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Harper and the Fire Star (Harper #4)
by Cerrie Burnell Laura Ellen AndersonHarper and her friends want to help the Wild Conductor win back his place in the magical Circus of Dreams. They put on a wondrous show, but their plan goes horribly wrong. Instead of the Wild Conductor, the ringmaster selects Harper to show off her incredible musical skills for the world to see. But once inside the circus, Harper learns of the Fire Star, a girl with her own extraordinary gift. She shines like a star whenever she hears music. And Harper may have figured out why . . .
Hearing Beethoven: A Story of Musical Loss and Discovery
by Robin WallaceWe’re all familiar with the image of a fierce and scowling Beethoven, struggling doggedly to overcome his rapidly progressing deafness. That Beethoven continued to play and compose for more than a decade after he lost his hearing is often seen as an act of superhuman heroism. But the truth is that Beethoven’s response to his deafness was entirely human. And by demystifying what he did, we can learn a great deal about Beethoven’s music. Perhaps no one is better positioned to help us do so than Robin Wallace, who not only has dedicated his life to the music of Beethoven but also has close personal experience with deafness. One day, at the age of forty-four, Wallace’s late wife, Barbara, found she couldn’t hear out of her right ear—the result of radiation administered to treat a brain tumor early in life. Three years later, she lost hearing in her left ear as well. Over the eight and a half years that remained of her life, despite receiving a cochlear implant, Barbara didn’t overcome her deafness or ever function again like a hearing person. Wallace shows here that Beethoven didn’t do those things, either. Rather than heroically overcoming his deafness, as we’re commonly led to believe, Beethoven accomplished something even more difficult and challenging: he adapted to his hearing loss and changed the way he interacted with music, revealing important aspects of its very nature in the process. Creating music became for Beethoven a visual and physical process, emanating from visual cues and from instruments that moved and vibrated. His deafness may have slowed him down, but it also led to works of unsurpassed profundity. Wallace tells the story of Beethoven’s creative life from the inside out, interweaving it with his and Barbara’s experience to reveal aspects that only living with deafness could open up. The resulting insights make Beethoven and his music more accessible, and help us see how a disability can enhance human wholeness and flourishing.
Heavy Duty: Days and Nights in Judas Priest
by K. K. Downing Mark EglintonMemoir by the cofounder and former lead guitarist of heavy metal giants Judas PriestJudas Priest formed in the industrial city of Birmingham, England, in 1969. With its distinctive twin-guitar sound, studs-and-leather image, and international sales of over 50 million records, Judas Priest became the archetypal heavy metal band in the 1980s. Iconic tracks like "Breaking the Law," "Living after Midnight," and "You've Got Another Thing Comin'" helped the band achieve extraordinary success, but no one from the band has stepped out to tell their or the band's story until now.As the band approaches its golden anniversary, fans will at last be able to delve backstage into the decades of shocking, hilarious, and haunting stories that surround the heavy metal institution. In Heavy Duty, guitarist K.K. Downing discusses the complex personality conflicts, the business screw-ups, the acrimonious relationship with fellow heavy metal band Iron Maiden, as well as how Judas Priest found itself at the epicenter of a storm of parental outrage that targeted heavy metal in the '80s. He also describes his role in cementing the band's trademark black leather and studs image that would not only become synonymous with the entire genre, but would also give singer Rob Halford a viable outlet by which to express his sexuality. Lastly, he recounts the life-changing moment when he looked at his bandmates on stage during a 2009 concert and thought, "This is the last show." Whatever the topic, whoever's involved, K.K. doesn't hold back.
Heavy Duty: Days and Nights in Judas Priest
by K. K. Downing'A must for fans and rock buffs' The Sun'Fascinating read' PowerplayJudas Priest formed in Birmingham in 1969. With its distinctive twin-guitar sound, studs-and-leather image, and international sales of over 50 million records, Judas Priest became the archetypal heavy metal band in the 1980s. Iconic tracks like 'Breaking the Law', 'Living after Midnight', and 'You've Got Another Thing Coming' helped the band achieve extraordinary success, but no one from the band has stepped out to tell their or the band's story until now.As the band approaches its golden anniversary, fans will at last be able to delve backstage into the decades of shocking, hilarious, and haunting stories that surround the heavy metal institution. In Heavy Duty, guitarist K.K. Downing discusses the complex personality conflicts, the business screw-ups, the acrimonious relationship with fellow heavy metal band Iron Maiden, as well as how Judas Priest found itself at the epicentre of a storm of parental outrage that targeted heavy metal in the '80s. He also describes his role in cementing the band's trademark black leather and studs image that would not only become synonymous with the entire genre, but would also give singer Rob Halford a viable outlet by which to express his sexuality. Lastly, he recounts the life-changing moment when he looked at his bandmates on stage during a 2009 concert and thought, 'This is the last show'. Whatever the topic, whoever's involved, K.K. doesn't hold back.From the band at the very beginning until his retirement in 2011 (and even still as a member of the band's board of directors), Downing has seen it all and is now finally at a place in his life where he can also let it all go. Even if you're a lifelong fan, if you think you know the full story of Judas Priest, well, you've got another thing coming.
