Download or read book The Oxford American Book of Great Music Writing written by Marc Smirnoff and published by University of Arkansas Press. This book was released on 2012-01-01 with total page 456 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Not only have a breathtaking array of musical giants come from the South—think Elvis Presley, Robert Johnson, Louis Armstrong, Jimmie Rodgers, to name just obvious examples—but so have a breathtaking array of American music genres. From blues to rock & roll to jazz to country to bluegrass—and areas in between—it all started in the American South. Since its debut in 1996, The Oxford American's more-or-less annual Southern Music Issue has become legendary for its passionate and wide-ranging approach to music and for working with some of America's greatest writers. These writers—from Peter Guralnick to Nick Tosches to Susan Straight to William Gay—probe the lives and legacies of Southern musicians you may or may not yet be familiar with, but whom you'll love being introduced, or reintroduced, to. In one creative, fresh way or another, these writers also uncover the essence of music—and why music has such power over us. To celebrate ten years of Southern music issues, most of which are sold-out or very hard to find, the fifty-five essays collected in this dynamic, wide-ranging, and vast anthology appeal to both music fans and fans of great writing.
Download or read book The Queer Composition of America s Sound written by Nadine Hubbs and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2004-10-18 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this vibrant and pioneering book, Nadine Hubbs shows how a gifted group of Manhattan-based gay composers were pivotal in creating a distinctive "American sound" and in the process served as architects of modern American identity. Focusing on a talented circle that included Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Leonard Bernstein, Marc Blitzstein, Paul Bowles, David Diamond, and Ned Rorem, The Queer Composition of America's Sound homes in on the role of these artists' self-identification—especially with tonal music, French culture, and homosexuality—in the creation of a musical idiom that even today signifies "America" in commercials, movies, radio and television, and the concert hall.
Download or read book Classical Music In America written by Joseph Horowitz and published by W. W. Norton & Company. This book was released on 2005-03-15 with total page 664 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An award-winning scholar and leading authority on American symphonic culture argues that classical music in the United States is peculiarly performance-driven, and he traces a musical trajectory rising to its peak at the close of the 19th century and receding after World War I.
Download or read book America s Songs written by Philip Furia and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-05-12 with total page 359 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: America's Songs tells the stories behind the most beloved popular songs of the last century. We all have songs that have a special meaning in our lives; hearing them evokes a special time or place. Little wonder that these special songs have become enduring classics. Nothing brings the roarin '20s to life like Tea for Two or I'm just Wild About Harry; the Great Depression is evoked in all of its pain and misery in songs like Brother Can You Spare a Dime?; God Bless America revives the powerful hope that American democracy promised to the world during the dark days of World War II; Young at Heart evokes the postwar optimism of the '50s. And then there are the countless songs of love, new romance, and heartbreak: As Time Goes By, Always, Am I Blue...the list is endless. Along with telling the stories behind these songs, America's Songs suggests, simply and succinctly, what makes a song great. The book illuminates the way each great song melds words and music - sentiment and melody - into a seamless whole. America's Songs also traces the fascinating but mysterious process of collaboration, the give-and-take between two craftsmen, a composer and a lyricist, as they combined their talents to create a song. For anyone interested in the history of the songs that America loves, America'sSongs will make for fascinating reading.
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 Beethoven in America written by Michael Broyles and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2011-10-27 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines America's early reception to Beethoven, the use of his work and image in American music, movies, stage works, and other forms of popular culture, and related topics.
Download or read book Songs of America written by Jon Meacham and published by Random House. This book was released on 2019-06-11 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A celebration of American history through the music that helped to shape a nation, by Pulitzer Prize winner Jon Meacham and music superstar Tim McGraw “Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw form an irresistible duo—connecting us to music as an unsung force in our nation's history.”—Doris Kearns Goodwin Through all the years of strife and triumph, America has been shaped not just by our elected leaders and our formal politics but also by our music—by the lyrics, performers, and instrumentals that have helped to carry us through the dark days and to celebrate the bright ones. From “The Star-Spangled Banner” to “Born in the U.S.A.,” Jon Meacham and Tim McGraw take readers on a moving and insightful journey through eras in American history and the songs and performers that inspired us. Meacham chronicles our history, exploring the stories behind the songs, and Tim McGraw reflects on them as an artist and performer. Their perspectives combine to create a unique view of the role music has played in uniting and shaping a nation. Beginning with the battle hymns of the revolution, and taking us through songs from the defining events of the Civil War, the fight for women’s suffrage, the two world wars, the Great Depression, the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War, and into the twenty-first century, Meacham and McGraw explore the songs that defined generations, and the cultural and political climates that produced them. Readers will discover the power of music in the lives of figures such as Harriet Tubman, Franklin Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Martin Luther King, Jr., and will learn more about some of our most beloved musicians and performers, including Marian Anderson, Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke, Aretha Franklin, Bob Dylan, Duke Ellington, Carole King, Bruce Springsteen, and more. Songs of America explores both famous songs and lesser-known ones, expanding our understanding of the scope of American music and lending deeper meaning to the historical context of such songs as “My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” “God Bless America,” “Over There,” “We Shall Overcome,” and “Blowin’ in the Wind.” As Quincy Jones says, Meacham and McGraw have “convened a concert in Songs of America,” one that reminds us of who we are, where we’ve been, and what we, at our best, can be.
