EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

EBookClubs

Read Books & Download eBooks Full Online

Book Vanishing Sensibilities

    Book Details:
  • Author : Kristina Muxfeldt
  • Publisher : OUP USA
  • Release : 2012-01-19
  • ISBN : 0199782423
  • Pages : 264 pages

Download or read book Vanishing Sensibilities written by Kristina Muxfeldt and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2012-01-19 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vanishing Sensibilities examines music of Schubert, Beethoven, Schumann, and their contemporaries in drama and poetry, showing how music was a powerful force in lively ongoing conversations about the nature of liberty, consent in marriage, freedom of expression, and other matters of cultural and political urgency in this age of censorship.

Book Vanishing Sensibilities

    Book Details:
  • Author : Kristina Muxfeldt
  • Publisher : Oxford University Press
  • Release : 2012-04-01
  • ISBN : 0199782644
  • Pages : 288 pages

Download or read book Vanishing Sensibilities written by Kristina Muxfeldt and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-04-01 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vanishing Sensibilities examines once passionate cultural concerns that shaped music of Schubert, Beethoven, Schumann, and works of their contemporaries in drama or poetry. Music, especially music with text, was a powerful force in lively ongoing conversations about the nature of liberty, which included such topics as the role of consent in marriage, same-sex relationships, freedom of the press, and the freedom to worship (or not). Among the most common vehicles for stimulating debate about pressing social concerns were the genres of historical drama, and legend or myth, whose stories became inflected in fascinating ways during the Age of Metternich. Interior and imagined worlds, memories and fantasies, were called up in purely instrumental music, and music was privately celebrated for its ability to circumvent the restrictions that were choking the verbal arts. Author Kristina Muxfeldt invites us to listen in on these cultural conversations, dating from a time when the climate of censorship made the tone of what was said every bit as important as its literal content. At this critical moment in European history such things as a performer's delivery, spontaneous improvisation, or the demeanor of the music could carry forbidden messages of hope and political resistance--flying under the censor's radar like a carrier pigeon. Rather than trying to decode or fix meanings, Muxfeldt concerns herself with the very mechanisms of their communication, and she confronts distortions to meaning that form over time as the cultural or political pressures shaping the original expression fade and are eventually forgotten. In these pages are accounts of works successful in their own time alongside others that failed to achieve more than a liminal presence, among them Schubert's Alfonso und Estrella and his last opera project Der Graf von Gleichen, whose libretto was banned even before Schubert set to work composing it. Enlivening the narrative are generous music examples, reproductions of artwork, and facsimiles of autograph material.

Book The Collected Writings of Franz Liszt

Download or read book The Collected Writings of Franz Liszt written by and published by Scarecrow Press. This book was released on 2013-12-19 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Dramaturgical Leaves: Essays about Musical Works for the Stage and Queries about the Stage, Its Composers and Performers, the third volume in Janita R. Hall-Swadley’s The Collected Writings of Franz Liszt, Liszt heralds his admiration for early nineteenth-century opera and musical stage works. He honors Gluck, the musical prophet, as the cultivator of dramatic truth in the Romantic opera Orpheus, expounds on Beethoven’s harmonic inventions and innovative treatment of form in Fidelio, and argues for the latter’s incidental music to Goethe’s Egmont as the epitome of music organicism, a complete unity of words and tone. He also comments on Weber’s Euryanthe as offering the most progressive musical characterizations and declamation—even more so than his popular work Der Freischütz—and on how both works prefigure Wagner’s music dramas; awards Mendelssohn, whose genius Liszt ranks only slightly less than Beethoven’s, top honors for creating in Midsummer’s Night Dream the highest standards of music poetry; suggests how Scribe and Meyerbeer’s Robert the Devil paints a mental image of art’s eternal flames, where poet and musician share equal space in the development of music tragedy; reveals how the poetic deficiencies in the libretto to Schubert’s Alfonso and Estrella are too easily overlooked because of the music’s melodic and lyrical supremacy; and offers in contrast Auber’s Mute from Portici, a remarkable text by many historically picturesque musical motives that are universal and nationalistic at the same time. Finally Liszt offers an early gender study in music in his essay about Bellini’s Montague and Capulet (as well as its impact on nineteenth-century audiences), a look at Boieldieu’s White Lady as a sublime depiction of literary music, and Donizetti’s Favorite as colored with a special type of imagery, a laterna magica, in Liszt’s hand. The beloved soprano Pauline Viardot-Garcia receives special attention in an essay devoted entirely to her, and Liszt proffers a critique of entr’acte music as a pointless tradition that dethrones music and insults the artist and composer by making music a “palate cleanser.” This volume includes a detailed discussion about what it meant to be patronized by Liszt and how his support—financial, literary, and musical—helped shape many a music career. It also offers commentary on how gender in opera was sometimes obscured not only for dramatic interest but also as part of the process of outlining a nation’s identity,as well as a thorough study of Liszt’s concepts of Gestalt theory, the Archetype, and his musical Weltanschauung (his musical "world view"), all revealing his contribution to 19th-century music philosophy as it relates to opera. Finally, a historical review of entr’acte music is presented—how it began and how it developed—to clarify Liszt’s stance against it, making this volume a necessary read for music historians, serious musicians, and music connoisseurs alike.

