New Publications,
New Music Book Publications - 19th August 2019
Welcome to our latest selection of new music books. Our picks this time round include a critical biography of Shostakovich; conversations with Harry Christophers (director of world-renowned choir, The Sixteen); an examination of the influence of Mahler on the music of Aaron Copland; the history of electronic music from the late nineteenth century to the present day; a study of the recordings of Andy Kirk and his jazz band, Clouds of Joy; an analysis of the songs of The Beatles as an artistic reflection of the 1960s; and music diaries for 2020 from Boosey & Hawkes, available in a choice of three colours.
Boosey & Hawkes Music Diary 2020
This diary includes musicians' birthdays, listings of musical events and anniversaries, and a directory of concert halls, opera houses, and music festivals. The cover includes an excerpt from Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 14, marking the 250th anniversary of his birth.
Available in black, red, or green.
This absorbing biography offers a vivid portrait of Shostakovich that goes well beyond the habitual clichés of repression and suffering under Stalin's regime. Featuring quotations from previously-unpublished letters as well as rarely-seen photographs, it provides a fresh insight into the music and life of a composer whose legacy, above all, was to have written some of the most cherished music of the last century.
Available Format: Book
A New Heaven: Harry Christophers and The Sixteen
Choral Conversations with Sara Mohr-Pietsch; Faber & Faber
The Sixteen are prolific recording artists, and perform at festivals and venues all over the world. Harry Christophers has succeeded in nurturing a choir of exceptional calibre, establishing a business model that includes a record label and extensive tours to capacity audiences, mining a rich variety of repertoire, and combining enormous popularity with the stamp of approval from experts. This collection of conversations will appeal to anyone interested in the sound of the human voice.
Available Format: Book
Aaron Copland and the American Legacy of Gustav Mahler
Matthew Mugmon; University of Rochester Press
Aaron Copland was strongly attracted to the music of Gustav Mahler. Drawing extensively on archival and musical materials, this book offers the first detailed exploration of Copland's relationship with Mahler's music and its lasting consequences for music in America, demonstrating how Copland, inspired by Mahler's example, blended Modernism and Romanticism in shaping a vision for American music in the twentieth century.
Available Format: Book
David Stubbs charts the evolution of electronic music from the earliest mechanical experiments in the late nineteenth century, through to the familiar sounds of electronica, house and techno that we know today. Along the way he takes in the cosmic funk of Stevie Wonder and Giorgio Moroder, the astonishing sounds of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, and eighties electropop by the likes of Depeche Mode, the Pet Shop Boys and Laurie Anderson, right up to present-day innovators on the underground scene.
Available Format: Book
Andy Kirk's Clouds of Joy came from Kansas City to find nationwide fame in the later 1930s. The many records they made between 1929 and 1949 came to exemplify the Kansas City style of jazz, but they were also criticised for their populism and inauthenticity. George Burrows considers these records as representing negotiations over racialised styles between black jazz musicians and the racist music industry during a vital period of popularity and change for American jazz.
Available Format: Book
What Goes On: The Beatles, Their Music, and Their Time
Walter Everett & Tim Riley; Oxford University Press
In a stretch of just seven years, the Beatles recorded hundreds of songs which tower above those of their peers as an artistic reflection of their turbulent age, the 1960s. This book blends historical narrative, musicology, and music analysis to tell the story of how they redefined pop music, tracing their involvement with world events such as the Vietnam War, and their strides in overcoming racial segregation, gender stereotyping, and the generation gap.
Available Format: Book
Drawing on readily-available hit records produced since 1945, each section of this book explains a handful of core production and engineering techniques in chronological record-making sequence, elucidating how those techniques work, what they sound like, how they function musically, where listeners can hear them at work in the broader Top 40 soundscape, and where they fit within the broader record-making process at large.
Available Format: Book
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical and Qualitative Assessment in Music Education
David J. Elliott, Marissa Silverman, & Gary E. McPherson (editors); Oxford University Press
This handbook focuses on broadening and deepening understandings of and critical thinking about the problems, opportunities, spaces and places, concepts, and practical strategies that music educators and community music facilitators employ, develop, and deploy in order to improve various aspects of music teaching and learning around the world.
Available Format: Book
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