Music : History & Criticism

Full of humor, insight, and unflinching honesty, Great Pretenders bucks the received wisdom, explores the intersections of our private lives and pop culture, and broadens our understanding of a crucial moment in our history. more...

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Heavy metal has developed from a British fringe genre of rock music in the late 1960s to a global mass market consumer-good in the early twenty-first century. In this book, individual contributors approach British heavy metal from a textual perspective, providing critical analyses of the politics and ideology behind the lyrics, images and performances. The wide range of approaches will provide readers from various disciplines with new and original ideas about the study of this phenomenon of popular culture. more...

Price: $99.95

Part I: The Scole Grandi. 1. For the Honor of God: The Origin and Nature of the Scoli Grandi. 2. Gathering Together: Ritual and Ceremony at the Scoli Grandi. 3. Singing for the Souls of Brothers: Musical Beginnings to the early 15th century. 4. Singing Praies to the Lord: The Early Use of Professional Musicians, 1445-1500. 5. The Best in the City: Salaried Musicians. 6. So Super-excellent: Music for the Annual Festa. 7. Only a few appear and often none: The Scole in decline, 1650-1807. Part II: The Scole Piccole. 8. Processions, vespers, songs, and organ: The Scole Piccole and Music to 1600. 9. An honorable and necessary work: The Scole Piccole in the 17th century. 10. With jubilant voices: The Final Century of Music at the Scole Piccole, 1700-1807. Conclusions. Appendix I: Processions and Ceremonies of the Scole Grandi. Appendix II: A Calendar of Religious Occasions Celebrated by the Scole. Appendix III: Musicians for the Festa di San Rocco, 1595-1634. Appendix IV: The Venetian Monetary System more...

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Preface and Acknowledgments. Introduction: An Atmosphere of Controversy. PART ONE: The Middle Ages, Plainchant, and "Otherness". 1. A Different Sense of Time-Marcel Peres on plainchant. 2. You Can't Sing a Footnote--Susan Hellauer on performing medieval music. 3. Vox Feminea--Barbara Thornton on Hildegard von Bingen. 4. The Colonizing Ear--Christopher Page on medieval music. Postscript: The Middle Ages, Plainchant, and "Otherness". PART TWO: The Renaissance, Oxbridge, and Italy. The Modern "English Countenance". 5. There Is No Such Thing as a Norm--Paul Hillier on Renaissance sacred vocal music. 6. Other Kinds of Beauty--Peter Phillips on Palestrina and the Tallis Scholars. 7. Singing Like a Native--Alan Curtis, Rinaldo Alessandrini, and Anthony Rooley on Monteverdi; Afterword. 8. Emotional Logic--Andrew Lawrence-King on instrumental music and improvisation. PART THREE: The Baroque. 9. Consistent Inconsistencies--John Butt on Bach. 10. "One Should Not Make a Rule"--Gustav Leonhardt on Baroque keyboard music. 11. Aladdin's Lamp-- Anner Bylsma on the 'cello (and Vivaldi). 12. Beyond the Beautiful Pearl--Julianne Baird on the Italian and English styles. 13. You Can Never Be Right for All Time--Nicholas McGegan on Handel. 14. At Home with the Idiom--William Christie on the French Baroque. 15. Triple Counterpoint:--Jeffrey Thomas, Philippe Herreweghe, and John Butt on Singing Bach's Sacred Works. PART FOUR: Classic and Romantic. 16. Restoring Ingredients--Malcolm Bilson on the Fortepiano. 17. Speaking Mozart's Lingo--Robert Levin on Mozart and Improvisation. 18. Taking Music off the Pedestal--Roger Norrington on Beethoven. Postscript: "Classical" and "Romantic" Performance Practice in Beethoven. 19. Reviving Idiosyncrasies--John Eliot Gardiner on Berlioz and Brahms. 20. Reinventing Wheels--Joshua Rifkin on Interpretation and Rhetoric. Epilog more...

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Drawing together information from a wide variety of primary and secondary sources, in particular treatises and tutors, David Golby demonstrates that while Britain produced many fewer instrumental virtuosi than its foreign neighbours, there developed a more serious and widespread interest in the cultivation of music throughout the nineteenth century. Discussion of general developments and issues is followed by a detailed examination of violin pedagogy, method and content which is used as a guide to society's influence on cultural trends and informs the discussion of other instruments and institutional training that follows.The book includes a chronology of developments in 19th-century British music education, and a particularly useful feature for future researchers in this field is a representative chronology of principal British instrumental treatises 1780-1900 that features over 700 items. more...

Price: $130.00