Help!: The Beatles, Duke Ellington, And The Magic Of Collaboration
by Thomas BrothersThe fascinating story of how creative cooperation inspired two of the world’s most celebrated musical acts. The Beatles and Duke Ellington’s Orchestra stand as the two greatest examples of collaboration in music history. Ellington’s forte was not melody—his key partners were not lyricists but his fellow musicians. His strength was in arranging, in elevating the role of a featured soloist, in selecting titles: in packaging compositions. He was also very good at taking credit when the credit wasn’t solely his, as in the case of Mood Indigo, though he was ultimately responsible for the orchestration of what Duke University musicologist Thomas Brothers calls "one of his finest achievements." If Ellington was often reluctant to publicly acknowledge how essential collaboration was to the Ellington sound, the relationship between Lennon and McCartney was fluid from the start. Lennon and McCartney "wrote for each other as primary audience." Lennon’s preference for simpler music meant that it begged for enhancement and McCartney was only too happy to oblige, and while McCartney expanded the Beatles’ musical range, Lennon did "the same thing with lyrics." Through his fascinating examination of these two musical legends, Brothers delivers a portrait of the creative process at work, demonstrating that the cooperative method at the foundation of these two artist-groups was the primary reason for their unmatched musical success. While clarifying the historical record of who wrote what, with whom, and how, Brothers brings the past to life with a lifetime of musical knowledge that reverberates through every page, and analyses of songs from Lennon and McCartney’s Strawberry Fields Forever to Billy Strayhorn’s Chelsea Bridge. Help! describes in rich detail the music and mastery of two cultural leaders whose popularity has never dimmed, and the process of collaboration that allowed them to achieve an artistic vision greater than the sum of their parts.
Henry V and the Earliest English Carols: 1413–1440
by David FallowsAs a distinctive and attractive musical repertory, the hundred-odd English carols of the fifteenth century have always had a ready audience. But some of the key viewpoints about them date back to the late 1920s, when Richard L. Greene first defined the poetic form; and little has been published about them since the burst of activity around 1950, when a new manuscript was found and when John Stevens published his still definitive edition of all the music, both giving rise to substantial publications by major scholars in both music and literature. This book offers a new survey of the repertory with a firmer focus on the form and its history. Fresh examination of the manuscripts and of the styles of the music they contain leads to new proposals about their dates, origins and purposes. Placing them in the context of the massive growth of scholarly research on other fifteenth-century music over the past fifty years gives rise to several fresh angles on the music.
Hildegard of Bingen (Women Composers)
by Honey MeconiA Renaissance woman long before the Renaissance, the visionary Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) corresponded with Europe's elite, founded and led a noted women's religious community, and wrote on topics ranging from theology to natural history. Yet we know her best as Western music's most accomplished early composer, responsible for a wealth of musical creations for her fellow monastics. Honey Meconi draws on her own experience as a scholar and performer of Hildegard's music to explore the life and work of this foundational figure. Combining historical detail with musical analysis, Meconi delves into Hildegard's mastery of plainchant, her innovative musical drama, and her voluminous writings. Hildegard's distinctive musical style still excites modern listeners through wide-ranging, sinuous melodies set to her own evocative poetry. Together with her passionate religious texts, her music reveals a holistic understanding of the medieval world still relevant to today's readers.
