Download or read book The Selected Correspondence of Aaron Copland written by Aaron Copland and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-01 with total page 287 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book devoted to the correspondence of composer Aaron Copland, covering his life from age eight to eighty-seven. The chronologically arranged collection includes letters to many significant figures in American twentieth-century music as well as Copland’s friends, family, teachers, and colleagues. Selected for readability, interest, and the light they cast upon the composer’s thoughts and career, the letters are carefully annotated and each published in its entirety. Copland was a gifted and natural letter writer who revealed much more about himself in his letters than in formal writings in which he was conscious of his position as spokesman for modern music. The collected letters offer insights into his music, personality, and ideas, along with fascinating glimpses into the lives of such other well-known musicians as Leonard Bernstein, Carlos Chávez, William Schuman, and Virgil Thomson.
Download or read book Aaron Copland s Appalachian Spring written by Annegret Fauser and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A commission and its context -- The creation of a dance piece -- Appalachian spring performed -- Americana between war and peace -- An American icon
Download or read book Selected Correspondence of Charles Ives written by Charles Ives and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2007-06-14 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This authoritative volume of 453 letters written by and to composer Charles Ives (1874-1954) provides unparalleled insight into one of the most extraordinary and paradoxical careers in American music history. The most comprehensive collection of Ives's correspondence in print, this book opens a direct window on Ives's complex personality and his creative process. Though Ives spent much of his career out of the mainstream of professional music-making, he corresponded with a surprisingly large group of musicians and critics, including John J. Becker, Henry Bellamann, Leonard Bernstein, John Cage, Aaron Copland, Henry Cowell, Ingolf Dahl, Walter Damrosch, Lehman Engel, Clifton J. Furness, Lou Harrison, Bernard Herrmann, John Kirkpatrick, Serge Koussevitzky, John Lomax, Francesco Malipiero, Radiana Pazmor, Paul Rosenfeld, Carl Ruggles, E. Robert Schmitz, Nicolas Slonimsky, and Peter Yates.
Download or read book Aaron Copland written by Richard Kostelanetz and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-12-16 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a selection of the best writings, of the American composer and music legend Aaron Copland, on a wide variety of topics. It features excerpts from his correspondence and recommendations he wrote for other composers.
Download or read book What to Listen For in Music written by Aaron Copland and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2011-02-01 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now in trade paperback: “The definitive guide to musical enjoyment” (Forum). In this fascinating analysis of how to listen to both contemporary and classical music analytically, eminent American composer Aaron Copland offers provocative suggestions that will bring readers a deeper appreciation of the most viscerally rewarding of all art forms.
Download or read book The Leonard Bernstein Letters written by Leonard Bernstein and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-29 with total page 903 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “With their intellectual brilliance, humor and wonderful eye for detail, Leonard Bernstein’s letters blow all biographies out of the water.”—The Economist (2013 Book of the Year) Leonard Bernstein was a charismatic and versatile musician—a brilliant conductor who attained international superstar status, and a gifted composer of Broadway musicals (West Side Story), symphonies (Age of Anxiety), choral works (Chichester Psalms), film scores (On the Waterfront), and much more. Bernstein was also an enthusiastic letter writer, and this book is the first to present a wide-ranging selection of his correspondence. The letters have been selected for the insights they offer into the passions of his life—musical and personal—and the extravagant scope of his musical and extra-musical activities. Bernstein’s letters tell much about this complex man, his collaborators, his mentors, and others close to him. His galaxy of correspondents encompassed, among others, Aaron Copland, Stephen Sondheim, Jerome Robbins, Thornton Wilder, Boris Pasternak, Bette Davis, Adolph Green, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, and family members including his wife Felicia and his sister Shirley. The majority of these letters have never been published before. They have been carefully chosen to demonstrate the breadth of Bernstein’s musical interests, his constant struggle to find the time to compose, his turbulent and complex sexuality, his political activities, and his endless capacity for hard work. Beyond all this, these writings provide a glimpse of the man behind the legends: his humanity, warmth, volatility, intellectual brilliance, wonderful eye for descriptive detail, and humor. “The correspondence from and to the remarkable conductor is full of pleasure and insights.”—The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) “Exhaustive, thrilling [and] indispensable.”—USA Today (starred review)
Download or read book The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder written by Thornton Wilder and published by Theatre Communications Grou. This book was released on 1997 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume One of the collected short plays by one of the greatest American playwrights of the Twentieth Century.
