Music reviews and criticism

Thinkers like W.

Bach's cantatas are among the highest achievements of Western musical art, yet studies of the individual cantatas that are both illuminating and detailed are few.

The Muse That Sings is a unique behind-the-scenes look at both twentieth-century music and the nuts and bolts of creative work.

The time: 1936-1938.

Inventing the Recording focuses on the decades in which recorded sound went from a technological possibility to a commercial and cultural artefact.

In the late 1960s, a new movement emerged championing historically informed 'authentic' approaches to performance.

In Cosmos, Liturgy, and the Arts in the Twelfth Century, Margot E.

Complements the ongoing revival of Mieczysław Weinberg''s music and explains its unique blend of Polish and Soviet Russian influences.

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.

Melodious panpipes and kena flutes.

Arguing that pop music turns on moments rather than movements, the essays in Listen Again pinpoint magic moments from a century of pop eclecticism, looking at artists who fall between genre lines, songs that sponge up influences from everywhere, and studio accidents with unforeseen consequences.

Demonstrating the intimate connections among our public, political, and personal lives, these essays by Robert Cantwell explore the vernacular culture of everyday life.

The once derided musical hybrid that is 1970s Jazz Fusion has since become one of the most influential genres of music in jazz, rock, soul, and hip-hop.

Few musical works loom as large in Western culture as Richard Wagner's four-part Ring of the Nibelung.

Nothing strikes the ear quite like a soprano singing in the sonic stratosphere.

Whilst the greatest effort has been made to ensure the quality of this text, due to the historical nature of this content, in some rare cases there may be minor issues with legibility.

A beautifully composed journey through music history!

How did castrati manage to amaze their eighteenth-century audiences by singing the same aria several times in completely different ways?

A freewheeling blend of continental European folk music and the songs, tunes, and dances of Anglo and Celtic immigrants, polkabilly has enthralled American musicians and dancers since the mid-19th century.

This volume delves into the vibrant world of 18th-century sociable music, presenting a curated selection of glees, catches, canons, and rounds that were central to the eras artistic and social fabric.

This is the story of Fred Taylor, who since 1960 has been bringing entertainers and audiences together in Boston and New England in nightclubs, concert halls, and festival grounds.

In Off Key, Kay Dickinson offers a compelling study of how certain alliances of music and film are judged aesthetic failures.

Since the mid-twentieth century, Zoltn Kodly's child-developmental philosophy for teaching music has had significant positive impact on music education around the world, and is now at the core of music teaching in the United States and other English speaking countries.

Guthrie P.

This collection uncovers how music criticism contributed to national and transnational preoccupations and agendas.

When Colleges Sang is an illustrated history of the rich culture of college singing from the earliest days of the American republic to the present.

The Sex Pistols exploded onto the music scene in 1976, paving the way for the deluge of punk rock that would change the face of modern rock music forever.

The German-American relationship was special long before the Cold War; it was rooted not simply in political actions, but also long-term traditions of cultural exchange that date back to the nineteenth century.

"e;A persuasive argument that Presley's "e;moonshot"e; to fame could not have happened without Florida.

From the Tin Pan Alley 32-bar form, through the cyclical forms of modal jazz, to the more recent accumulation of digital layers, beats, and breaks in Electronic Dance Music, repetition as both an aesthetic disposition and a formal property has stimulated a diverse range of genres and techniques.

NOW A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER, HIP-HOP (AND OTHER THINGS) is about, as it were, rap, but also some other things.

The name of P.

Whether it was Patti Smith's angry moan, Nina Simone's guttural growl, or Dolly Parton's towering hair and sweet voice, women have been a musical force to be reckoned with, inspired by, and paid attention to.

A user's guide to opera-Matthew Aucoin, "e;the most promising operatic talent in a generation"e; (The New York Times Magazine), describes the creation of his groundbreaking new work, Eurydice, and shares his reflections on the past, present, and future of operaFrom its beginning, opera has been an impossible art.

Musicologist Pauline Fairclough explores the evolving role of music in shaping the cultural identity of the Soviet Union in a revelatory work that counters certain hitherto accepted views of an unbending, unchanging state policy of repression, censorship, and dissonance that existed in all areas of Soviet artistic endeavor.

This second volume of Music in Black American Life offers research and analysis that originally appeared in the journals American Music and Black Music Research Journal, and in two book series published by the University of Illinois Press: Music in American Life, and African American Music in Global Perspective.

A study of the life and works of Erik Chisholm, one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century Scottish music.

Shakespeare's texts have a long and close relationship with many different types of dance, from dance forms referenced in the plays to adaptations across many genres today.

Trip-hop described some of the 1990s' best music, and it was one of the decade's most revealing bad ideas.

The Low Countries were at the heart of innovation in Europe in the fifteenth century.

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.

The crooner Rudy Vallee's soft, intimate, and sensual vocal delivery simultaneously captivated millions of adoring fans and drew harsh criticism from those threatened by his sensitive masculinity.

Bach's St.

Winner of the Benjamin L.

In this innovative book, Gundula Kreuzer argues for the foundational role of technologies in the conception, production, and study of nineteenth-century opera.

In the Middle Ages, relic cults provoked rich expressions of devotion not only in hagiographic literature and visual art but also in liturgical music and ritual.

Handel is one of the most remarkable figures in the history of western music.

In this book, Emily Wilbourne boldly traces the roots of early opera back to the sounds of the commedia dell'arte.