Book Globalization and Islamism

Download or read book Globalization and Islamism written by Nevzat Soguk and published by Globalization. This book was released on 2011 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores non-Arab Islamic orientations, convincingly showing that Islam as a historical force has been characteristically more tolerant, pluralistic, and flexible than contemporary Islamist movements suggest. Nevzat Soguk argues that the current Western focus on Wahabi fundamentalism has obscured past and present cosmopolitan Islamic traditions around the world. He highlights the often-overlooked forms of Islam in Turkey and in Indonesia, which holds the world's largest population of Muslims. By focusing on these two countries, he fills a significant void on the diverse role Islam is poised to play in shaping regional and global political futures. Original, timely, and humane, this book will be essential reading for all those concerned about repairing Western-Islamic relations.

Book The Vanishing Act

    Book Details:
  • Author : Mette Jakobsen
  • Publisher : Text Publishing
  • Release : 2011-06-27
  • ISBN : 1921834587
  • Pages : 225 pages

Download or read book The Vanishing Act written by Mette Jakobsen and published by Text Publishing. This book was released on 2011-06-27 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a story about a snow-covered island you won’t find on any map. It’s Minou’s story. A year ago, her mama disappeared. It’s a story about a magician, a priest and a dog called No Name. It’s about Papa’s endless hunt for the truth. It’s about a dead boy who listens, and Minou’s search for Mama’s voice. And it’s about discovering what love is.

Book The Vanishing

    Book Details:
  • Author : Wendy Webb
  • Publisher : Hachette Books
  • Release : 2014-01-21
  • ISBN : 1401305970
  • Pages : 234 pages

Download or read book The Vanishing written by Wendy Webb and published by Hachette Books. This book was released on 2014-01-21 with total page 234 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recently widowed and rendered penniless by her Ponzi-scheming husband, Julia Bishop is eager to start anew. So when a stranger appears on her doorstep with a job offer, she finds herself accepting the mysterious yet unique position: caretaker to his mother, Amaris Sinclair, the famous and rather eccentric horror novelist whom Julia has always admired . . . and who the world believes is dead. When she arrives at the Sinclairs' enormous estate on Lake Superior, Julia begins to suspect that there may be sinister undercurrents to her "too-good-to-be-true" position. As Julia delves into the reasons of why Amaris chose to abandon her successful writing career and withdraw from the public eye, her search leads to unsettling connections to her own family tree, making her wonder why she really was invited to Havenwood in the first place, and what monstrous secrets are still held prisoner within its walls.

Book William Faulkner s Use of the Tragic Mulatto Myth

Download or read book William Faulkner s Use of the Tragic Mulatto Myth written by Fay Elizabeth Beauchamp and published by . This book was released on 1975 with total page 318 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book The Art of Vanishing

Download or read book The Art of Vanishing written by Laura Smith and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2018-02-06 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A young woman chafing at the confines of marriage confronts the high cost of craving freedom and adventure in a memoir that "pushes literary boundaries" (The Atlantic) At twenty-five, as her wedding date approached, Laura Smith began to feel trapped. Not by her fiancé, who shared her appetite for adventure, but by the unsettling idea that it was hard to be at once married and free. Laura wanted her life to be different. She wanted her marriage to be different. And she found in the strangely captivating story of another restless young woman determined to live without constraints both an enticement and a challenge. Barbara Newhall Follett was a free-spirited trailblazer who published her first novel at 11, enlisted as a deck hand on a boat bound for the south China seas at 15 and was one of the first women to hike the Appalachian trail. Then in December 1939, when she was not much older than Laura, she walked out of her apartment on a quiet tree-lined street in Brookline, leaving behind a fraying marriage, and vanished without a trace. Obsessed by her story, Laura set off to find out what had happened. The Art of Vanishing is a riveting mystery and a piercing exploration of marriage and convention that asks deep and uncomfortable questions: Why do we give up on our childhood dreams? Is marriage a golden noose? Must we find ourselves in the same row houses with Pottery Barn lamps telling our kids to behave? Searingly honest and written with a raw intensity, it will challenge you to rethink your most intimate decisions and may just upend your life.

