Download or read book Every Good Boy Does Fine A Love Story in Music Lessons written by Jeremy Denk and published by Picador. This book was released on 2022-05-31 with total page 383 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A uniquely illuminating memoir of the making of a musician, in which renowned pianist Jeremy Denk explores what he learned from his teachers about classical music: its forms, its power, its meaning - and what it can teach us about ourselves. In this searching and funny memoir, based on his popular New Yorker article, renowned pianist Jeremy Denk traces an implausible journey. Life is difficult enough as a precocious, temperamental, and insufferable six-year-old piano prodigy in New Jersey. But then a family meltdown forces a move to New Mexico, far from classical music’s nerve centers, and he has to please a new taskmaster while navigating cacti, and the perils of junior high school. Escaping from New Mexico at last, he meets a bewildering cast of college music teachers, ranging from boring to profound, and experiences a series of humiliations and triumphs, to find his way as one of the world’s greatest living pianists, a MacArthur 'Genius,' and a frequent performer at Carnegie Hall. There are few writers working today who are willing to eloquently explore both the joys and miseries of artistic practice. Hours of daily repetition, mystifying early advice, pressure from parents and teachers who drove him on – an ongoing battle of talent against two enemies: boredom and insecurity. As we meet various teachers, with cruel and kind streaks, Denk composes a fraught love letter to the act of teaching. He brings you behind the scenes, to look at what motivates both student and teacher, locked in a complicated and psychologically perilous relationship. In Every Good Boy Does Fine, Denk explores how classical music is relevant to 'real life,' despite its distance in time. He dives into pieces and composers that have shaped him – Bach, Mozart, Schubert, and Brahms, among others – and gives unusual lessons on melody, harmony, and rhythm. Why and how do these fundamental elements have such a visceral effect on us? He tries to sum up many of the lessons he has received, to repay the debt of all his amazing teachers; to remind us that music is our creation, and that we need to keep asking questions about its purpose.

Download or read book Wandering Time written by Luis Alberto Urrea and published by University of Arizona Press. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 146 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fleeing a failed marriage and haunted by ghosts of his past, Luis Alberto Urrea jumped into his car several years ago and headed west. Driving cross-country with a cat named Rest Stop, Urrea wandered the West from one year's Spring through the next. Hiking into aspen forests where leaves "shiver and tinkle like bells" and poking alongside creeks in the Rockies, he sought solace and wisdom. In the forested mountains he learned not only the names of trees—he learned how to live. As nature opened Urrea's eyes, writing opened his heart. In journal entries that sparkle with discovery, Urrea ruminates on music, poetry, and the landscape. With wonder and spontaneity, he relates tales of marmots, geese, bears, and fellow travelers. He makes readers feel mountain air "so crisp you feel you could crunch it in your mouth" and reminds us all to experience the magic and healing of small gestures, ordinary people, and common creatures. Urrea has been heralded as one of the most talented writers of his generation. In poems, novels, and nonfiction, he has explored issues of family, race, language, and poverty with candor, compassion, and often astonishing power. Wandering Time offers his most intimate work to date, a luminous account of his own search for healing and redemption.

Download or read book Journal with Purpose written by Helen Colebrook and published by David and Charles. This book was released on 2019-11-26 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Journal with Purpose is the ultimate reference for journaling, packed with over 1000 motifs that you can use to decorate and enhance your bullet or dot journal pages. Copy or trace direct from the page, or follow one of the quick exercises to improve your skills. Featuring all the journal elements you could wish for – banners, arrows, dividers, scrolls, icons, borders and alphabets – this amazing value book will be a constant source of inspiration for journaling and an 'instant fix' for people who find the more artistic side of journaling a challenge.

