Bold new essays demonstrate how Leonard Bernstein influenced American culture, society, and politics through his conducting, composing, political relationships, and activism.
The first detailed study of Schenker's pathbreaking 1906 treatise, showing how it reflected 2500 years of thinking about harmony and presented a vigorous reaction to Austro-Germanic music theory ca.
Examines in detail the contexts of Brahms's masterpiece and demonstrates that, contrary to recent consensus, it was performed and received as an inherently Christian work during the composer's life.
This book discusses the myriad ways in which Beethoven begins his works and the structural, rhetorical, and emotional implications of these beginnings for listeners.
The first full-length treatment of the operatic querelles in eighteenth-century France, placing individual querelles in historical context and tracing common themes of authority, national prestige and the power of music over popular sentiment.
The composer's diaries, translated for the first time, with commentary on his distinctive musical aesthetics and his relationship to artistic cross-currents in Czechoslovakia, France, and America.
Traces Eisler's art songs through the political crises of the twentieth century, presenting them as a way to intervene in the nationalist appropriation of aesthetic material.
This pathbreaking study reveals Purcell's extensive use of symmetry and reversal in his much-loved trio sonatas, and shows how these hidden structural processes make his music multilayered and appealing.
Described in the Radio Times (27 July 2015) as 'A remarkable, unique institution lying at the heart of British life', the Three Choirs Festival celebrated its three-hundred-year anniversary in 2015.
This book reveals Czech composer Bedrich Smetana as a dynamic figure whose mythology has been rewritten time and again to suit shifting political perspectives.
This collection of nine essays investigates the consumption of music during the long eighteenth century, providing insights into the activities of composers, performers, patrons, publishers, theorists, impresarios, and critics.
The first full-length analytic study devoted to the Concerto for Piano and Wind Instruments, combining sketch studies, musicological context, and straightforward analyses of all three movements.
The renowned treatise on music, by an eleventh-century monk, in a critical edition with annotated English translation, introduction, and detailed indexes.
The first full length study of Sir George Thomas Smart (1776-1867), musical animateur and early champion of the music of BeethovenSir George Thomas Smart (1776-1867) was a significant musical animateur of the early nineteenth century, who earned his living primarily as a conductor but was also significant as an organist, composer and recorder of events.
Approaches the topic of classical music in the GDR from an interdisciplinary perspective, questioning the assumption that classical music functioned purely as an ideological support for the state.
Explores the visionary, mystical, and ecstatic traditions that influenced the music of the 1960s *; Examines the visionary, spiritual, and mystical influences on the Grateful Dead, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, the Incredible String Band, the Left Banke, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, and others *; Shows how the British Invasion acted as the ';detonator' to explode visionary music into the mainstream *; Explains how 1960s rock and roll music transformed consciousness on both the individual and collective levels The 1960s were a time of huge transformation, sustained and amplified by the music of that era: Rock and Roll.
Presents current analytic views by established scholars of the traditional tonal repertoire, with essays on works by Bach, Handel, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, and Brahms.
Examines Mendelssohn's relationship to the past, shedding light on the construction of historical legacies that, in some cases, served to assert German cultural supremacy only two decades after the composer's death.
NPR Best Books of 2017In this sweeping history of popular music in the United States, NPR's acclaimed music critic examines how popular music shapes fundamental American ideas and beliefs, allowing us to communicate difficult emotions and truths about our most fraught social issues, most notably sex and race.
A tour de force of storytelling years in the making: a dual biography of two of the greatest songwriters, Bob Dylan and Woody Guthrie, that is also a murder mystery and a history of labor relations and socialism, big business and greed in twentieth-century Americawoven together in one epic saga that holds meaning for all working Americans today.
The relationship between Romanticism and film remains one of the most neglected topics in film theory and history, with analysis often focusing on the proto-cinematic significance of Richard Wagner's music-dramas.
The relationship between Romanticism and film remains one of the most neglected topics in film theory and history, with analysis often focusing on the proto-cinematic significance of Richard Wagner's music-dramas.
In Janelle Monae's full-length debut, the science fiction concept album The ArchAndroid, the android Cindi Mayweather is on the run from the authorities for the crime of loving a human.
In Janelle Monae's full-length debut, the science fiction concept album The ArchAndroid, the android Cindi Mayweather is on the run from the authorities for the crime of loving a human.
Shelved for over 20 years, Sam Cooke's Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963, stands alongside Otis Redding's Live in Europe and James Brown's Live at the Apollo as one of the finest live soul albums ever made.