Download or read book Musical Landscapes in Color written by Bill Banfield and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2004-09-01 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A sequel to the award-winning The Black Composer Speaks (Scarecrow Press, 1978), this exploration of the creative world of African American composers traces the lives and careers of 40 talented individuals and, in their own words, provides perspectives on a world that has been slow to recognize their remarkable contributions to classical music. The discussion places the music of these composers within the greater context of Western art music, but analyzes it through the lenses of sociology, Western concepts of art and taste, and vernacular musical forms, including spirituals, blues, jazz, and contemporary popular music. Each chapter is devoted to an individual composer, who discusses his or her musical training, compositional techniques and style, and the composer's personal philosophy as reflected in his or her music. A selected list of compositions for each composer is included, as well as a photo and sample of the composer's "hand." Banfield offers unprecedented insight into the history and influence of the African American composer with this documentary, which will appeal to everyone from the music scholar to the general reader.
Download or read book Interviews with American Composers written by Barney Childs and published by . This book was released on 2022-01-25 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1972-73, Barney Childs embarked on an ambitious attempt to survey the landscape of new American concert music. He recorded freewheeling conversations with fellow composers, most of them under forty, all of them important but most not yet famous. Though unable to publish the interviews in his lifetime, Childs had gathered invaluable dialogues with the likes of Robert Ashley, Olly Wilson, Harold Budd, Christian Wolff, and others. Virginia Anderson edits the first published collection of these conversations. She pairs each interview with a contextual essay by a contemporary expert that shows how the composer's discussion with Childs fits into his life and work. Together, the interviewees cover a broad range of ideas and concerns around topics like education, notation, developments in electronic music, changing demands on performers, and tonal music. Innovative and revealing, Interviews with American Composers is an artistic and historical snapshot of American music at an important crossroads.
Download or read book Dictionary of American Classical Composers written by Neil Butterworth and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-02 with total page 1359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Dictionary of American Classical Composers covers over 650 composers active from the 18th century to today. Covering all classical styles, it offers the most comprehensive overview of key composers in the United States available. Entries include basic biographical information and critical analysis of each composer's key works and ideas. Entries also include worklists and bibliographic information. Whenever possible, the entries will have been checked by the composers themselves to assure greatest possible accuracy. This new edition, completely updated and expanded from the 1984 edition, also includes over 200 historic photographs.
Download or read book Ten Great American Composers written by Carmen Bredeson and published by Enslow Publishing. This book was released on 2002 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Unveils the unique influences of Sousa, Ellington and eight other composers whose musical creations have become some of the most memorable music in history.
Download or read book Women of Influence in Contemporary Music written by Michael K. Slayton and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2010-12-23 with total page 496 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this collection of essays and interviews, nine gifted composers openly discuss their work.
Download or read book Dvorak s Prophecy And the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music written by Joseph Horowitz and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2021-11-23 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 A provocative interpretation of why classical music in America "stayed white"—how it got to be that way and what can be done about it. In 1893 the composer Antonín Dvorák prophesied a “great and noble school” of American classical music based on the “negro melodies” he had excitedly discovered since arriving in the United States a year before. But while Black music would foster popular genres known the world over, it never gained a foothold in the concert hall. Black composers found few opportunities to have their works performed, and white composers mainly rejected Dvorák’s lead. Joseph Horowitz ranges throughout American cultural history, from Frederick Douglass and Huckleberry Finn to George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and the work of Ralph Ellison, searching for explanations. Challenging the standard narrative for American classical music fashioned by Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, he looks back to literary figures—Emerson, Melville, and Twain—to ponder how American music can connect with a “usable past.” The result is a new paradigm that makes room for Black composers, including Harry Burleigh, Nathaniel Dett, William Levi Dawson, and Florence Price, while giving increased prominence to Charles Ives and George Gershwin. Dvorák’s Prophecy arrives in the midst of an important conversation about race in America—a conversation that is taking place in music schools and concert halls as well as capitols and boardrooms. As George Shirley writes in his foreword to the book, “We have been left unprepared for the current cultural moment. [Joseph Horowitz] explains how we got there [and] proposes a bigger world of American classical music than what we have known before. It is more diverse and more equitable. And it is more truthful.”
