New Publications,
New Music Book Publications - 29th April 2019
Welcome to our latest selection of new music books. Our picks this time round include the memoir of Zuzana Růžičková, Holocaust survivor and harpsichordist; Charles-Marie Widor's thoughts on organ performance practice and technique; a discussion of the role of background sounds in the experience of life; an exploration of the aesthetics of improvisation and the definition of both a musical work and a performance; a history of British musical theatre; and books on Madonna, Radiohead, and The Beatles.
Classical Composers & Performers
Charles-Marie Widor was a leading figure of the French Romantic organ school. In the extensive Preface he wrote for his edition of the complete organ works of J. S. Bach, Widor conveyed what he considered to be the essential maxims of organ performance practice and technique. John Near has translated for the first time all the statements from Widor's Bach Preface that reflect his distinctive and influential approach to performance style and artistic awareness.
Available Format: Book
Musical Salon Culture in the Long Nineteenth Century
Anja Bunzel & Natasha Loges (editors); Boydell & Brewer
This book explores the idea of music in the salon during the long nineteenth century, both as a socio-cultural phenomenon, and as a source of artistic innovation and exchange. Drawing on a wide range of scholarly approaches, it uses the idea of the salon as a springboard to examine issues such as gender, religion, biography and performance; to explore the ways in which the salon was represented in different media; and to showcase the heterogeneity of the salon through a selection of case studies.
Available Format: Book
Music Theory & Aesthetics
Balancing big ideas with playful wit and lyrical prose, this volume identifies the role of sound in Western experience as the primary medium in which the presence of life acquires tangible form. Lawrence Kramer's book roves freely over music, media, language, philosophy, and science from the ancient world to the present, revealing how life is apprehended through sounds ranging from pandemonium to the faint background hum of the world.
Available Format: Book
Intents and Purposes: Philosophy and the Aesthetics of Improvisation
Eric Lewis; University of Michigan Press
Eric Lewis uses a series of case studies to challenge assumptions about what defines a musical work and musical performance, seeking to go beyond philosophical and aesthetic templates from Western classical music to foreground the distinctive practices and aesthetics of jazz. Pushing aside the assumption that composition and improvisation are different musical practices, he revisits key topics such as how to define the triangle of composer-performer-listener, and the status of live performances in relation to scores and recordings.
Available Format: Book
Graphic Music Analysis: An Introduction to Schenkerian Theory and Practice
Eric Wen; Rowman & Littlefield
With over 650 musical examples, Eric Wen guides students through the step-by-step process of creating graphic representations of music and reveals how Schenkerian ideas evolve out of analytical issues in the works encountered. Rather than promoting an analytic method for its own sake, Wen derives structural techniques from their particular musical situations to help students engage directly with the music.
Available Format: Book
Rock & Pop, World Music, & Musical Theatre
Music of a Thousand Years: A New History of Persian Musical Traditions
Ann E. Lucas; University of California Press
Iran's particular system of traditional Persian art music has been long treated as the product of an ever-evolving, ancient Persian culture. Ann E. Lucas argues that this music is a modern phenomenon indelibly tied to changing notions of Iran's national history. Rather than considering a single Persian music history, Lucas demonstrates cultural dissimilarity and discontinuity over time, bringing to light two different notions of music-making.
Available Format: Book
The Oxford Handbook of the British Musical
Robert Gordon & Olaf Jubin (editors); Oxford University Press
A comprehensive academic survey of British musical theatre,from John Gay's The Beggar's Opera in 1728, to the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, Edwardian and inter-war musical comedies and revues, the new forms of the post-war British musical from The Boy Friend (1953) to Oliver! (1960), and key twentieth-century figures including Noel Coward, Ivor Novello, Tim Rice, and Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Available Format: Book
This biography is based on decades of research and exclusive interviews with people speaking of her publicly for the first time - including friends, business associates and even family members. J. Randy Taraborrelli has also interviewed the star herself on numerous occasions and he draws on first-hand experiences to bring Madonna to life as not merely a sensational tabloid delight, but as a flesh-and-blood woman with human foibles and weaknesses, as well as great strengths and ambitions.
Available Format: Book
Since Radiohead's formation in the mid-1980s, the band has celebrated three decades of creative collaboration and achieved critical acclaim across music genres as cultural icons. Phil Rose dissects their entire catalogue to reveal how the music directs our attention toward themes like cyber technology, the environment, terrorism, and the inevitability of the apocalypse. As the most up-to-date and thorough discussion of this landmark body of musical multimedia, this book recounts the band's triumphs and tragedies along with their role at the forefront of adaptation both to a changing music industry and a rapidly changing world.
Available Format: Book
A history of the boy band from The Beatles to One Direction, placing the modern male pop group within the wider context of twentieth- and twenty-first century popular music and culture. Offering the first extended look at pop masculinity as exhibited by boy bands, this volume links evolving expressions of gender and sexuality to wider economic and social changes that have resulted in new ways of representing what it is to be a man.
Available Format: Book
Popular Music and the Politics of Hope: Queer and Feminist Interventions
Susan Fast & Craig Jennex (editors); Routledge
This book considers the many ways in which contemporary pop music performances of gender and sexuality are politically engaged and even radical. With analyses rooted in feminist and queer thought, contributors explore music from different genres and locations, from Beyonce's Lemonade to First Nations protest music.
Available Format: Book
Divided into four sections - People, Songs, Places and Broadcast and Cinema - Hunter Davies's guide to The Beatles covers all elements of the band's history and vividly brings to live every influence that shaped them. Illustrated with material from Davies's private collection of artefacts and memorabilia, this is the definitive Beatles treasure.
Available Format: Book
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