Book The Vanishing American Jew

Download or read book The Vanishing American Jew written by Alan M. Dershowitz and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 1998-09-08 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Explores the meaning of Jewishness in light of the increasing assimilation of America's Jews and suggests ways to preserve Jewish identity.

Book The Vanishing American Adult

Download or read book The Vanishing American Adult written by Ben Sasse and published by St. Martin's Griffin. This book was released on 2017-05-16 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: THE INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER In an era of safe spaces, trigger warnings, and an unprecedented election, the country's youth are in crisis. Senator Ben Sasse warns the nation about the existential threat to America's future. Raised by well-meaning but overprotective parents and coddled by well-meaning but misbegotten government programs, America's youth are ill-equipped to survive in our highly-competitive global economy. Many of the coming-of-age rituals that have defined the American experience since the Founding: learning the value of working with your hands, leaving home to start a family, becoming economically self-reliant—are being delayed or skipped altogether. The statistics are daunting: 30% of college students drop out after the first year, and only 4 in 10 graduate. One in three 18-to-34 year-olds live with their parents. From these disparate phenomena: Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse who as president of a Midwestern college observed the trials of this generation up close, sees an existential threat to the American way of life. In The Vanishing American Adult, Sasse diagnoses the causes of a generation that can't grow up and offers a path for raising children to become active and engaged citizens. He identifies core formative experiences that all young people should pursue: hard work to appreciate the benefits of labor, travel to understand deprivation and want, the power of reading, the importance of nurturing your body—and explains how parents can encourage them. Our democracy depends on responsible, contributing adults to function properly—without them America falls prey to populist demagogues. A call to arms, The Vanishing American Adult will ignite a much-needed debate about the link between the way we're raising our children and the future of our country.

Book Lake of the Ozarks

Download or read book Lake of the Ozarks written by Bill Geist and published by Grand Central Publishing. This book was released on 2019-05-07 with total page 155 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Beloved TV host Bill Geist pens a reflective memoir of his incredible summers spent in the heart of America in this New York Times bestseller. Before there was "tourism" and souvenir ashtrays became "kitsch," the Lake of the Ozarks was a Shangri-La for middle-class Midwestern families on vacation, complete with man-made beaches, Hillbilly Mini Golf, and feathered rubber tomahawks. It was there that author Bill Geist spent summers in the Sixties during his school and college years working at Arrowhead Lodge -- a small resort owned by his bombastic uncle -- in all areas of the operation, from cesspool attendant to bellhop. What may have seemed just a summer job became, upon reflection, a transformative era where a cast of eccentric, small-town characters and experiences shaped (some might suggest "slightly twisted") Bill into the man he is today. He realized it was this time in his life that had a direct influence on his sensibilities, his humor, his writing, and ultimately a career searching the world for other such untamed creatures for the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, and CBS News. In Lake of the Ozarks, Emmy Award-winning CBS Sunday Morning correspondent Bill Geist reflects on his coming of age in the American Heartland and traces his evolution as a man and a writer. He shares laugh-out-loud anecdotes and tongue-in-cheek observations guaranteed to evoke a strong sense of nostalgia for "the good ol' days." Written with Geistian wit and warmth, Lake of the Ozarks takes readers back to a bygone era, and demonstrates how you can find inspiration in the most unexpected places.

Book The Vanishing

    Book Details:
  • Author :
  • Publisher :
  • Release : 1993
  • ISBN :
  • Pages : pages

Download or read book The Vanishing written by and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book The Vanishing Word

    Book Details:
  • Author : Arthur W. Hunt
  • Publisher : Wipf and Stock Publishers
  • Release : 2013-09-01
  • ISBN : 1625642652
  • Pages : 273 pages

Download or read book The Vanishing Word written by Arthur W. Hunt and published by Wipf and Stock Publishers. This book was released on 2013-09-01 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Is image everything? For many people in our culture, image and images are everything. Americans spend hours watching television but rarely finish a good book. Words are quickly losing their appeal. Arthur Hunt sees this trend as a direct assault on Christianity. He warns that by exalting imagery we risk becoming mindless pagans. Our thirst for images has dulled our minds so that we lack the biblical and mental defenses we need to resist pagan influences. What about paganism? Hunt contends that it never died in modern Western culture; image-based media just brought it to the surface again. Sex, violence, and celebrity worship abound in our culture, driving a mass media frenzy reminiscent of pagan idolatry. This book is a clear warning that the church is being cut off from its word-based heritage, and that we are open to abuse by those who exploit the image but neglect the Word. Thoughtful readers will find this a challenging call to be critical about the images bombarding our sense and to affirm that the Word is everything.

