New Publications,
New Music Book Publications - 2nd April 2024
Welcome to our latest selection of new music publications, including a history of women and the piano, a discussion of Schubert's engagement with gothic discourse in his music, an analysis of the early compositions of Pierre Boulez in relation to the cultural environment of Paris in the 1940s, an exploration of avant-garde musicians in postwar New York such as David Tudor and Ornette Coleman, an examination of the circumstances that led to the creation of Miles Davis's seminal album, Kind of Blue, and a theoretical framework for studying a broad range of musical practices from Bach to Indonesian Dubstep.
Women are an essential part of the history of the piano - but how many women pianists can you name? Susan Tomes traces fifty women across the piano’s history, from Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn to more overlooked women such as Hélène de Montgeroult, Leopoldine Wittgenstein, and Hazel Scott. Including interviews with women performing today, this is a much-needed corrective to our understanding of the piano.
Available Format: Book
This book illuminates Schubert's engagement with gothic discourse at the intersection of music, literature and the visual arts. Ideas of the gothic provide a framework for contextualising the myriad ways in which Schubert's music evokes the blurring of past and present, life and death, and for situating strangeness in relation to a cross-disciplinary phenomenon that captivated the imagination of the time.
Available Format: Book
Pierre Boulez's creative output has mostly been studied from an analytical perspective in the context of serialism. While Boulez tends to be pigeonholed as a cerebral composer, his interest in structure coexisted with extreme visceral energy. This book stresses the febrile cultural environment of Paris in the 1940s and the emotional side of his early works, enhancing our understanding of his work by connecting it with significant trends in contemporary French culture.
Available Format: Book
The Musician as Philosopher: New York's Vernacular Avant-Garde, 1958–1978
Michael Gallope; University of Chicago Press; Paperback
This book explores the philosophical thought of avant-garde musicians in postwar New York: David Tudor, Ornette Coleman, The Velvet Underground, Alice Coltrane, Patti Smith, and Richard Hell. It contends that these musicians not only challenged the rules by which music is written and practised but also confounded and reconfigured gendered and racialised expectations for what critics took to be legitimate forms of musical sound.
Available Format: Book
3 Shades of Blue : Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans & The Lost Empire of Cool
James Kaplan; Canongate Books; Hardback
1959 saw Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans, and the other members of Miles's sextet come together to record the seminal jazz album of all time: Kind of Blue. Describing the paths that led them to this mountaintop, this is a book about music, business, race, addiction and the cities that gave jazz its home; from New York and LA to Philadelphia, Chicago, and Kansas City.
Available Format: Book
This book outlines a theoretical framework for studying a broad range of current musical practices, from performance and composition to listening and dancing, from historically informed performances of Bach in the USA to Indonesian Dubstep or Australian musical theatre, and from Irish traditional music played by French musicians from Toulouse to Brazilian thrash metal or K-Pop.
Available Format: Book
Screening the Operatic Stage: Television and Beyond
Christopher Morris; University of Chicago Press; Paperback
From the early days of television broadcasts to today’s live streams, opera houses have embraced technology as a way to reach new audiences. But how do these forms of media extend, amplify, or undermine production values, and what does the audience gain or lose in the process? This book examines the implications of opera’s engagement with screen media, showing how the conventions of televisual representation have masked the mediating effects of technology in the name of fidelity to live performance.
Available Format: Book
Born by the Thames: Stephen Dodgson - A Centenary Celebration
Oliver Chandler & Thomas Hyde (editors); de la Porte Publishing; Paperback
This volume marks the centenary of British composer Stephen Dodgson, whose career produced many highly distinctive works in a voice that could be both playful and deeply evocative. It brings together interviews and specially commissioned articles on Dodgson's musical output as well as a selection of the composer's own warmly erudite writings and broadcasts. These sit alongside personal reflections and anecdotes from friends and family, providing a rounded picture of the musician and the man.
Available Format: Book
Repetition and Performance in the Recording Studio
Rod Davies; Cambridge University Press; Paperback
The recording studio is a setting in which performers often produce multiple takes, using strategies to vary outcomes in search of the 'perfect take'. Observing multiple takes of one's own recorded performance within the temporal limits of a vocal recording session yields qualitative data to create an ethnography of both the process and the work itself. This book provides a demonstration of how technology and social conventions in the recording studio interact in order to impact a musician's performance.
Available Format: Book
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