New Publications,
New Music Book Publications - 27th July 2020
Welcome to our latest selection of new music books. Our picks this time round include an exploration of the life of Beethoven through nine of his pieces; a lavishly-illustrated compendium of composers and their works; a guide to John Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra; an updated edition of Albert Rice's classic text on the Baroque Clarinet; a study of women's voices in Britain between 1780 and 1850; an analysis of form and harmony in rock music; tips on singing cabaret music; the autobiography of famous lyricist, Don Black; a biography of iconic singer, Peggy Lee; and a new edition of the Very Short Introduction to World Music.
Classical Music
John Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra
Martin Iddon & Philip Thomas; Oxford University Press; Hardback
John Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra is one of the seminal works of the second half of the twentieth century. This volume provides a rich and critical examination of this enormously significant piece, tracing its many contexts and influences - particularly Schoenberg, jazz, and Cage's own compositional practice - through a wide and previously untapped range of archival sources.
Available Format: Book
The Baroque Clarinet and Chalumeau (Second Edition)
Albert R. Rice; Oxford University Press; Paperback
Twenty-eight years after its first publication, Albert R. Rice has updated his renowned study, with new chapters on chalumeau and clarinet music, insights on newly-found instruments, and additional material on the Baroque clarinet in society. Expanding the volume to include the chalumeau, close cousin to the clarinet, Rice draws on nearly three decades of new research on the instrument's origins and music.
Available Format: Book
Hearing Homophony: Tonal Expectation at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century
Megan Kaes Long; Oxford University Press; Hardback
The question of tonality's origins in music's pitch content has long vexed many scholars of music theory. However, tonality is not ultimately defined by pitch alone, but rather by pitch's interaction with elements like rhythm, meter, phrase structure, and form. This book investigates the early history of tonality by examining a constellation of late-Renaissance popular songs which flourished at the turn of the seventeenth century.
Available Format: Book
Sounding Feminine: Women's Voices in British Musical Culture, 1780-1850
David Kennerley; Oxford University Press; Hardback
Between 1780 and 1850, the growing prominence of female singers in Britain's professional and amateur spheres opened a discourse about women's engagement with culture. Protestant gender ideology framed the powerful, expressive female voice as a sign of inner moral corruption, while more restrained vocal styles were seen as indicative of virtuous femininity. This book draws from a variety of fields to examine how audiences heard different kinds of femininities in the voices of British female singers.
Available Format: Book
Much has been written about the desirability (or otherwise) of historical authenticity - performing works as they would have been performed, under ideal conditions, in the era in which they were composed. This book explores another kind of kind of truthfulness to the work altogether, namely interpretive authenticity: being faithful to the performed work by virtue of evincing a profound, far-reaching, or sophisticated understanding of it.
Available Format: Book
The Politics of Princely Entertainment: Music and Spectacle in the Lives of Lorenzo Onofrio and Maria Mancini Colonna
Valeria De Lucca; Oxford University Press; Hardback
Throughout early modern Europe, patronage became a means for the dominant classes to highlight their wealth, intellectual refinement, and political agendas. Cultural transformations influenced the production of music in radical ways, not least through the influence of the Colonna family - Prince Lorenzo Onofrio Colonna and his wife Maria Mancini. This book traces the journeys of the singers, composers, and librettists whose art reached distant corners of Europe through the Colonna family's patronage activities.
Available Format: Book
Interactive Visual Ideas for Musical Classroom Activities: Tips for Music Teachers
Catherine Dwinal; Oxford University Press; Paperback
By allowing teachers to show students methods and outcomes from a computer, digital interactive projection systems have become a necessity for reaching students who grew up as digital natives. But such systems can be much more meaningful pedagogical tools than simple replacements for blackboards. This book offers practical tips, tricks, resources, and fifty activities ideal to use alongside classroom projection systems.
Available Format: Book
Popular Music
Overturning the inherited belief that popular music is unrefined, this book brings the process-based approach of classical theorists to popular music scholarship. It offers the first comprehensive theory of form for 1960s, 70s, and 80s classic rock repertoire, showing how songs in this genre are not simply a series of discrete elements, but rather exhibit cohesive formal-harmonic structures across their entire timespan.
Available Format: Book
So You Want to Sing Cabaret: A Guide for Performers
David Sabella & Sue Matsuki; Rowman & Littlefield; Paperback
Cabaret performances are often known for bringing alive the Great American Songbook for contemporary audiences. But modern-day cabaret does much more than preserve the past - it also fosters the new generation of American composers and creates a uniquely vibrant musical and theatrical experience for its audiences. This is the first book to examine in detail the unique requirements for professional performance within the genre of cabaret.
Available Format: Book
One hundred years after her birth, this book brings to life the eventful career of an iconic performer whose contributions to jazz, popular music, and film music remain unparalleled. It focuses on the evolution of Peggy Lee's recorded music, vocal development, artistic achievements, and contributions to American music, while interviews with Lee's family, friends, and colleagues reveal new insights and memories of this musical icon.
Available Format: Book
Just as music has the power to inspire, it has the power to irritate and enrage. Why does certain music annoy us? Based on more than seventy interviews, this book discusses the everyday challenges of living together with unwanted music. It examines issues of taste, individual rights, private and public spaces, violence and the law. The interviews explore various relationships with forced listening and the behaviors that result.
Available Format: Book
Glitter Up the Dark: How Pop Music Broke the Binary
Sasha Geffen; University of Texas Press; Paperback
This book takes an historical look at the voices that transcended gender and the ways music has subverted the gender binary. Starting with early blues and The Beatles, and continuing with performers such as David Bowie, Prince, Missy Elliott, and Frank Ocean, it explores how artists have used music to break out of the confines mandated by gender essentialism and establish the voice as the primary expression of gender transgression.
Available Format: Book
World Music
World Music: A Very Short Introduction (Revised Edition)
Philip V. Bohlman; Oxford University Press; Paperback
In this new edition, Philip Bohlman considers questions of meaning and technology in world music. He also addresses the different ways in which world music is created and consumed, as the full reach of the internet and technologies that store and spread music spark a revolution in its availability. Finally, Bohlman revises the way we think of the musician towards that of an increasingly mobile individual, sometimes because physical borders have fallen away, at other times because they are closing.
Available Format: Book
In the mid-20th century, African musicians took up Cuban music and claimed it as a marker of black Atlantic connections. Today, Cuban/African bands popular in Africa in the 1960s and '70s have moved into the world music scene in Europe and North America. This study follows two of these bands, Orchestra Baobab and AfroCubism, and the industry and audiences that surround them.
Available Format: Book
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