Download or read book The Devil s Music Master written by Sam H. Shirakawa and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1992-07-02 with total page 542 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From 1922 until his death in 1954, Wilhelm Furtwängler was the foremost cultural music figure of the German-speaking world, conductor of both the Berlin and Vienna Philharmonic orchestras. But a cloud still hangs over his reputation, despite his undeniable brilliance as a musician, because of a fatal and tragic decision. Wilhelm Furtwängler remained in Germany when thousands of intellectuals and artists fled after the Nazis seized power in 1933. His decision to stay behind earned him lasting condemnation as a Nazi collaborator--"The Devil's Music Master." Decades after his death, Furtwängler remains for many not only the greatest but also the most controversial musical personality of our time. In The Devil's Music Master, Sam H. Shirakawa forges the first full-length and comprehensive biography of Furtwängler. He surveys Furtwängler's formative years as a difficult but brilliant prodigy, his rise to pre-eminence as Germany's leading conductor, and his development as a musician, composer, and thinker. Shirakawa also reviews the rich recorded legacy Furtwängler documented throughout his forty-year career--such as the legendary Tristan with Kirsten Flagstad and the famous performances of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in 1942 and 1951. Equally important, Shirakawa goes backstage and behind the lines to explore how the Nazis seized control of the arts and how Furtwängler single-handedly tried to prevent evil characters as Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and Luftwaffe Chief Hermann Göring from annihilating Germany's musical life. He shows how Furtwängler, far from being a toady to the Nazis, stood up openly against Hitler and Himmler--at enormous personal risk--to salvage the musical traditions of Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. Shirakawa also presents moving and overwhelming evidence of Furtwängler's astonishing efforts to save the lives of Jews and other persecuted individuals trapped in Nazi Germany--only to be proscribed at the end of the war and nearly framed as a war criminal. But there was more to Furtwängler than his politics, or even his music, and we come to know this extraordinary man as a reluctant composer, a prolific essayist and diary keeper, a loyal friend, a formidable enemy when crossed, and an incorrigible philanderer. Numerous musical luminaries share their memories of Furtwängler to round out this vivid portrait. Based on dozens of interviews and research in numerous documents, letters, and diaries, many of them previously unpublished, The Devil's Music Master is an in-depth look at the life and times of a unique personality whose fatal flaw lay in his uncompromising belief that music and art must be kept apart from politics, a conviction that transformed him into a tragic figure.

Download or read book The Devil written by Philip C. Almond and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2014-09-11 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Although the Devil still 'lives' in modern popular culture, for the past 250 years he has become marginal to the dominant concerns of Western intellectual thought. That life could not be thought or imagined without him, that he was a part of the everyday, continually present in nature and history, and active at the depths of our selves, has been all but forgotten. It is the aim of this work to bring modern readers to a deeper appreciation of how, from the early centuries of the Christian period through to the recent beginnings of the modern world, the human story could not be told and human life could not be lived apart from the 'life' of the Devil. With that comes the deeper recognition that, for the better part of the last two thousand years, the battle between good and evil in the hearts and minds of men and women was but the reflection of a cosmic battle between God and Satan, the divine and the diabolic, that was at the heart of history itself."—from The Devil Lucifer, Mephistopheles, Beelzebub; Ha-Satan or the Adversary; Iblis or Shaitan: no matter what name he travels under, the Devil has throughout the ages and across civilizations been a compelling and charismatic presence. In Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, the supposed reign of God has long been challenged by the fiery malice of his opponent, as contending forces of good and evil have between them weighed human souls in the balance. In The Devil, Philip C. Almond explores the figure of evil incarnate from the first centuries of the Christian era. Along the way, he describes the rise of demonology as an intellectual and theological pursuit, the persecution as witches of women believed to consort with the Devil and his minions, and the decline in the belief in Hell and in angels and demons as corporeal beings as a result of the Enlightenment. Almond shows that the Prince of Darkness remains an irresistible subject in history, religion, art, literature, and culture. Almond brilliantly locates the "life" of the Devil within the broader Christian story of which it is inextricably a part; the "demonic paradox" of the Devil as both God's enforcer and his enemy is at the heart of Christianity. Woven throughout the account of the Christian history of the Devil is another complex and complicated history: that of the idea of the Devil in Western thought. Sorcery, witchcraft, possession, even melancholy, have all been laid at the Devil's doorstep. Until the Enlightenment enforced a "disenchantment" with the old archetypes, even rational figures such as Thomas Aquinas were obsessed with the nature of the Devil and the specific characteristics of the orders of demons and angels. It was a significant moment both in the history of demonology and in theology when Benedict de Spinoza (1632–1677) denied the Devil's existence; almost four hundred years later, popular fascination with the idea of the Devil has not yet dimmed.

