Rock Concert Performance from ABBA to ZZ Top (For the Record: Lexington Studies in Rock and Popular Music)
by Peter Smith
This book presents an analysis of 100 rock concert performances and answers the question "What makes a truly great rock performance?" Author Peter Smith, an experienced concert goer, delves into his own recollections of experiencing rock performances over the last 50+ years and, with the support of his daughter, Laura Smith, analyzes 100 selected performances covering the themes of icons, persona, energy, fandom, venues, communities, politics, art-rock, authenticity and maturity. The approach ta...
Portraying Performer Image in Record Album Cover Art (For the Record: Lexington Studies in Rock and Popular Music)
by Ken Bielen
In Portraying Performer Image in Record Album Cover Art, Ken Bielen explains how album cover art authenticates recording artists by using elements that authenticate the performer in the particular genre. He considers albums issued from the 1950s to the 1980s, the golden era of record album cover art. The whole album package is studied including the front and back covers, the inside cover, the inner sleeve, and the text (liner notes) on the album jacket. Performers in rock and roll, folk and folk...
In this book author Cathy Benedict challenges and reframes traditional ways of addressing many of the topics we have come to think of as social justice. Offering practical suggestions for helping both teachers and students think philosophically (and thus critically) about the world around them, each chapter engages with important themes through music making and learning as it presents scenarios, examples of dialogue with students, unit ideas and lesson plans geared toward elementary students (ag...
Despite the presence of the Flaming Lips in a commercial for a copier and Iggy Pop's music in luxury cruise advertisements, Jeffrey T. Nealon argues that popular music has not exactly been co-opted in the American capitalist present. Contemporary neoliberal capitalism has, in fact, found a central organizing use for the values of twentieth-century popular music: being authentic, being your own person, and being free. In short, not being like everybody else. Through a consideration of the shift...
Compositional Process in Elliott Carter's String Quartets is an interdisciplinary study examining the evolution and compositional process in Elliott Carter's five string quartets. Offering a systematic and logical way of unpacking concepts and processes in these quartets that would otherwise remain opaque, the book's narrative reveals new aspects of understanding these works and draws novel conclusions on their collective meaning and Carter's place as the leading American modernist. Each of Car...
Rhythm and Critique (Technicities)
Rhythm and Critique presents 12 new essays from a range of specialists to define, contextualise and challenge the concepts of rhythm and rhythmanalysis. It includes newly translated materials from Rudolf Laban and Henri Meschonnic. The book begins with a genealogy of rhythm as it occurs through critical theory literatures of the 20th century, enabling the reader to situate philosophical and contemporary readings that further define rhythm as a critical term and mode of analysis.
Produced in association with the Smithsonian and including images from The National Music Museum in South Dakota, this volume guides readers through the progression of music since its prehistoric beginnings, discussing not just Western classical music, but music from all around the world. Profiles the lives of groundbreaking musicians, takes an in-depth look at the history and function of various instruments, and includes listening suggestions for each music style.
Music and Meaning
In order to promote new ways of thinking about musical meaning, this volume brings together scholars in music theory, musicology, and the philosophy of music, disciplines generally treated as separate and distinct. This interdisciplinary collaboration, while respecting differences in perspective, identifies and elaborates shared concerns. This volume focuses on the many and various kinds of meaning in music. Do musical meanings exist exclusively in internal, formal musical relations or might th...
Fun, bright, and playful, Power Pop is a sometimes adored, sometimes maligned, often misunderstood genre of music. From its heyday in the 70s and 80s to its resurgence in the 90s and 00s, Power Pop has meant many things to many people. In Go All The Way, today's best and brightest writers go deep on what certain Power Pop bands and songs mean and have meant to them. Whether they love or hate it, Go All The Way is a dive into the Beatles-inspired pop rock of the last five decades. Featuring: Hea...
About Man and God and Law is the story of how Bob Dylan sparked a revolution of the spirit and why it matters today. Many of our assumptions about empathy, sensual pleasure, and the essence of work, community, country, race, and the divine have germinated in Bob Dylan's need to know what's blowing in the wind and how it feels. Tracing his work and vision through themes that have shaped religious and cultural history for millennia, Stephen Daniel Arnoff uncovers how Bob Dylan has re-enchanted an...
Sonic Identity at the Margins convenes the interdisciplinary work of 17 academics, composers, and performers to examine sonic identity from the 19th century to the present. Recognizing the myriad aspects of identity formation, the authors in this volume adopt methodological approaches that range from personal accounts and embodied expression to archival research and hermeneutic interpretation. They examine real and imagined spaces-from video games and monument sites to films and depictions of ou...