Download or read book American Composers written by Elsa Z. Posell and published by . This book was released on 1963 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Includes material on Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Henry Dixon Cowell, Paul Creston, Norman Dello Joio, Lukas Foss, Stephen Collins Foster, George Gershwin, Morton Gould, Charles Griffes, Ferde Grofe, Howard Hanson, Roy Harris, Alan Hovhaness, Charles Ives, Ulysses Kay, Normand Lockwood, Edward MacDowell, Peter Mennin, Gian-Carlo Menotti, Douglas Stuart Moore, Walter Piston, Quincy Porter, Wallingford Riegger, William Schuman, Roger Sessions, John Philip Sousa, and William Grant Still.
Download or read book Reminiscences of an American Composer and Pianist written by George Walker and published by . This book was released on 2009-07-09 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The first black American to receive the Pulitzer Prize for music (for his composition Lilacs), George Walker recounts the most significant events in his life and distinguished career as a composer and a musician.
Download or read book Christian Wolff written by Michael Hicks and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2012-07-23 with total page 138 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this first interpretive narrative of the life and work of Christian Wolff, Michael Hicks and Christian Asplund trace the influences and sensibilities of a contemporary composer's atypical career path and restless imagination. Written in full cooperation with Wolff, including access to his papers, this volume is a much-needed introduction to a leading avant-garde composer still living, writing music, and speaking about his own work. Wolff has pioneered various compositional and notational idioms, including overtly political music, indeterminacy, graphic scores, and extreme virtuosity. Trained as a classicist rather than a musician, Wolff has never quite had both feet in the rarefied world of contemporary composition. Yet he's considered a "composer's composer," with a mind ensconced equally in ancient Greek tragedy and experimental music and an eccentric and impulsive compositional approach that eludes a fixed stylistic fingerprint. Hicks and Asplund cover Wolff's family life and formative years, his role as a founder of the New York School of composers, and the context of his life and work as part of the John Cage circle, as well as his departures from it. Critically assessing Wolff's place within the experimental musical field, this volume captures both his eloquence and reticence and provides insights into his broad interests and activities within music and beyond.
Download or read book American Composers written by Edward Strickland and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1991-08-22 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: " . . . Strickland's own deep involvement with the works of these composers [is] revealed by the questions and comments he poses in an appreciative, Paterian way. His profound pleasure in these works also leads him to scrutinize and challenge them intimately." —Publishers Weekly "This is an indispensable book about American music . . . " —Fanfare " . . . exhilarating . . . Any of the interviews in American Composers will stimulate your curiosity and appetite." —Hungry Mind Review " . . . not only engaging, but also a useful representation of the major compositional styles of the 1980s and their corresponding practitioners." —Notes Philip Glass, Keith Jarrett, Meredith Monk, and eight other active American composers reveal a broad spectrum of musical personalities in these candid, in-depth conversations. Witty and articulate, their remarks convey the great vitality, diversity, and distinctiveness of today's American music.
Download or read book American Composers written by David Froom and published by Psychology Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First Published in 1994. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Download or read book Carla Bley written by Amy C. Beal and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2011-10-25 with total page 130 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first comprehensive treatment of the remarkable music and influence of Carla Bley, a highly innovative American jazz composer, pianist, organist, band leader, and activist. With fastidious attention to Bley's diverse compositions over the last fifty years spanning critical moments in jazz and experimental music history, Amy C. Beal tenders a long-overdue representation of a major figure in American music. Best known for her jazz opera "Escalator over the Hill," her role in the Free Jazz movement of the 1960s, and her collaborations with artists such as Jack Bruce, Don Cherry, Robert Wyatt, and Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, Bley has successfully maneuvered the field of jazz from highly accessible, tradition-based contexts to commercially unviable, avant-garde works. Beal details the staggering variety in Bley's work as well as her use of parody, quotations, and contradictions, examining the vocabulary Bley has developed throughout her career and highlighting the compositional and cultural significance of her experimentalism. Beal also points to Bley's professional and managerial work as a pioneer in the development of artist-owned record labels, the cofounder and manager of WATT Records, and the cofounder of New Music Distribution Service. Showing her to be not just an artist but an activist who has maintained musical independence and professional control amid the profit-driven, corporation-dominated world of commercial jazz, Beal's straightforward discussion of Bley's life and career will stimulate deeper examinations of her work.