Download or read book Devil Sickness and Devil Songs written by David L. Kozak and published by Smithsonian Books (DC). This book was released on 1999 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the Tohono O'odham (formerly known as the Papago) of southern Arizona, devils are the spirits of deceased O'odham cattlemen and cowboys. The arbiters of wealth and the protectors of horses and cattle, devils safeguard their property by inflicting their staying sickness on humans who mistreat or show disrespect for livestock. But devils also give humans the power to recover from devil sickness by teaching healing songs to shamans and ritual curers. In this book, David L. Kozak and David I. Lopez discuss O'odham devil way in the context of shamanic tradition, Catholic missionization, and the rise of the Southwest cattle economy, showing how it has been both a barometer of and a means of coping with several centuries of social upheaval. They analyze the structure and sequence of thirty-nine curative devil songs, explaining how each song-set includes primary and secondary poetic tensions that effect a cure by enabling patients to relive their own experiences from the perspective of the spirit world.

Download or read book Musical Observer written by and published by . This book was released on 1923 with total page 808 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Say No to the Devil written by Ian Zack and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2015-04-10 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Finally, the biography that Rev. Davis deserves. Ian Zack takes ‘Blind Gary’ out of the footnotes and into the footlights of the history of American music.” —Steve Katz, cofounder of Blood, Sweat & Tears Bob Dylan called Gary Davis “one of the wizards of modern music.” Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead—who took lessons with Davis—claimed his musical ability “transcended any common notion of a bluesman.” And the folklorist Alan Lomax called him “one of the really great geniuses of American instrumental music.” But you won’t find Davis alongside blues legends Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The first biography of Davis, Say No to the Devil restores “the Rev’s” remarkable story. Drawing on extensive research and interviews with many of Davis’s former students, Ian Zack takes readers through Davis’s difficult beginning as the blind son of sharecroppers in the Jim Crow South to his decision to become an ordained Baptist minister and his move to New York in the early 1940s, where he scraped out a living singing and preaching on street corners and in storefront churches in Harlem. There, he gained entry into a circle of musicians that included, among many others, Lead Belly, Woody Guthrie, and Dave Van Ronk. But in spite of his tremendous musical achievements, Davis never gained broad recognition from an American public that wasn’t sure what to make of his trademark blend of gospel, ragtime, street preaching, and the blues. His personal life was also fraught, troubled by struggles with alcohol, women, and deteriorating health. Zack chronicles this remarkable figure in American music, helping us to understand how he taught and influenced a generation of musicians.

Download or read book Derek Walcott written by Edward Baugh and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-03-09 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nobel Laureate Derek Walcott is one of the Caribbean's most famous writers. His unique voice in poetry, drama and criticism is shaped by his position at the crossroads between Caribbean, British and American culture and by his interest in hybrid identities and diaspora. Edward Baugh's Derek Walcott analyses and evaluates Walcott's entire career over the last fifty years. Baugh guides the reader through the continuities and differences of theme and style in Walcott's poems and plays. Walcott is an avowedly Caribbean writer, acutely conscious of his culture and colonial heritage, but he has also made a lasting contribution to the way we read and value the western literary tradition. This comprehensive survey considers each of Walcott's published books, offering a guide for students, scholars and readers of Walcott. Students of Caribbean and postcolonial studies will find this a perfect introduction to this important writer.

