgers, the first book to explore the deep legacy of "e;The Singing Brakeman"e; from a twenty-first century perspective, Barry Mazor offers a lively look at Rodgers' career, tracing his rise from working-class obscurity to the pinnacle of renown that came with such hits as "e;Blue Yodel"e; and "e;In the Jailhouse Now.
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.
Michael Steinberg's highly successful listener's guides--The Symphony and The Concerto--have been universally praised for their blend of captivating biography, crystal clear musical analysis, and delightful humor.
During the years preceding the composition of Tristan and Isolde, Wagner's aesthetics underwent a momentous turnaround, principally as a result of his discovery of Schopenhauer.
William Kinderman's detailed study of Parsifal, described by the composer as his "e;last card,"e; explores the evolution of the text and music of this inexhaustible yet highly controversial music drama across Wagner's entire career, and offers a reassessment of the ideological and political history of Parsifal, shedding new light on the connection of Wagner's legacy to the rise of National Socialism in Germany.
This is the first full-length biography in English of Giovanni Battista Viotti (1755-1824), one of the great violinist-composers in the history of music, and arguably the most influential violinist who ever lived.
Mahler's Voices brings together a close reading of the renowned composer's music with wide-ranging cultural and historical interpretation, unique in being a study not of Mahler's works as such but of Mahler's musical style.
Arnold Schoenberg was a polarizing figure in twentieth century music, and his works and ideas have had considerable and lasting impact on Western musical life.
Originally published in 1943, Models for Beginners in Composition represents one of Arnold Schoenberg's earliest attempts at reaching a broad American audience through his pedagogical ideas.
A fresh perspective on two well-known personalities, Schoenberg's Correspondence with Alma Mahler documents a modern music friendship beginning in fin-de-siecle Vienna and ending in 1950s Los Angeles.