Download or read book Duke Ellington written by Steven Brower and published by Rizzoli Publications. This book was released on 2016-03-22 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beautifully illustrated and unparalleled in scope, this is an elegant visual celebration befitting the life and work of the "prince of the piano." Duke Ellington was the undisputed father of the American songbook. A prolific writer and consummate performer, Ellington was the author of such standards as "Solitude," "Prelude to a Kiss," and "It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got that Swing)." With a career that spanned five decades, he is one of the defining composers of the Jazz Age. With unprecedented access to the Ellington family archives, this long overdue book illuminates the life and work of an icon of twentieth-century music from his humble beginnings to his long-lasting success. Every stage of Ellington’s career is brought to life, from sepia photographs of his early days in Washington, DC, to colorful playbills from the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, his triumphant tours of Europe in the 1930s, and his pioneering explosion of form and genre in the 1940s and beyond. Alongside more than two hundred stunning images, contributions from peers such as Dave Brubeck, Cornel West, Quincy Jones, and Tony Bennett shed light on Ellington’s musical legacy, while the voice of his granddaughter Mercedes reveals the character behind the charisma, and the man behind the piano.
Download or read book Accent on Composers written by and published by Alfred Music Publishing. This book was released on 2001-07 with total page 124 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A complete music appreciation course in one, 120-page, reproducible book/CD package. For each of the 22 featured composers there is a bio (focusing on his or her personal life), a portrait, a listing of the types of music he or she composed, composer factoids, and a timeline. The CD contains a listening example for each composer. The reproducible listening guide includes information about each listening example and a second by second what to listen for in the music." Also included are reviews (assessments) for each composer, plus more than two dozen pages of supplementary material. And it's all reproducible! Composers: Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Copland, Debussy, Dvorák, Elgar, Handel, Haydn, Hensel, Hildegard, Ives, Joplin, Felix and Fanny Mendelssohn, Mozart, Schubert, Sousa, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Verdi, Vivaldi, and Wagner. Reproducible PDFs included on the Enhanced CD, or purchase the Digital Download option to get a full PDF immediately. Great activities for remote teaching or distance learning!"
Download or read book Contemporary American Composers written by Rupert Hughes and published by Good Press. This book was released on 2019-11-21 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the preface to his work, Rupert Hughes explains his motivation and method for writing this historical account of American composers. Being a musician himself, he was interested to know who of merit was a native composer. He found it difficult to obtain such information, so he resolved to research contemporary composers, listen to and read their scores and make his own judgements. This wide-ranging book is the result.
Download or read book A New Anthology of Art Songs by African American Composers written by Margaret R. Simmons and published by SIU Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Including thirty-nine pieces for voice and piano created since 1968 by eighteen artists, ANew Anthology of Art Songs by African American Composers navigates a varied musical terrain from classical European traditions to jazz and spirituals. With nearly half of the featured songs composed by women and with others by lesser-known and emerging composers, this important collection offers a diverse, representative sampling of African American art songs and works to secure the places of these songs and artists in the canon of contemporary American music.
Download or read book Nationalist and Populist Composers written by Steve Schwartz and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2017-12-22 with total page 439 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Populism and nationalism in classical music held a significant place between the world wars with composers such as George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, and Leonard Bernstein creating a soundtrack to the lives of everyday Americans. While biographies of these individual composers exist, no single book has taken on this period as a direct contradiction to the modernist dichotomy between the music of Stravinsky and Schoenberg. In Nationalist and Populist Composers: Voices of the American People, Steve Schwartz offers an overdue correction to this distortion of the American classical music tradition by showing that not all composers of this era fall into either the Stravinsky or Schoenberg camps. Exploring the rise and decline of musical populism in the United States, Schwartz examines the major works of George Gershwin, Randall Thompson, Virgil Thomson, Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Kurt Weill, Morton Gould, and Leonard Bernstein. Organized chronologically, chapters cover each composer’s life and career and then reveal how key works participated in populist and nationalist themes. Written for the both the scholar and amateur enthusiast interested in modern classical music and American social history, Nationalist and Populist Composers creates a contextual frame through which all audiences can better understand such works as Rhapsody in Blue, Appalachian Spring, and West Side Story.
