New Publications,
New Music Book Publications - 6th February 2023
Welcome to our latest selection of new music publications, including a memoir of childhood from pianist Stephen Hough, an examination of the works of Beethoven, a biography of influential professor and musicologist Edward J. Dent, an exploration of the importance of the symphony in Germany and the United States in 1933, an analysis of why dance matters, and paperback reissues of books on how the brain interprets musical patterns in different ways and the relationship between sound recording technology and American literature.
This memoir recounts Hough's coming-of-age story, from his beginnings in Cheshire to the main stage of Carnegie Hall aged twenty-one. We read of his early love-affair with the piano which curdled, after a teenage nervous breakdown, into failure at school and six hours a day watching television, seesawing between sexual and religious obsessions. Then, having abandoned plans for an alternative life as a Catholic priest, he found his way back to the piano to begin his career as an international soloist.
Available Format: Book
Without Beethoven, music as we know it wouldn't exist. Who was this titan of world culture? Through 100 recordings, this book brings to life the composer as we've never seen him before. Unruly, offensive and hopeless in so much of his life, yes, but driven to a fault and devoted to his art, conquering deafness to compose some of the towering works of our culture. Along the way, we encounter the great musicians who have taken on the challenge of Beethoven, in all their glories and foibles.
Available Format: Book
This first full biography of Edward J. Dent, Cambridge Professor of Music and foremost musicologist, tells the story of a remarkable man who played a crucial role in the formation of twentieth-century culture. Dent knew and quietly influenced musicians, poets, artists, writers, politicians, theatrical producers and designers including Busoni, E.M. Forster, Sassoon and Maynard Keynes. The book covers not only his pioneering music scholarship and cultural activities but also his personal crusades on behalf of music and opera, gays, refugees and the culturally destitute.
Available Format: Book
Now available in paperback, this book by one of the world's leading experts on the psychology of music shows how illusions of music and speech have fundamentally altered thinking about the brain. These illusions show that people can differ strikingly in how they hear musical patterns - differences that reflect variations in brain organisation as well as influences of language on music perception.
Available Format: Book
Interwar Symphonies and the Imagination: Politics, Identity, and the Sound of 1933
Emily MacGregor; Cambridge University Press; Hardback
Though standard historical accounts suggest that composers' interest in the symphony was almost extinguished in the early 1930s, this book makes plain the genre's continued cultural dominance, and argues that the symphony can illuminate issues around space/geography, race, and post-colonialism in Germany, France, Mexico, and the United States. Focusing on a number of symphonies composed or premiered in 1933, it recreates some of the cultural and political landscapes of an uncertain historical moment.
Available Format: Book
This book analyses dance as the ultimate expression of human energy and feeling. Using personal anecdotes, this engaging collection of stories about dance from around the world takes us on a journey through various forms of dance rituals, religious observances, storytelling, and musical interpretations to show why dance matters to human beings, revealing the intimate relationship we have with dance.
Available Format: Book
Sound Recording Technology and American Literature: From the Phonograph to the Remix
Jessica Teague; Cambridge University Press; Paperback
Phonographs, tapes, stereo LPs, digital remix - how did these technologies impact American writing? Uncovering a rich archive of materials, this book, now available in paperback, offers a reading of how writers across several genres, such as John Dos Passos, Langston Hughes, William S. Burroughs, and others, navigated the intermedial spaces between texts and recordings.
Available Format: Book
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