Download or read book Musicophilia written by Oliver Sacks and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2010-02-05 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What goes on in human beings when they make or listen to music? What is it about music, what gives it such peculiar power over us, power delectable and beneficent for the most part, but also capable of uncontrollable and sometimes destructive force? Music has no concepts, it lacks images; it has no power of representation, it has no relation to the world. And yet it is evident in all of us–we tap our feet, we keep time, hum, sing, conduct music, mirror the melodic contours and feelings of what we hear in our movements and expressions. In this book, Oliver Sacks explores the power music wields over us–a power that sometimes we control and at other times don’t. He explores, in his inimitable fashion, how it can provide access to otherwise unreachable emotional states, how it can revivify neurological avenues that have been frozen, evoke memories of earlier, lost events or states or bring those with neurological disorders back to a time when the world was much richer. This is a book that explores, like no other, the myriad dimensions of our experience of and with music.

Download or read book The Notebooks of a Successful Psychopath written by Willem Martens and published by Osmora Incorporated. This book was released on 2015-01-12 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: I worked for decades as psychoanalyst and researcher in forensic psychiatric settings with psychopaths. I was fascinated by those psychopaths who were cured and wrote my PhD-thesis about remission in psychopaths, which is a very rare phenomenon, indeed. I was astonished about the simplicity of ideas and misconceptions about psychopathy of other scholars. I knew from my own and other psychopaths experiences that the reality of the psychopathic condition was much more complex than they ever could conceive. This motivated me the write a number of articles in international journals in order to make an attempt to correct and complement current theories of psychopaths. I am retired now since 5 years and I enjoyed to be in the circumstance to focus myself completely on my old passion, namely composing of music. However, my repose was disturbed by a well-known scholar and friend who asked me to write a book about my own experienced as a psychopath. And so I decided to accept this last task before I should leave forever the scientific arena of the forensic psychiatry. And I do it with a good reason. Psychopaths might regard their features, attitude and behavior quite differently than their non-psychopathic counterparts and psychiatric researchers do. This distinction might be the result of a) ignorance of non-psychopaths about the true nature of this complex disorder, b) a very different perspective of psychopaths and non-psychopaths in analyzing this phenomenon, c) the fact that most empirical data is gathered from incarnated, criminal populations who are very able to manipulate tests (most of them know much about the PCL-R), assessments, researchers, and therapists (just for fun, revenge, hatred, or disgust) and d) a lack of utilization of and unavailability of reliable and voluntary self-reports of psychopaths in informal settings, and so on. Informal, non-academic and non-clinical settings are important because the psychopaths I investigated hate formal academic and clinical settings because they consider them as bulwarks of repressing authority which are harmful for them. They consider current theories and concepts of psychopathy as inadequate, incomplete, incorrect, stereotype which bring about stigmatization.

Download or read book The Artist s Way written by Julia Cameron and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2002-03-04 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "With its gentle affirmations, inspirational quotes, fill-in-the-blank lists and tasks — write yourself a thank-you letter, describe yourself at 80, for example — The Artist’s Way proposes an egalitarian view of creativity: Everyone’s got it."—The New York Times "Morning Pages have become a household name, a shorthand for unlocking your creative potential"—Vogue Over four million copies sold! Since its first publication, The Artist's Way phenomena has inspired the genius of Elizabeth Gilbert and millions of readers to embark on a creative journey and find a deeper connection to process and purpose. Julia Cameron's novel approach guides readers in uncovering problems areas and pressure points that may be restricting their creative flow and offers techniques to free up any areas where they might be stuck, opening up opportunities for self-growth and self-discovery. The program begins with Cameron’s most vital tools for creative recovery – The Morning Pages, a daily writing ritual of three pages of stream-of-conscious, and The Artist Date, a dedicated block of time to nurture your inner artist. From there, she shares hundreds of exercises, activities, and prompts to help readers thoroughly explore each chapter. She also offers guidance on starting a “Creative Cluster” of fellow artists who will support you in your creative endeavors. A revolutionary program for personal renewal, The Artist's Way will help get you back on track, rediscover your passions, and take the steps you need to change your life.