Download or read book Music for the Common Man written by Elizabeth B. Crist and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-12 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1930s, Aaron Copland began to write in an accessible style he described as "imposed simplicity." Works like El Salón México, Billy the Kid, Lincoln Portrait, and Appalachian Spring feature a tuneful idiom that brought the composer unprecedented popular success and came to define an American sound. Yet the cultural substance of that sound--the social and political perspective that might be heard within these familiar pieces--has until now been largely overlooked. While it has long been acknowledged that Copland subscribed to leftwing ideals, Music for the Common Man is the first sustained attempt to understand some of Copland's best-known music in the context of leftwing social, political, and cultural currents of the Great Depression and Second World War. Musicologist Elizabeth Crist argues that Copland's politics never merely accorded with mainstream New Deal liberalism, wartime patriotism, and Communist Party aesthetic policy, but advanced a progressive vision of American society and culture. Copland's music can be heard to accord with the political tenets of progressivism in the 1930s and '40s, including a fundamental sensitivity toward those less fortunate, support of multiethnic pluralism, belief in social democracy, and faith that America's past could be put in service of a better future. Crist explores how his works wrestle with the political complexities and cultural contradictions of the era by investing symbols of America--the West, folk song, patriotism, or the people--with progressive social ideals. Much as been written on the relationship between politics and art in the 1930s and '40s, but very little on concert music of the era. Music for the Common Man offers fresh insights on familiar pieces and the political context in which they emerged.
Download or read book Music for the Common Man written by Elizabeth B. Crist and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2009-01-12 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the 1930s, Aaron Copland began to write in an accessible style he described as "imposed simplicity." Works like El Salón México, Billy the Kid, Lincoln Portrait, and Appalachian Spring feature a tuneful idiom that brought the composer unprecedented popular success and came to define an American sound. Yet the cultural substance of that sound--the social and political perspective that might be heard within these familiar pieces--has until now been largely overlooked. While it has long been acknowledged that Copland subscribed to leftwing ideals, Music for the Common Man is the first sustained attempt to understand some of Copland's best-known music in the context of leftwing social, political, and cultural currents of the Great Depression and Second World War. Musicologist Elizabeth Crist argues that Copland's politics never merely accorded with mainstream New Deal liberalism, wartime patriotism, and Communist Party aesthetic policy, but advanced a progressive vision of American society and culture. Copland's music can be heard to accord with the political tenets of progressivism in the 1930s and '40s, including a fundamental sensitivity toward those less fortunate, support of multiethnic pluralism, belief in social democracy, and faith that America's past could be put in service of a better future. Crist explores how his works wrestle with the political complexities and cultural contradictions of the era by investing symbols of America--the West, folk song, patriotism, or the people--with progressive social ideals. Much as been written on the relationship between politics and art in the 1930s and '40s, but very little on concert music of the era. Music for the Common Man offers fresh insights on familiar pieces and the political context in which they emerged.
Download or read book Making Music Modern written by Carol J. Oja and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2000 with total page 510 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book recreates an exciting and productive period in which creative artists felt they were witnessing the birth of a new age. Aaron Copland, Henry Cowell, George Gershwin, Roy Harris, and Virgil Thomson all began their careers then, as did many of their less widely recognized compatriots. While the literature and painting of the 1920's have been amply chronicled, music has not received such treatment. Carol Oja's book sets the growth of American musical composition against parallel developments in American culture, provides a guide for the understanding of the music, and explores how the notion of the concert tradition, as inherited from Western Europe, was challenged and revitalized through contact with American popular song, jazz, and non-Western musics.
Download or read book Aaron Copland written by Howard Pollack and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 734 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Features the biography of Aaron Copland, his life, and his music.
Download or read book Aaron Copland and the American Legacy of Gustav Mahler written by Matthew Mugmon and published by Eastman Studies in Music. This book was released on 2019 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals how Aaron Copland's complex relationship with the music of Gustav Mahler shaped his vision for American music in the twentieth century.
