New Publications,
New Music Book Publications - 13th May 2019
Welcome to our latest selection of new music books. Our picks this time round include a collection of essays on the music of Brahms, a reflection by conductor Kent Nagano on the relevance of classical music today, thoughts on teaching music by pianist Susan Tomes, an analysis on George Harrison's contribution to the music of The Beatles, a study of how music permeates the writing of D.H. Lawrence, and the influence of jazz on the music of Leonard Bernstein.
Classical Music
This collection of essays opens with topics including Brahms's Hamburg childhood, his move to Vienna and his rich social life, and also considers professional matters from finance to publishing and copyright, the musicians who shaped his works, and the musical styles that influenced him. It closes with chapters on reception, recordings, historical performance, and his compositional legacy.
Available Format: Book
How relevant is classical music today? Conductor Kent Nagano has a world in mind where everyone has access to classical music. In this book he tells the story of his own engagement with the masterpieces and great composers of classical music, his work with the world's major orchestras, and his tireless commitment to bringing music to everybody. In this autobiography, Nagano makes a compelling plea for classical music that is as exhilarating as it is thought-provoking.
Available Format: Book
The Cambridge Haydn Encyclopedia
Sarah Day-O'Connell & Caryl Clark (editors); Cambridge University Press
With over eighty entries focused on ideas and seven longer thematic essays, this richly-illustrated encyclopedia offers a new perspective on Haydn and the many cultural contexts in which he worked and left his indelible mark during the Enlightenment and beyond. With contributions from sixty-seven scholars and performers, this distinctive encyclopedia captures the vitality of Haydn studies today.
Available Format: Book
Renowned pianist Susan Tomes reflects on how her own experience as a learner has influenced her approach to teaching. She tells us how her performing career has given her insight into what young performers need to know, and how discussions with students have fed into her own practice. She describes the brilliant and intriguing teachers whose masterclasses opened her ears to the many ways in which music can be brought alive and communicated.
Available Format: Book
A Portrait in Four Movements: The Chicago Symphony Under Barenboim, Boulez, Haitink, and Muti
Andrew Patner; University of Chicago Press
As music critic of the Chicago Sun-Times, Andrew Patner was able to trace the arc of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's changing repertoire under a storied group of conductors including Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Bernard Haitink, and Riccardo Muti. This book assembles Patner's reviews of the concerts given by the CSO during this time, as well as transcripts of his remarkable radio interviews with these colossal figures.
Available Format: Book
Many instances of self-reference occur within otherwise serious pieces of medieval music. Are these simply in-jokes, or are there more meaningful messages? Examining connections between self-referential repertoire from the years 1450–1530, this study reveals musicians' agency in forming the first communities of early modern composers.
Available Format: Book
This first book-length study of D. H. Lawrence's lifelong engagement with music surveys his extensive musical interests and how these permeate his writing, while also situating Lawrence within a growing body of work on music and modernism. A twin focus considers the music that shaped Lawrence's novels and poetry, as well as contemporary developments in music that parallel his quest for new forms of expression.
Available Format: Book
Jazz & World Music
Though a Bernstein work might reference anything from modernism to cartoon ditties, jazz permeated every part of his musical identity as a performer, educator, and intellectual. Katherine Baber investigates how jazz in its many styles served Bernstein as a flexible musical idea. As she shows, Bernstein used jazz to signify American identity with all its tensions and contradictions and to articulate community and conflict, irony and parody, and timely issues of race and gender.
Available Format: Book
Opera in the Tropics: Music and Theater in Early Modern Brazil
Rogerio Budasz; Oxford University Press
An engaging exploration of theater with music in Brazil from the mid 1500s to the early 1820s. Author Rogerio Budasz delves into the practices of the actors, singers, poets, and composers who created and performed Jesuit moral plays, Spanish comedias, and Portuguese vernacular operas and entremezes during the colonial period, as well as the Italian operas that celebrated the new independent nation in 1822.
Available Format: Book
Rock & Pop Music
Often described as "The Invisible Singer," George Harrison's solo recordings reveal him to be an elusive, yet essential, element in the Beatles's sound. The discussion blends accessible music analysis with an exploration of the virtual space created on the sound recording. This approach is then used to explore Harrison's extensive catalogue of solo works, which, due to their varied cultural sources, seem increasingly like early examples of Global Pop.
Available Format: Book
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