Download or read book Wartime Notebooks written by Andrzej Bobkowski and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 698 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Polish writer's experience of wartime France, a cosmopolitan outsider's perspective on politics, culture, and life under duress When the aspiring young writer Andrzej Bobkowski, a self-styled cosmopolitan Pole, found himself caught in occupied France in 1940, he recorded his reflections on culture, politics, history, and everyday life. Published after the war, his notebooks offer an outsider's perspective on the hardships and ironies of the Occupation. In the face of war, Bobkowski celebrates the value of freedom and human life through the evocation--in a daringly untragic mode--of ordinary existence, the taste of simple food, the beauty of the French countryside. Resisting intellectual abstractions, his notes exude a young man's pleasure in physical movement--miles clocked on country roads and Parisian streets on his trusty bike--and they reveal the emergence of an original literary voice. Bobkowski was recognized in his homeland as a master of modern Polish prose only after Communism ended. He remains to be discovered in the English-speaking world.

Download or read book Just Being at the Piano written by Mildred Portney Chase and published by . This book was released on 1981 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Mystwick School of Musicraft written by Jessica Khoury and published by Clarion Books. This book was released on 2020 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Twelve-year-old Amelia gets the opportunity to attend a boarding school and learn how to use music to create magic, hoping to become a Maestro like her deceased mother.

Download or read book Sheet Music written by M. J. Rose and published by Evil Eye Concepts, Incorporated. This book was released on 2014-10-20 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a seductive storyteller who dares to plumb the dark, passionate depths of the heart and soul comes an absorbing new erotic thriller that is also a gripping tale of psychological suspense. SHEET MUSIC Grief-stricken Justine Pagett fled to Paris after her mother’s death, but scandal forces her back to the States to redeem her tarnished reputation as a journalist. Commissioned to write a piece on the eccentric classical composer Sophie DeLyon, Justine finds herself part of a mysterious deception. At Euphonia, the exclusive institution DeLyon created to nurture America’s most gifted music prodigies, a malevolent presence is composing a deadly work. Threatening cybermessages meant to intimidate convince a determined Justine that fascinating secrets await her. But when Sophie suddenly disappears, Justine’s assignment to mine the story behind the legend becomes an even greater challenge. The disharmonious DeLyon family seems more interested in Sophie’s estate than in her artistic legacy, and a group of devoted fans is fiercely defending the name of the enigmatic genius. Wrestling with her own demons while searching for the truth, Justine is clear about one thing: Someone is orchestrating a deadly deceit . . . from which no one will emerge unscathed. An expertly crafted opus of obsessive passions and poisonous shame, of brilliant achievements and brutal deception, Sheet Music confirms M. J. Rose’s place at the forefront of today’s top psychological suspense writers.

Download or read book The Writing Notebooks written by Helene Cixous and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2006-08-03 with total page 139 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hélène Cixous is among the most influential and original literary critics and feminist thinkers of our time. This volume reproduces - for the first time, in any language - a collection of pages from her original writing notebooks, offering a unique insight into her radical thought and work. The material gathered here ranges across the full spectrum of Cixous' writing, including the concept of écriture féminine, and the starting points and sources of inspiration for her poetry and prose. The editor's introduction succinctly outlines the central tenets of Cixous' theory of writing. Each extract is accompanied by editorial commentary and a translation, both by Susan Sellers. The book concludes with an interview with Cixous herself, in which she discusses the writing process, her own criticism, fiction and poetry and the value and importance of these notebooks. Students and teachers of literature, psychoanalysis, philosophy and feminist theory will find this an illuminating and inspiring collection of writings. Edited by Susan Sellers, Professor of English and Related Literature at the Univeristy of St Andrews.

Download or read book Notebooks written by Margaret Rose Thornton and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2006-01-01 with total page 868 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Meticulously edited and annotated, Tennessee Williams's notebooks follow his growth as a writer from his undergraduate days to the publication and production of his most famous plays, from his drug addiction and drunkenness to the heights of his literary accomplishments.