Download or read book Carlos Ch vez and His World written by Leonora Saavedra and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-25 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Carlos Chávez (1899–1978) is the central figure in Mexican music of the twentieth century and among the most eminent of all Latin American modernist composers. An enfant terrible in his own country, Chávez was an integral part of the emerging music scene in the United States in the 1920s. His highly individual style—diatonic, dissonant, contrapuntal—addressed both modernity and Mexico's indigenous past. Chávez was also a governmental arts administrator, founder of major Mexican cultural institutions, and conductor and founder of the Orquesta Sinfónica de México. Carlos Chávez and His World brings together an international roster of leading scholars to delve into not only Chávez’s music but also the history, art, and politics surrounding his life and work. Contributors explore Chávez’s vast body of compositions, including his piano music, symphonies, violin concerto, late compositions, and Indianist music. They look at his connections with such artistic greats as Aaron Copland, Miguel Covarrubias, Henry Cowell, Silvestre Revueltas, and Paul Strand. The essays examine New York’s modernist scene, Mexican symphonic music, portraits of Chávez by major Mexican artists of the period, including Diego Rivera and Rufino Tamayo, and Chávez’s impact on El Colegio Nacional. A quantum leap in understanding Carlos Chávez and his milieu, this collection will stimulate further work in Latin American music and culture. The contributors are Ana R. Alonso-Minutti, Amy Bauer, Leon Botstein, David Brodbeck, Helen Delpar, Christina Taylor Gibson, Susana González Aktories, Anna Indych-López, Roberto Kolb-Neuhaus, James Krippner, Rebecca Levi, Ricardo Miranda, Julián Orbón, Howard Pollack, Leonora Saavedra, Antonio Saborit, Stephanie Stallings, and Luisa Vilar Payá. Bard Music Festival 2015: Carlos Chávez and His World Bard College August 7-9 and August 14-16, 2015
Download or read book John Kirkpatrick American Music and the Printed Page written by Drew Michael Massey and published by University Rochester Press. This book was released on 2013 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How one extraordinary pianist, scholar, and editor prepared for publication important scores by Ives, Copland, and Ruggles, and reshaped the history of American musical modernism. For over sixty years, the scholar and pianist John Kirkpatrick tirelessly promoted and championed the music of American composers. In this book, Drew Massey explores how Kirkpatrick's career as an editor of music shaped the musicand legacies of some of the great American modernists, including Aaron Copland, Ross Lee Finney, Roy Harris, Hunter Johnson, Charles Ives, Robert Palmer, and Carl Ruggles. Drawing on oral histories, interviews, and Kirkpatrick's own extensive archives, Massey carefully reconstructs Kirkpatrick's collaborations with such luminaries, displaying his editorial practice and inviting reconsideration of many of the most important debates in American modernism --for example, the self-fashioning of young composers during the 1940s, the cherished myth of Ruggles as a composer in communion with the "timeless," and Ives's status as a pioneer of modernist techniques. First winner (November 2014) of ASCAP's Virgil Thomson Award for Outstanding Music Criticism. Drew Massey is an Assistant Professor of Music at Binghamton University.
Download or read book Aaron Copland s Appalachian Spring written by Annegret Fauser and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-27 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Appalachian Spring, with music by Aaron Copland and choreography by Martha Graham, counts among the best known American contributions to the global concert hall and stage. In the years since its premiere-as a dance work at the Library of Congress in 1944-it has become one of Copland's most widely performed scores, and the Martha Graham Dance Company still treats it as a signature work. Over the decades, the dance and the music have taken on a range of meanings that have transformed a wartime production into a seemingly timeless expression of American identity, both musically and visually. In this Oxford Keynotes volume, distinguished musicologist Annegret Fauser follows the work from its inception in the midst of World War II to its intersections with contemporary American culture, whether in the form of choreographic reinterpretations or musical ones, as by John Williams, in 2009, for the inauguration of President Barack Obama. A concise and lively introduction to the history of the work, its realization on stage, and its transformations over time, this volume combines deep archival research and cultural interpretations to recount the creation of Appalachian Spring as a collaboration between three creative giants of twentieth-century American art: Graham, Copland, and Isamu Noguchi. Building on past and current scholarship, Fauser critiques the myths that remain associated with the work and its history, including Copland's famous disclaimer that Appalachian Spring had nothing to do with the eponymous Southern mountain region. This simultaneous endeavor in both dance and music studies presents an incisive exploration this work, situating it in various contexts of collaborative and individual creation.
Download or read book Aaron Copland s Hollywood Film Scores written by Paula Musegades and published by Eastman Studies in Music. This book was released on 2020 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A pioneering study of how American composer Aaron Copland helped shape the sound of the Hollywood film industry and introduced the moviegoing public to modern musical styles.
Download or read book The Rest Is Noise written by Alex Ross and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2007-10-16 with total page 706 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the Year Time magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2007 Newsweek Favorite Books of 2007 A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2007 In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties; from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest Is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.