Download or read book I d Rather Be the Devil written by Stephen Calt and published by Chicago Review Press. This book was released on 2008-04 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Skip James (1902–1969) was perhaps the most creative and idiosyncratic of all blues musicians. Drawing on hundreds of hours of conversations with James himself, Stephen Calt here paints a dark and unforgettable portrait of a man untroubled by his own murderous inclinations, a man who achieved one moment of transcendent greatness in a life haunted by failure. And in doing so, Calt offers new insights into the nature of the blues, the world in which it thrived, and its fate when that world vanished.

Download or read book Controversial Poetry 1400 1625 written by and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-05-11 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Controversial poetry played a crucial role in dealing with religious, political, and scholarly conflicts from 1400 until 1625. This volume analyses roles and functions of Latin, Italian, Dutch, German, Scots, and Hungarian poetry in specific historical controversies. A media theory of poetical impact is proposed by Franz-Josef Holznagel and Dieuwke van der Poel. Levente Seláf, Philipp Steinkamp, and Guillaume van Gemert examine the genres sung in wars, and in rulers’ controversies. Judith Keßler, Dirk Coigneau, Juliette Groenland, and Regina Toepfer analyse how female and male rhetoricians and humanists use verse in religious, municipal, and educational conflicts. Signe Rotter-Broman, Samuel Pakucs Willcocks†, and Alasdair A. MacDonald explain how reception strategies can shape cultural and political identities. Controversial Poetry 1400-1625 diskutiert den entscheidenden Einfluss von Controversial Poetry, Kontrovers-Dichtung, in Konflikten zwischen 1400 und 1625. Dafür werden die Rollen und Funktionen lateinischer, italienischer, niederländischer, deutscher, schottischer und ungarischer Dichtung in konkreten historischen Kontroversen analysiert. Eine Medientheorie der Beeinflussung durch Dichtung entwerfen Franz-Josef Holznagel and Dieuwke van der Poel. Levente Seláf, Philipp Steinkamp, and Guillaume van Gemert untersuchen verschiedene Gattungen gesungener Politik in Kriegen und Auseinandersetzungen von Herrschern. Judith Keßler, Dirk Coigneau, Juliette Groenland und Regina Töpfer analysieren, wie weibliche und männliche rederijkers und Humanisten Verse in konfessionellen, städtischen und Bildungs-Konflikten verwenden. Signe Rotter-Broman, Samuel Pakucs Willcocks† und Alasdair MacDonald erklären, wie Rezeptions-Strategien kulturelle und politische Identitäten gestalten können.

Download or read book Running with the Devil written by Robert Walser and published by Wesleyan University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-05 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A solid, scholarly analysis of the power, meaning, musical structure, and sociopolitical contexts of the most popular examples of heavy metal.” —Library Journal Dismissed by critics and academics, condemned by parents and politicians, and fervently embraced by legions of fans, heavy metal music continues to attract and embody cultural conflicts that are central to society. In Running with the Devil, Robert Walser explores how and why heavy metal works, both musically and socially, and at the same time uses metal to investigate contemporary formations of identity, community, gender, and power. This edition includes a new foreword by Harris M. Berger contextualizing the work and a new afterword by the author. Ebook Edition Note: all photographs (sixteen) have been redacted. “Walser belongs to a small but influential group of academics trying to reconcile ‘high theory’ with a streetwise sense of culture . . . an excellent book.” —Rolling Stone “Takes musicology where it has never gone before; I once saw the chapter on metal guitarists and the classical tradition performed live in a lecture hall, but even on paper it smokes.” —SF Weekly “Walser is truly gifted at doing what few critics before him have done: analyzing the music . . . In virtuoso readings of metal music that forge persuasive links between metal and particular classical music traditions, Walser reveals the ways that musical structures themselves are social texts.” —The Nation “Making surprising connections to classical forms and debunking stereotypes of metal’s musical crudity, Walser delves enthusiastically into guitar conventions and rituals.” —The Washington Post