Music as an Art begins by examining music through a philosophical lens, engaging in discussions about tonality, music and the moral life, music and cognitive science and German idealism, as well as recalling the author’s struggle to encourage his students to distinguish the qualities of good music. Scruton then explains – via erudite chapters on Schubert, Britten, Rameau, opera and film – how we can develop greater judgement in music, recognising both good taste and bad, establishing musical val...
Artistic Dynamos: An Ethnography on Music in Central African Kingdoms
by Brian Schrag
Artistic Dynamos: An Ethnography on Music in Central African Kingdoms uses stories and research from Ngiembɔɔn communities of Central and West Cameroon as touchstones for proposing new approaches to arts scholarship and community development. Building on the results of ethnographic research, artistic action is viewed through the lens of communication. This view brings a picture of increased cultural energy in the enactment of artistic genres—those with melodic, rhythmic, poetic, dramatic, visual...
Records of English Court Music
Pioneering work on the musical material from the archives of the English court was undertaken by Nagel (1894), Lafontaine (1909) and Stokes (in the Musical Antiquary 1903-1913). Records of English Court Music (a series of seven volumes covering the period 1485-1714) is the first attempt to compile a systematic calendar of such references. It aims to revise these earlier studies where necessary, adding significant details which researchers omitted, clarifying the context of documents and substi...
Perspectives Historico-Esthetiques Dans l'Oeuvre de Fernando Liuzzi (Passages - Transitions - Intersections, #4)
by Alessandro Giovannucci
A GUARDIAN AND INDEPENDENT BEST MUSIC BOOK OF 2017. 'At last an expert classicist gets to grips with Bob Dylan' Mary Beard 'A poignant blend of memoir, literary analysis through a classical lens, musicology and, above all, love' Guardian When the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan in 2016, the literary world was up in arms. How could the world's most prestigious book prize be aw...
Noise has become a model of cultural and theoretical thinking over the last two decades. Following Hegarty's influential 2007 book, Noise/Music, Annihilating Noise discusses in sixteen essays how noise offers a way of thinking about critical resistance, disruptive creativity and a complex yet enticing way of understanding the unexpected, the dissonant, the unfamiliar. It presents noise as a negativity with no fixed identity that can only be defined in connection and opposition to meaning and ord...
From the author of the celebrated classic Louder Than Hell comes an oral history of the badass Heavy Metal lifestyle-the debauchery, demolition, and headbanging dedication-featuring metalhead musicians from Black Sabbath and Judas Priest to Twisted Sister and Quiet Riot to Disturbed, Megadeth, Throwdown and more. In his song "You Can't Kill Rock and Roll" Ozzy Osbourne sings, "Rock and roll is my religion and my law." This is the mantra of the metal legends who populate Raising Hell-artists f...
A tap of the foot, a rush of emotion, the urge to hum a tune; without instruction or training we all respond intuitively to music. Comparing Notes explores what music is, why we are all musical, and how abstract patterns of sound that don't actually mean anything can in fact be so meaningful. Taking the reader on a clear and compelling tour of major twentieth century musical theories, Professor Adam Ockelford arrives at his own important psychologically grounded theory of how music works. From...
Today’s higher education music faculty and administrators are faced with extraordinary pressure to adapt, innovate, and change. But what change is most critical to pursue – and how can it be brought about effectively? This concise volume brings together four seasoned thought leaders with distinct voices, each providing a complementary glimpse into how music faculty and administrators can help lead changes that truly matter. Making the case for transformations to better align music training in hi...
The aesthetics of imperfection emphasises spontaneity, disruption, process and energy over formal perfection and is often ignored by many commentators or seen only in improvisation. This comprehensive collection is the first time imperfection has been explored across all kinds of musical performance, whether improvisation or interpretation of compositions. Covering music, visual art, dance, comedy, architecture and design, it addresses the meaning, experience, and value of improvisation and sp...
You may have read about the Longwood Symphony orchestra (LSO) in the paper or heard them on your favorite radio station. But the LSO is not just any orchestra. it began in 1982 with a group of talented Boston-area physicians, med students and health-care professionals and has since flourished under the leadership of violinist Dr. Lisa Wong, who became president of the LSO in 1991. The orchestra is now a proud, extraordinary group of musicians with fans around the globe. In Scales to Scalpels,...
Everyone Loves Live Music (Big Issues in Music (CHUP)) (Big Issues in Music)
by Fabian Holt
For decades, millions of music fans have gathered every summer in parks and fields to hear their favorite bands at festivals such as Lollapalooza, Coachella, and Glastonbury. How did these and countless other festivals across the globe evolve into glamorous pop culture events, and how are they changing our relationship to music, leisure, and public culture? In Everyone Loves Live Music, Fabian Holt looks beyond the marketing hype to show how festivals and other institutions of musical performanc...