New Publications,
New Music Book Publications - 23rd March 2020
Welcome to our latest selection of new music books. Our picks this time round include a discussion of the ways in which Beethoven began his works; a critical account of Prokofiev's operas; cross-curricular experiments in sound based on the music of John Cage; the relationship between music and mathematics; a documentation of how the songs of the troubadours were not originally French in nature; the importance of dance to modern digital culture; a collection of lyrics from the songs of Van Morrison; a detailed analysis of David Bowie's Diamond Dogs; and a look at the life and career of famed jazz saxophonist, Ornette Coleman.
Classical Music
This book discusses the myriad ways in which Beethoven begins his works, and the implications of these beginnings for listeners. Examining the opening moments of nearly 200 compositions, it offers a new method of analysis of Beethoven's music, at the same time setting it in context through a close study of beginnings in the compositions of Haydn, Mozart, and many other composers of the Classical Era.
Available Format: Book
This book is the first in the English language to provide a contextual, critical and musico-analytical account of Prokofiev's entire operatic output, including those juvenile works that are unpublished as well as the incomplete works composed towards the end of his life. Drawing on a wealth of archival material and other sources, it provides the compelling untold story of Prokofiev the opera composer.
Available Format: Book
Everything We Do Is Music: Cross-curricular experiments in sound based on the music of John Cage
Barry Russell; Edition Peters; Paperback
More than fifty fun, thought-provoking activities, each taking a work by John Cage as a starting point and exploring the links between music, dance, visual art, poetry and nature. Most projects require no prior knowledge of reading music, and they encourage creative thinking, experimentation, and an exploration of the world around us.
Available Format: Book
No group of compositions occupies a more central position in chamber music than the string quartets of Beethoven, yet the meaning of these works continues to stimulate debate. This volume stands as the most detailed and comprehensive exploration of the subject, offering fresh insights into the aesthetics of the quartets, and probing expressive and structural features that have hitherto received little attention.
Available Format: Book
Music is filled with mathematical elements, yet this book argues that it is music that has had the greater influence on mathematics, not the other way around. Starting with Pythagoras, proceeding through Schoenberg, and bringing the story up to the present with string theory, it tells a story of composers, scientists, inventors, and eccentrics who have played a role in the relationship between music, mathematics, and the physical sciences.
Available Format: Book
The Pianist's Dictionary, Second Edition
Maurice Hinson & Wesley Roberts; Indiana University Press; Paperback
This revised and expanded edition is a compendium of information gleaned from a combined century of piano teaching. Users will find helpful and clear definitions of musical and pianistic terms and performance directions, as well as information on composers, pianists, famous piano pieces, and piano makers.
Available Format: Book
Most scholars would find the claim that troubadour poetry is the origin of French literature uncontroversial. However, this book shows how the "Frenchness" of this tradition was invented and confected by francophone medieval poets and compilers keen to devise their own literary history. It also documents the simultaneous creation of an alternative point of origin for French literary history - a body of faux-archaic Occitanising songs.
Available Format: Book
Musical Solidarities: Political Action and Music in Late Twentieth-Century Poland
Andrea F. Bohlman; Oxford University Press; Paperback
This volume presents a music history of Solidarity, the social movement opposing state socialism in 1980s Poland, as it unfolded through underground radio networks, the sanctuaries of the Polish Roman Catholic Church, labour strikes and student demonstrations, and commemorative performances. Unfurling the rich soundscapes of political action, it offers a nuanced portrait of this pivotal decade of European and global history.
Available Format: Book
Egon Wellesz studied music only briefly with Arnold Schoenberg but remained forever captivated by his personality. As Schoenberg's first biographer, Wellesz did much to promote the composer's cause, especially in France and England. Bojan Bujić offers a meticulously-researched account of their fraught relationship that brings into focus the outstanding intellectual and musical currents of the day in both Austria and Britain.
Available Format: Book
Postmodernity is understood to be a period in which both modernism and postmodernism co-exist, and relates to a wider interpretation of "historicity" that focuses on the complex nexus of past-present-future. As well as exploring how time and history manifest themselves in art music, this book also takes the contrasts and transitional moments of post-1945 practices further by looking at the temporality of reception, and investigates questions of nostalgia and temporalities of belonging.
Available Format: Book
Famed writer Anthony Burgess asks two questions: what can literature contribute to the art of composition, and how can music influence the writer? This book contains eleven interconnected essays that touch on philosophical conundrums of art and adaptation, questions of meaning, and the author's own personal experience.
Available Format: Book
Popular Music
Perpetual Motion: Dance, Digital Cultures, and the Common
Harmony Bench; University of Minnesota Press; Paperback
This book argues that dance is a vital part of civil society and a means for building participation and community. It looks at how, after 9/11, dance became a crucial way of recuperating the common character of public spaces, and asks how dance brings people together in digital spaces and what dance's digital travels might mean for how we experience and express community.
Available Format: Book
From the first Tin Pan Alley tunes to today's million-view streaming hits, pop songs have been supported and influenced by an increasingly complex industry that feeds audience demand and regulates supply. This book investigates how music entered American homes and established a cultural institution that would expand throughout the decades to become a multi-billion dollar industry.
Available Format: Book
This is the second volume of Van Morrison's collected lyrics, containing one hundred and twenty songs from across his storied career. It contains love songs, work songs, songs about the pains and anxieties of existence, songs of consolation, songs of memory and of childhood, songs about the natural world, and many others, revealing why he is celebrated as one of the most innovative and enduring songwriters of our time.
Available Format: Book
David Bowie's dark and difficult concept album, set in a post-apocalyptic "Hunger City" populated by post-human mutants, includes the glam anthem Rebel Rebel and utterly unique songs that combine lush romantic piano and nearly operatic singing with scratching, grungy guitars, creepy, insidious noises, and dark, pessimistic lyrics. This book shows that each song shifts the ground underneath the listener, not just by changing in musical style, but by being sung by a different "I" who directly addresses a different "you."
Available Format: Book
Beyond Talent: Creating a Successful Career in Music (Third Edition)
Angela Myles Beeching; Oxford University Press; Paperback
With key insights into the issues that often plague musicians, this new edition provides a wealth of strategies, examples, and real-world solutions. Step-by-step instructions detail how to design promotional materials, book performances, fund your projects, and cultivate a community of support so you can manage your career without losing your soul.
Available Format: Book
The mid-'70s were a time of paradoxes of record making and record breaking. Critics who once exalted the shamanic characteristics of rock stars launched full-frontal assaults on mainstream music icons and their tendencies toward overindulgent artistic visions. Amid this confusion, psychedelic and progressive rock pioneers Pink Floyd unleashed their 1975 progressive rock milestone, Wish You Were Here.
Available Format: Book
Ornette Coleman's career encompassed the glory years of jazz and the American avant-garde. Lauded by some, maligned by many, he forged a breakaway art sometimes called "the new thing" or "free jazz". Featuring previously unpublished photographs of Ornette and his contemporaries, this is the compelling story of one of America's most adventurous musicians and the sound of a changing world.
Available Format: Book
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