Download or read book The Ghost Notebooks written by Ben Dolnick and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2019-01-22 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Belletrist Book Club Pick When Nick Beron and Hannah Rampe decide to move from New York City to the tiny upstate town of Hibernia, they’re in desperate need of a change: their careers have flatlined, the city is exhausting, and they’ve reached a relationship stalemate. So Hannah accepts a job as live-in director of the Wright Historic House, a museum dedicated to an obscure nineteenth-century philosopher whose life was marred by tragedy. At first, life in this old, creaky house feels cozy. Nick and Hannah explore the deserted museum at night, wandering the twisting halls and sneakily trying out the former owners’ original master bed. But as summer turns to fall, Hannah begins to have trouble sleeping; reluctantly, she tells Nick she’s hearing whispers in the night. Then one morning, Nick wakes up to find Hannah gone. In his frantic search for her, Nick will discover the hidden legacy of Wright House: a man driven wild with grief, and a spirit aching for home.

Download or read book Coleridge s Notebooks written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2002 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Coleridge was one of the Romantic Age's most enigmatic figures and author of some of the most famous poems in the English language. He confided his thoughts and emotions to his notebooks, a selection of which are presented in this text.

Download or read book Romantic Poetry written by Karl Kroeber and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 1993 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology fills the need for a comprehensive, up-to-date collection of the most important contemporary writings on the English romantic poets. During the 1980s, many theoretical innovations in literary study swept academic criticism. Many of these approaches--from deconstructive, new historicist, and feminist perspectives--used romantic texts as primary examples and altered radically the ways in which we read. Other major changes have occurred in textual studies, dramatically transforming the works of these poets. The world of English romantic poetry has certainly changed, and Romantic Poetry keeps pace with those changes. Karl Kroeber and Gene W. Ruoff have organized the book by poet--Blake, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, Shelly, and Keats--and have included essays representative of key critical approaches to each poet's work. In addition to their excellent general introduction, the editors have provided brief, helpful forewords to each essay, showing how it reflects current approaches to its subject. The book also has an extensive bibliography sure to serve as an important research aid. Students on all levels will find this book invaluable.

Download or read book The Notebooks of Alexander Skryabin written by and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-16 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Russian composer Alexander Skryabin's life spanned the late romantic era and the momentous early years of the twentieth century, but was cut short before the end of the first world war. In a predominantly conservative era in the Russian musical scene, he drew inspiration from poets, philosophers, and dramatists of the Silver Age, a period of radical artistic renewal in Russia. Possessed by an apocalyptic vision of transformation, aspects of which he shared with other Russian thinkers and artists of the period, Skryabin transformed his musical language from a ripe Romantic style into a far-reaching, radical instrument for the expression of his ideas. This newly translated collection of the composer's writings and letters allows readers to experience and understand Skryabin's worldview, personality, and life as never before. The Notebooks of Alexander Skryabin features commentary based on original materials and accounts by the composer's friends and associates, dispelling popular misconceptions about his life and revealing the dazzling constellation of philosophies that comprised his world of ideas, from Ancient Greek and German Idealist philosophy to the writings of Nietzsche, and Indian culture to the Theosophical writings of H. P. Blavatsky. Close textual readings and new biographical insights converge to present a vivid impression of Skryabin's thought and its impact on his musical compositions.

Download or read book Burn After Writing Gray written by Sharon Jones and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2021-05-18 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The national bestseller. Write. Burn. Repeat. Now with new covers to match whatever mood you’re in. "This book has made me laugh and cry, filled me with joy, and inspired me." -TikTok user camrynbanks Instagram, WhatsApp, Snapchat, TikTok, VSCO, YouTube...the world has not only become one giant feed, but also one giant confessional. Burn After Writing allows you to spend less time scrolling and more time self-reflecting. Through incisive questions and thought experiments, this journal helps you learn new things while letting others go. Imagine instead of publicly declaring your feelings for others, you privately declared your feelings for yourself? Help your heart by turning off the comments and muting the accounts that drive you into jealousy for a few moments a night. Whether you are going through the ups and downs of growing up, or know a few young people who are, you will flourish by finding free expression--even if through a few tears! Push your limits, reflect on your past, present, and future, and create a secret book that's about you, and just for you. This is not a diary, and there is no posting required. And when you're finished, toss it, hide it, or Burn After Writing.