New Publications,
New Music Book Publications - 1st April 2019
Welcome to our latest selection of new music books. Our picks this time round include a guide to the life and works of Janáček, a study of Stravinsky's time spent living in the USA, an analysis of the Requiem by Tomás Luis de Victoria, books on Schenkerian analysis and music research, a discussion of the social history of jazz, and a collection of essays on popular American music from Tin Pan Alley to to hip hop.
One of the most original composers of the early twentieth century, Leos Janáček occupied a pre-eminent position in Moravian culture. This volume includes nearly 300 entries on every aspect of his life and works, with detailed notes on all his significant compositions - above all the operas - providing the latest information to emerge about some of his most famous pieces. An extensive bibliography supports the entries, which are cross-referenced to enable wider exploration of particular topics.
Available Format: Book
Stravinsky in the Americas: Transatlantic Tours and Domestic Excursions from Wartime Los Angeles (1925-1945)
H. Colin Slim: University of California Press
This study explores 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 correspondence, photographs, and other documents, it examines the period that began with Stravinsky as a radical European art-music composer and ended with him as a popular figure in American culture.
Available Format: Book
This book tells the story of classical music through eighteenth-century eyes, exposing readers to the wealth of musical styles of the time. Outlining how music interacted with society, politics, and the arts, this kaleidoscopic approach presents an overview of how the various genres expanded during the period. It also contains access to a companion website with scores and recordings of pieces discussed in the text.
Available Format: Book
Music in Context: The Requiem of Tomás Luis de Victoria (1603)
Owen Rees; Cambridge University Press
Victoria's Requiem is among the most-performed Renaissance works, and is often thought to represent the summation of golden-age Spanish polyphony. Yet it has been the focus of surprisingly little research. This study brings together the historical and ritual contexts for the work's genesis, the first detailed musical analysis of the Requiem itself, and the long story of its circulation and reception.
Available Format: Book
A textbook directed at those interested in gaining understanding of Schenker's ideas on musical structure. Unlike other texts on this subject, it combines the study of multi-level pitch organisation with that of phrase rhythm, motivic repetition at different structural levels, and form. This second edition has been revised to make the early chapters more accessible.
Available Format: Book
This handbook for students does not aim to be an exhaustive guide to the subject of music research; rather, it is highly selective and guides students to the most significant English-language tools and resources, reference titles in major areas, and the principal sources in French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Now updated to reflect the growing emphasis on the digital humanities, this is the perfect guide for 21st-century music scholars.
Available Format: Book
Dreaming with Open Eyes: Opera, Aesthetics, and Perception in Arcadian Rome
Ayana O. Smith; University of California Press
This book examines visual symbolism in late seventeenth-century Italian opera, contextualising the genre amid the broad ocularcentric debates emerging at the crossroads of the early modern period and the Enlightenment. It concludes with close readings of gender and character in two operas: Alessandro Scarlatti's La Statira and Carlo Francesco Pollarolo's La forza della virtù.
Available Format: Book
Now fully updated and expanded, this book traces the evolution of jazz and blues from their nineteenth-century African-American origins right through to the present day. Each chapter looks at the key developments during that period, and is followed by an A-Z of artists from that era, with more extensive entries on key artists that include recommended classic recordings.
Available Format: Book
The first comprehensive social history of jazz provides a compelling look at the many forces that shaped this most American of art forms. Rich with the voices of musicians, producers, promoters, and others on the scene during the decades following World War II, this book views jazz's evolution through the prism of technological advances, social transformations, changes in the law, economic trends, and much more.
Available Format: Book
Rethinking American Music
Tara Browner & Thomas Laurence Riis (editors); University of Illinois Press
Tara Browner and Thomas L. Riis curate essays that offer an eclectic survey of current music scholarship. Ranging from Tin Pan Alley to Thelonious Monk to hip hop, the contributors go beyond repertory and biography to explore four critical yet overlooked areas: the impact of performance; patronage's role in creating music and finding a place to play it; personal identity; and the ways cultural and ethnographic circumstances determine the music that emerges from the creative process.
Available Format: Book
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