Book On Vanishing

    Book Details:
  • Author : Lynn Casteel Harper
  • Publisher : Catapult
  • Release : 2020-04-14
  • ISBN : 1948226294
  • Pages : 126 pages

Download or read book On Vanishing written by Lynn Casteel Harper and published by Catapult. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 126 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice An essential book for those coping with Alzheimer’s and other cognitive disorders that “reframe[s] our understanding of dementia with sensitivity and accuracy . . . to grant better futures to our loved ones and ourselves” (The New York Times). An estimated fifty million people in the world suffer from dementia. Diseases such as Alzheimer's erase parts of one's memory but are also often said to erase the self. People don't simply die from such diseases; they are imagined, in the clichés of our era, as vanishing in plain sight, fading away, or enduring a long goodbye. In On Vanishing, Lynn Casteel Harper, a Baptist minister and nursing home chaplain, investigates the myths and metaphors surrounding dementia and aging, addressing not only the indignities caused by the condition but also by the rhetoric surrounding it. Harper asks essential questions about the nature of our outsized fear of dementia, the stigma this fear may create, and what it might mean for us all to try to “vanish well.” Weaving together personal stories with theology, history, philosophy, literature, and science, Harper confronts our elemental fears of disappearance and death, drawing on her own experiences with people with dementia both in the American healthcare system and within her own family. In the course of unpacking her own stories and encounters—of leading a prayer group on a dementia unit; of meeting individuals dismissed as “already gone” and finding them still possessed of complex, vital inner lives; of witnessing her grandfather’s final years with Alzheimer’s and discovering her own heightened genetic risk of succumbing to the disease—Harper engages in an exploration of dementia that is unlike anything written before on the subject. A rich and startling work of nonfiction, On Vanishing reveals cognitive change as it truly is, an essential aspect of what it means to be mortal.

Book Snow White  Blood Red

    Book Details:
  • Author : Ellen Datlow
  • Publisher : Open Road Media
  • Release : 2019-01-01
  • ISBN : 1504055764
  • Pages : 369 pages

Download or read book Snow White Blood Red written by Ellen Datlow and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2019-01-01 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fairy tales retold—with a twist—from “some of our best storytellers” including Neil Gaiman, Gahan Wilson, Tanith Lee, and others (The Washington Post). In this “no holds barred . . . nightmarish . . . provocative” collection, bestselling and award-winning fantasy masters put a dark, disturbing, and erotic spin on your favorite bedtime stories—and give you something entirely new to trouble your dreams (The New York Times Book Review). A boy is haunted through adulthood by a soul-eating creature that lies forever in wait under Neil Gaiman’s “Troll Bridge”; a melancholy amphibian shares his most private fantasies with a therapist in Gahan Wilson’s “The Frog Prince”; in Tanith Lee’s “Snow-Drop,” a lonely artist invites seven circus performers into her home to satisfy an obsession; in Steve Rasnic Tem’s “Little Poucet,” a band of lost brothers find refuge and terror with a hungry family in the woods; and Wendy Wheeler delves into the deviant psyche of the predatory male in “Little Red.” Also featuring Nancy Kress, Charles de Lint, Melanie Tem, Patricia A. McKillip, Jack Dann, and others, all paying a revisit to our favorite fairy tales in ways you’ve never dared to imagine.

Book Moderator topics

Download or read book Moderator topics written by and published by . This book was released on 1908 with total page 820 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Book Comrade Baron

    Book Details:
  • Author : Jaap Scholten
  • Publisher : Helena History Press
  • Release : 2017-05-01
  • ISBN : 9781943596072
  • Pages : 0 pages

Download or read book Comrade Baron written by Jaap Scholten and published by Helena History Press. This book was released on 2017-05-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Deluxe edition. In the darkness of the early morning of 3 March 1949, practically all of the Transylvanian aristocracy were arrested in their beds and loaded into lorries. Under the terror of Gheorghiu-Dej and later Ceauescu the aristocracy led a double life: during the day they worked in quarries, steelworks and carpenters' yards; in the evening they secretly gathered and maintained the rituals of an older world. To record this episode of recent history, Jaap Scholten travelled extensively in Romania and Hungary and sought out the few remaining aristocrats who survived communism and met the youngest generation of the once distinguished aristocracy to talk about the restitution of assets and about the future.