Download or read book American Music in the Twentieth Century written by Kyle Gann and published by Schirmer. This book was released on 1997 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American Music in the Twentieth Century surveys the art music written in the United States during the last 100 years from the groundbreaking experiments of Charles Ives to the present day. Writing for the general reader, Kyle Gann describes the characteristic sounds of the diverse movements that have sprung up in this eventful period, while at the same time he sketches the changing social and cultural contexts for American concert music, and provides concise biographies of key figures.
Download or read book Contemporary American Composers written by Rupert Hughes and published by Boston : L.C. Page. This book was released on 1900 with total page 528 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The American Stravinsky written by Gayle Murchison and published by University of Michigan Press. This book was released on 2012-02-21 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: divdivThe first study to show Copland's style development from his early works through his first widely accessible ballet/DIV/DIV
Download or read book Perspectives on American Music since 1950 written by James R. Heintze and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2024-01-26 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the century comes to a close, composition of music in the United States has reached little consensus in terms of style, techniques, or schools. In fourteen original articles, the contributors to this volume explore the broad range and diversity of post-World War II musical culture. Classical and jazz idioms are both covered, as is the broad history of electronic music in the United States.
Download or read book Charles Ives in the Mirror written by David C Paul and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2013-04-01 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: American composer Charles Ives (1874–1954) has gone from being a virtual unknown to become one of the most respected and lauded composers in American music. In this sweeping survey of intellectual and musical history, David C. Paul tells the new story of how Ives's music was shaped by shifting conceptions of American identity within and outside of musical culture, charting the changes in the reception of Ives across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. Paul focuses on the critics, composers, performers, and scholars whose contributions were most influential in shaping the critical discourse on Ives, many of them marquee names of American musical culture themselves, including Henry Cowell, Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, and Leonard Bernstein. Paul explores both how Ives positioned his music amid changing philosophical and aesthetic currents and how others interpreted his contributions to American music. Although Ives's initial efforts to find a public in the early twenties attracted a few devotees, the resurgence of interest in the American literary past during the thirties made a concert staple of his "Concord" Sonata, a work dedicated to nineteenth-century transcendentalist writers. Paul shows how Ives was subsequently deployed as an icon of American freedom during the early Cold War period and how he came to be instigated at the head of a line of "American maverick" composers. Paul also examines why a recent cadre of scholars has beset the composer with Gilded Age social anxieties. By embedding Ives' reception within the changing developments of a wide range of fields including intellectual history, American studies, literature, musicology, and American politics and society in general, Charles Ives in the Mirror: American Histories of an Iconic Composer greatly advances our understanding of Ives and his influence on nearly a century of American culture.
Download or read book Music and Musical Composition at the American Academy in Rome written by Martin Brody and published by Boydell & Brewer. This book was released on 2014 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining cultural analysis with historical and personal accounts of a century of musical life at the American Academy in Rome, this volume provides a history of the AAR's Rome Prize in Composition.
Download or read book The Origins of Composition Studies in the American College 1875 1925 written by John C. Brereton and published by University of Pittsburgh Press. This book was released on 1996-01-15 with total page 609 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume describes the formative years of English composition courses in college through a study of the most prominent documents of the time: magazine articles, scholarly reports, early textbooks, teachers' testimonies-and some of the actual student papers that provoked discussion. Includes writings by leading scholars of the era such as Adams Sherman Hill, Gertrude Buck, William Edward Mead, Lane Cooper, William Lyon Phelps, and Fred Newton Scott.
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 American Pop 4 volumes written by Bob Batchelor and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2008-12-30 with total page 1703 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pop culture is the heart and soul of America, a unifying bridge across time bringing together generations of diverse backgrounds. Whether looking at the bright lights of the Jazz Age in the 1920s, the sexual and the rock-n-roll revolution of the 1960s, or the thriving social networking websites of today, each period in America's cultural history develops its own unique take on the qualities define our lives.American Pop: Popular Culture Decade by Decade is the most comprehensive reference on American popular culture by decade ever assembled, beginning with the 1900s up through today. The four-volume set examines the fascinating trends across decades and eras by shedding light on the experiences of Americans young and old, rich and poor, along with the influences of arts, entertainment, sports, and other cultural forces. Whether a pop culture aficionado or a student new to the topic, American Pop provides readers with an engaging look at American culture broken down into discrete segments, as well as analysis that gives insight into societal movements, trends, fads, and events that propelled the era and the nation. In-depth chapters trace the evolution of pop culture in 11 key categories: Key Events in American Life, Advertising, Architecture, Books, Newspapers, Magazines, and Comics, Entertainment, Fashion, Food, Music, Sports and Leisure Activities, Travel, and Visual Arts. Coverage includes: How Others See Us, Controversies and scandals, Social and cultural movements, Trends and fads, Key icons, and Classroom resources. Designed to meet the high demand for resources that help students study American history and culture by the decade, this one-stop reference provides readers with a broad and interdisciplinary overview of the numerous aspects of popular culture in our country. Thoughtful examination of our rich and often tumultuous popular history, illustrated with hundreds of historical and contemporary photos, makes this the ideal source to turn to for ready reference or research.
Download or read book American Experimental Music 1890 1940 written by David Nicholls and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1990 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the end of the nineteenth century a national musical consciousness gradually developed in the USA as composers began to turn away from the European conventions on which their music had hitherto been modelled. It was in this period of change that experimentation was born. In this book, the composer and scholar David Nicholls considers the most influential figures in the development of American experimental music, including Charles Ives, Charles Seeger, Ruth Crawford, Henry Cowell, and the young John Cage. He analyses the music and ideas of this group, explaining the compositional techniques invented and employed by them and the historical and cultural context in which they emerged.
