New Publications,
New Music Book Publications - 2nd May 2022
Welcome to our latest selection of new music books. Our picks this time round include the official guide to the 2022 BBC Proms; an exploration of the idea of the heroic in music; a paperback edition of one person's obsession with the sound of the foghorn; a biography of Johann Scheibe, organ builder in Leipzig during the time of Bach; an assessment of the impact of the French Revolution on music-making; a chronicle of the career of the choreographer Frederick Ashton; the story of the birth of pop music; a memoir by respected jazz author Alyn Shipton; the life of John W. Bubbles; a book on innovators in American popular song; and a dive into the music scene in the Chinese city of Guangzhou.
Held every summer at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the BBC Proms is the world's biggest classical music festival, attracting a glittering array of artists and orchestras from around the world. Filled with concert listings and articles by leading experts, the BBC Proms Guide offers a wide-ranging insight into the performers and repertoire, as well as thought-provoking opinion pieces about audiences, music and music-making.
Available Format: Book
This volume reconstructs the various musical strategies that composers employed when referring to heroic ideas, moving from medieval chant, Renaissance madrigals, and Baroque operas and cantatas to an investigation of Beethoven and the cult of the virtuoso. Furthermore, it documents the forced heroisation of music in twentieth-century totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union and its consequences for heroic thinking and musical styles in the time thereafter.
Available Format: Book
The foghorn is a booming, lonely sound echoing into the vastness of the sea. When Jennifer Lucy Allan heard its colossal bellow for the first time, it marked the beginning of an obsession and a journey deep into the history of a sound that has carved out the identity and the landscape of coastlines around the world. Now available in paperback, this is an odyssey told through the people who battled the sea and the sound, and one woman's intrepid voyage through the howling loneliness of nature.
Available Format: Book
Johann Scheibe: Organ Builder in Leipzig at the Time of Bach
Lynn Edwards Butler; University of Illinois Press; Hardback
In his nearly forty-year career, Johann Scheibe became Leipzig's most renowned organ builder and one of the late Baroque's masters of the craft. Johann Sebastian Bach and Johann Kuhnau considered Scheibe a valued colleague. Drawing on extensive research and previously untapped archival materials, this book explores Scheibe's professional relationships and the full range of his projects.
Available Format: Book
From Servant to Savant: Musical Privilege, Property, and the French Revolution
Rebecca Dowd Geoffroy-Schwinden; Oxford University Press; Hardback
Before the French Revolution, making music was an activity that required permission. After the Revolution, music was an object that could be possessed. This book demonstrates how the French Revolution set the stage for the emergence of so-called musical Romanticism and the legacies that continue to haunt musical institutions and industries.
Available Format: Book
Theory and Practice of Technology-Based Music Instruction (Second Edition)
Jay Dorfman; Oxford University Press; Paperback
Technology is an increasingly popular part of music education in schools. This book helps to establish a theoretical and practical foundation for how to teach students to use technology as the major means for developing their musicianship, including discussions of lesson planning, lesson delivery, and assessment. This new edition also touches on issues of inequity of social justice in music education technology and how teachers might begin to address those concerns.
Available Format: Book
This book brings together all genres to tell the definitive story of the birth of Pop, from 1900 to the mid-fifties. From the invention of the 78 rpm record at the end of the nineteenth century to the beginnings of rock and the modern pop age, it takes in superstars such as Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington and Frank Sinatra, alongside the unheralded songwriters and arrangers behind some of our most enduring songs, to paint an aural portrait of pop music's formative years.
Available Format: Book
Few musical genres inspire the passionate devotion of jazz. Through vivid personal contacts, reminiscences, and zesty anecdotes, one of the most influential writers on the subject describes his life in jazz as a player, broadcaster and observer, recalling friendships with legendary musicians while revealing fresh discoveries about such luminaries as Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Charlie Parker.
Available Format: Book
Wisdom and musings on creativity and life from one of the world's most beloved musicians, producers, and mentors, this is a self-development guide that will affirm that creativity is a calling that can and should be answered, no matter your age or experience. Drawing from his own life, and those of his many creative collaborators past and present, Quincy Jones presents readers with lessons that are hardworking and accessible, yet speak to the passion of self-expression.
Available Format: Book
John W. Bubbles was the ultimate song-and-dance man. A groundbreaking tap dancer, he provided inspiration to Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, and the Nicholas Brothers. Most memorably, in the role of Sportin' Life he stole the show in the original production of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. In this compelling and deeply researched biography, his dramatic story is told for the first time.
Available Format: Book
American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950
Alec Wilder; Oxford University Press; Paperback
When it was first published, Alec Wilder's American Popular Song quickly became a classic. Now, in a fiftieth anniversary edition, Robert Rawlins brings the book fully up-to-date for the twenty-first century, adding more than sixty music examples to help complete the chapter on Irving Berlin, plus a new chapter discussing fifty-three songs by numerous composers that Wilder might have well included but was not able to.
Available Format: Book
Sonic Mobilities: Producing Worlds in Southern China
Adam Kielman; University of Chicago Press; Paperback
With a booming economy and abundant job opportunities, Guangzhou has become a magnet for rural citizens seeking better job prospects as well as global corporations hoping to gain a foothold in one of the world's largest economies. This openness and energy have led to a thriving popular music scene that is every bit the equal of Beijing's. This book takes a deep dive into Guangzhou's music scene through two bands, Wanju Chuanzhang (Toy Captain) and Mabang (Caravan), that express ties to their rural homelands and small-town roots while forging new cosmopolitan musical connections.
Available Format: Book
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