Download or read book The Devil s Music written by Randall J. Stephens and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-19 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When rock ’n’ roll emerged in the 1950s, ministers denounced it from their pulpits and Sunday school teachers warned of the music’s demonic origins. The big beat, said Billy Graham, was “ever working in the world for evil.” Yet by the early 2000s Christian rock had become a billion-dollar industry. The Devil’s Music tells the story of this transformation. Rock’s origins lie in part with the energetic Southern Pentecostal churches where Elvis, Little Richard, James Brown, and other pioneers of the genre worshipped as children. Randall J. Stephens shows that the music, styles, and ideas of tongue-speaking churches powerfully influenced these early performers. As rock ’n’ roll’s popularity grew, white preachers tried to distance their flock from this “blasphemous jungle music,” with little success. By the 1960s, Christian leaders feared the Beatles really were more popular than Jesus, as John Lennon claimed. Stephens argues that in the early days of rock ’n’ roll, faith served as a vehicle for whites’ racial fears. A decade later, evangelical Christians were at odds with the counterculture and the antiwar movement. By associating the music of blacks and hippies with godlessness, believers used their faith to justify racism and conservative politics. But in a reversal of strategy in the early 1970s, the same evangelicals embraced Christian rock as a way to express Jesus’s message within their own religious community and project it into a secular world. In Stephens’s compelling narrative, the result was a powerful fusion of conservatism and popular culture whose effects are still felt today.

Download or read book Twentieth Century Countertenor Repertoire written by Steven L. Rickards and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2008-08-11 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This significant reference of over 600 entries compiles and catalogues information about repertoire composed specifically for the countertenor from 1950 to 2000. Representing more than 350 composers, it provides a resource for countertenors and voice teachers to identify and become more familiar with contemporary works for countertenor.

Download or read book The Archive and the Repertoire written by Diana Taylor and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2003-09-12 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Archive and the Repertoire preeminent performance studies scholar Diana Taylor provides a new understanding of the vital role of performance in the Americas. From plays to official events to grassroots protests, performance, she argues, must be taken seriously as a means of storing and transmitting knowledge. Taylor reveals how the repertoire of embodied memory—conveyed in gestures, the spoken word, movement, dance, song, and other performances—offers alternative perspectives to those derived from the written archive and is particularly useful to a reconsideration of historical processes of transnational contact. The Archive and the Repertoire invites a remapping of the Americas based on traditions of embodied practice. Examining various genres of performance including demonstrations by the children of the disappeared in Argentina, the Peruvian theatre group Yuyachkani, and televised astrological readings by Univision personality Walter Mercado, Taylor explores how the archive and the repertoire work together to make political claims, transmit traumatic memory, and forge a new sense of cultural identity. Through her consideration of performances such as Coco Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s show Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit . . . , Taylor illuminates how scenarios of discovery and conquest haunt the Americas, trapping even those who attempt to dismantle them. Meditating on events like those of September 11, 2001 and media representations of them, she examines both the crucial role of performance in contemporary culture and her own role as witness to and participant in hemispheric dramas. The Archive and the Repertoire is a compelling demonstration of the many ways that the study of performance enables a deeper understanding of the past and present, of ourselves and others.

Download or read book Idolatry and Its Enemies written by Kenneth Mills and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-24 with total page 355 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The ecclesiastical investigations into Indian religious error--the Extirpation of idolatry--that occurred in the seventeenth-and eighteenth-century Archdiocese of Lima come to life here as the most revealing sources on colonial Andean religion and culture. Focusing on a largely neglected period, 1640 to 1750, and moving beyond portrayals that often view the relationships between indigenous peoples and Europeans solely in terms of repression, opposition, or accommodation, Kenneth Mills provides a wealth of new material and interpretation for understanding native Andeans and Spanish Christians as participants in a common, if not harmonious, history. By examining colonial interaction and "religion as lived," he introduces memorable native Andean and Spanish actors and finds vivid points of entry into the complex realities of parish life in the mid-colonial Andes. Mills describes fitful, sometimes unintentional, and often ambiguous kinds of religious change among Andeans. He shows that many of the Quechua speakers whose testimonies form the bulk of the archival evidence were simultaneously active Catholic parishioners and adherents to a complex of transforming Andean religious structures. Mills also explores the notions of reformation and correction that fueled the extirpating process in the central Andes, as elsewhere. Moreover, he demonstrates wide differences of opinion among Spanish churchmen as to the best manner to proceed against the suspect religiosity of baptized Andeans--many of whom considered themselves Christians. In so doing, he connects this religious history to experiences in other regions of colonial Spanish America and to wider relations between Christian and non-Christian peoples.

