New Publications,
New Music Book Publications - 27th February 2023
Welcome to our latest selection of new music publications, including a study of the impact that singing can have on well-being, a companion to serialism in music, a collection of conversations with Black American composers, an exploration of Copland's visits to Latin America, a paperback edition of Prokofiev's diaries, a guide to the viola, an appraisal of the problematic aspects of Puccini's Madama Butterfly, a discussion of Kylie Minogue's debut album and its effect on the music industry, a handbook to Hip Hop, and an analysis of how listening to music affects the unconscious mind.
As a singing therapist, teacher, and performer, Julia Hollander is in an unique position to consider singing's importance to our well-being, charting its extraordinary influence on all aspects of our spiritual, emotional and physical lives. In so many walks of life, people of all ages and backgrounds are waking up to the joys of singing and its power to give hope and connection in a fragmented world. This book offers explanations for why this should be, and inspiration to anyone who loves to sing.
Available Format: Book
Defended by enthusiastic champions and decried by horrified detractors, serialism was central to twentieth-century music but riven by inherent contradictions. This companion introduces and embraces serialism in all its dimensions, from Schoenberg and Stravinsky to Stockhausen and Babbitt, and explores its variants and legacies in Europe, the Americas and Asia.
Available Format: Book
Musical Landscapes in Color: Conversations with Black American Composers
William C. Banfield; University of Illinois Press; Paperback
This collection of interviews delves into the lives and work of forty-one Black composers, providing candid self-portraits that explore areas from training and compositional techniques to working in an exclusive canon that has existed for a very long time. At the same time, it draws on sociology, Western concepts of art and taste, and vernacular musical forms like blues and jazz to provide a frame for the artists’ achievements, helping to illuminate the ongoing progress and struggles against industry barriers.
Available Format: Book
Aaron Copland in Latin America: Music and Cultural Politics
Carol A. Hess; University of Illinois Press; Paperback
Between 1941 and 1963, Aaron Copland made four government-sponsored tours of Latin America that drew extensive attention at home and abroad. Interviews with eyewitnesses, previously untapped Latin American press accounts, and Copland’s diaries inform this examination of his approach to cultural diplomacy. The book also teases out the broader meanings behind reviews of Copland and examines his critics in the context of their backgrounds, training, aesthetics, and politics.
Available Format: Book
Sergey Prokofiev Diaries 1924-1933: Prodigal Son
Anthony Phillips (editor); Faber & Faber; Paperback
The third and final volume of Prokofiev's diaries covers the years 1924 to 1933 when he was living in Paris. Intimate accounts of the successes and disappointments of a great creative artist at the heart of the European arts world between the two world wars jostle with witty and trenchant commentaries on the personalities who made up this world. The diaries document the complex emotional inner world of a Russian exile uncomfortably aware of the nature of life in Stalin's Russia.
Available Format: Book
The Viola, How It Works: A Practical Guide to Viola Ownership
Michael Pagliaro; Rowman & Littlefield; Paperback
This book presents information on the technical and historical aspects of the viola, and is designed to expand a student's experience by learning about the parts of the viola and how it works, how to care for it, how it is made, its history, useful accessories, and how to plan practice sessions.
Available Format: Book
The experimental composer John Cage is best known for his works for percussion, prepared piano, and electronic instruments, but he is also acknowledged to be one of the most significant figures in twentieth-century theatre, where he often blurred the distinctions between music, dance, literature, art, and everyday life. This book examines the majority of those compositions, beginning with Cage's first work in this genre in 1952.
Available Format: Book
Using an approach to music informed by Adorno, this book examines the political significance of seemingly abstracted things like musical and literary forms. Re-assessing music in James Joyce, Ezra Pound, and Sylvia Townsend Warner, it re-shapes temporal, aesthetic, and political understandings of modernism, arguing that music plays a crucial role in ongoing attempts to investigate language, rational thought and ideology.
Available Format: Book
Madama Butterfly/Madamu Batafurai: Transpositions of a 'Japanese Tragedy'
Arthur Groos; Cambridge University Press; Hardback
Puccini's famous but controversial opera reflects a practice of 'temporary marriage' between Western men and Japanese women. This book identifies the plot's origin and traces its transmission to reveal how Puccini and his librettists imbued the opera with differing constructions of the action and its heroine. It explores how they devised a drama with multiple possibilities for interpreting the misalliance between a callous American naval officer and an impoverished fifteen-year-old geisha.
Available Format: Book
Kylie Minogue’s self-titled debut album produced hits, controversy and a perfect mainstream storm. The then soap star ‘crossed over’ to music, and the commercial approach of all involved saw the ‘real’ music industry get its back up. This book interrogates the way that commercial pop albums are remembered in both the popular music press and in academic research, shedding light on the way that notions of ‘mainstream’ and ‘other’ play out in a local context on a global stage.
Available Format: Book
The Oxford Handbook of Hip Hop Dance Studies
Mary Fogarty & Imani Kai Johnson (editors); Oxford University Press; Hardback
Filling a lacuna in both Hip Hop and dance studies, this handbook places practitioners' voices in dialogue with theoretical insights, rooted in critical race theory, anti-colonialism, intersectional feminism, and more. Contributors address individual and social histories of dance, Afro-diasporic and global lineages, the contribution of B-Girls from Honey Rockwell to Rokafella, the "studio-fication" of Hip Hop styles, and moves into theatre, TV, and the digital/social media space.
Available Format: Book
Listening to the Unconscious: Adventures in Popular Music and Psychoanalysis
Kenneth Smith & Stephen Overy; Bloomsbury; Paperback
What happens in our unconscious minds when we listen to, produce or perform popular music? This book presents the long history of the unconscious and related concepts, working systematically through philosophers such as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, psychoanalysts such as Freud and Lacan, and theorists such as Deleuze and Kristeva, to offer inroads into the fascinating worlds of our unconscious musical minds, and as a consequence taking us deeper into the heart of popular music.
Available Format: Book
James Longstaffe - Head of Retail