Download or read book Vocal Repertoire for the Twenty First Century Volume 1 written by Jane Manning and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-09-15 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Described as the "life and soul of British contemporary music", Jane Manning is an internationally celebrated English concert and opera soprano. In this new follow-up to her highly regarded New Vocal Repertory, Volumes I and II, she provides a seasoned expert's guidance and insight into the vocal genre she calls home. Vocal Repertoire for the Twenty-First Century spans the late middle-20th century through the second decade of the 21st. Manning's comprehensive selection of contemporary art songs ranges from the avant-garde to the more easily accessible, including substantial song cycles, shorter encore pieces, and songs suitable for auditions and competitions. The two-volume guide presents expertly-informed selections tailored to particular voice types. Each of the 160 selections is accompanied by a highly detailed performance guide, music examples, levels of difficulty, and a brief encapsulation of vocal characteristics or challenges contained in the piece. A supplemental companion website provides composer biographies and an up-to-date list of recommended recordings. With a focus on younger composers in addition to prominent figures, Manning encourages singers to refresh and expand their recital repertoire into less familiar territory, and discover the rewards therein. Volume 1 features works written before 2000, including pieces from such renowned composers as John Cage ("The Wonderful Widow of Eighteen Springs", "A Flower"), André Previn ("Five Songs"), and Igor Stravinsky ("The Owl and the Pussycat").

Download or read book The World Dream Book written by Sarvananda Bluestone and published by Inner Traditions / Bear & Co. This book was released on 2002-12 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique self-help guide to dream interpretation using techniques and icons from cultures around the world. • Challenges the assumption that all symbols universally signify the same thing to all dreamers. • Includes numerous stories, games, and exercises for inducing, recalling, interpreting, and utilizing dreams. • Extends beyond Jung and Freud to include dream theory from numerous world cultures, including the Temiar of Malaya, the African Ibans, the Lepchka of the Himalayas, and the Ute of North America. Dreaming can be used as a tool for understanding our own consciousness, enhancing creativity, receiving visions, conquering fears, interpreting recent events, healing the body, and evolving the soul. Tapping into the vast dreaming experiences and lore of the world's cultures--from the Siwa people of the Libyan desert to the Naskapi Indians of Labrador--Sarvananda Bluestone challenges the assumption that all symbols universally signify the same thing to all dreamers. The World Dream Book encourages readers to develop their own, personalized symbols for understanding their consciousness and provides a series of stories, multicultural techniques, and games to help them do so. Playful explorations, such as the aboriginal "Sipping the Water of the Moon," teach how to induce, recall, interpret, and utilize the power of dreams. Readers will discover how a stone under a pillow can help us remember a dream and will explore their own dormant artist and writer as they reclaim the power of their sleeping consciousness. Sarvananda Bluestone applies his uniquely engaging style to demonstrate that, with a few simple tools, everybody has the capacity to unleash their full dreaming potential.

Download or read book Gender and Song in Early Modern England written by Professor Katherine R Larson and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2014-11-28 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Song offers a vital case study for examining the rich interplay of music, gender, and representation in the early modern period. This collection engages with the question of how gender informed song within particular textual, social, and spatial contexts in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England. Bringing together ongoing work in musicology, literary studies, and film studies, it elaborates an interdisciplinary consideration of the embodied and gendered facets of song, and of song’s capacity to function as a powerful-and flexible-gendered signifier. The essays in this collection draw vivid attention to song as a situated textual and musical practice, and to the gendered processes and spaces of song's circulation and reception. In so doing, they interrogate the literary and cultural significance of song for early modern readers, performers, and audiences.

Download or read book The Devil s Music written by Giles Oakley and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt P. This book was released on 1978 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anecdotes, reminiscences, first-hand reports, and appreciative commentary combine to provide a celebratory account of the blues' development from turn-of-the-century New Orleans honky-tonk and Mississippi Delta barrelhouse to today's urban blues.