Hildegard von Bingen's Ordo Virtutum: A Musical and Metaphysical Analysis
by Michael GardinerThe Ordo Virtutum, Hildegard von Bingen’s twelfth-century music-drama, is one of the first known examples of a large-scale composition by a named composer in the Western canon. Not only does the Ordo’s expansive duration set it apart from its precursors, but also its complex imagery and non-biblical narrative have raised various questions concerning its context and genre. As a poetic meditation on the fall of a soul, the Ordo deploys an array of personified virtues and musical forces over the course of its eighty-seven chants. In this ambitious analysis of the work, Michael C. Gardiner examines how classical Neoplatonic hierarchies are established in the music-drama and considers how they are mediated and subverted through a series of concentric absorptions (absorptions related to medieval Platonism and its various theological developments) which lie at the core of the work’s musical design and text. This is achieved primarily through Gardiner’s musical network model, which implicates mode into a networked system of nodes, and draws upon parallels with the medieval interpretation of Platonic ontology and Hildegard’s correlative realization through sound, song, and voice.
Historical Interplay in French Music and Culture, 1860–1960
by Deborah MawerThis edited volume of case studies presents a selective history of French music and culture, but one with a dynamic difference. Eschewing a traditional chronological account, the book explores the nature of relationships between one main period, broadly the 'long' modernist era between 1860–1960, and its own historical ‘others’, referencing topics from the Romantic, classical, baroque, renaissance and medieval periods. It probes the emergent interplay, intertextualities and scope for reinterpretation across time and place. Notions of cultural meaning are paramount, especially those pertaining to French identity, national and individual. While founded on historical musicology, the approach benefits from interdisciplinary association with philosophy, political history, literature, fine art, film studies and criticism. Attention is paid to French composers’ celebrations and remakings of their predecessors. Editions of and writings about earlier music are examined, together with the cultural reception of performances of past repertoire. Organized into two parts, each of the eleven chapters characterizes a specific cultural network or temporal interplay, which may result in synthesis, disjunction, or historical misreading. The interwar years and those surrounding the Second World War prove particularly rich sources of enquiry. This volume aims to attract a wide readership of musicologists and musicians, as well as cultural historians, other humanities scholars and concert-goers.
A History of Women's Lives in Hove and Portslade
by Judy MiddletonThis book looks at the lives of the women from Hove and Portslade, ranging from artists, musicians, writers, performers, reformers, pioneering doctors and business-women to those employed in factories, shops, laundries and as domestic servants, not forgetting, of course, women's contribution to war-work in both of the world wars. There are facts about their ordinary lives, birth, marriage and death; their education; their leisure activities from guns to cycling, the gym, swimming and horse riding.It is also appropriate to reflect on the Votes for Women movement, when brave souls battled against prejudice to achieve the franchise. Not all women felt the same, of course, and although there was apathy at first, Brighton and Hove was home to an early group of suffragists who were passionate in their beliefs but disliked the violence embraced by the suffragettes.If you ever thought women deserved more than being a mere footnote in history, then this is the book for you.
El hombre de blanco
by Johnny CashLa conversión de San Pablo, novelada por el legendario músico. La historia de un hombre que tuvo valor para cambiar de rumbo es también la historia del propio Cash. Esto ocurrió en Palestina, siglo I, bajo la dominación romana. Saulo de Tarso, fariseo radical, solicita permiso al sumo sacerdote de los judíos para arrestar a cristianos en la frontera oriental del Imperio, hacia las ciudades de la Decápolis. En el camino a Damasco, sin embargo, se le aparece el Hombre de Blanco, su más íntimo enemigo. Tras caer del caballo, Saulo de Tarso ya no es quien era: ha empezado a convertirse en el apóstol Pablo. ¿Cómo puede un hombre transformarse así? En ese misterio indagó media vida Johnny Cash, el gran icono del country, el rockabilly, el blues y el folk. Inmerso en un apasionante viaje interior, logró finalmente retratar a san Pablo bajo una nueva luz, en su primera y única novela, inédita hasta hoy en lengua española. Críticas:«El más grande de entre los grandes de ahora y siempre. Si queremos saber qué significa ser mortal, no hay más que mirar al Hombre de Negro.»Bob Dylan «Su influencia ha recaído sobre muchas generaciones. Un grandísimo cantante, letrista y escritor.»Mick Jagger «Con Johnny Cash perdí mi inocencia.»Nick Cave
How Does It Feel?: A Life of Musical Misadventures
by Mark Kermode'Wonderful - such a terrific read. Brilliantly captures the passion, commitment, searing self-knowledge and dizzy happiness that comes with loving music. An enchanting book' STEPHEN FRY***Following a formative encounter with the British pop movie Slade in Flame in 1975, Mark Kermode decided that musical superstardom was totally attainable. And so, armed with a homemade electric guitar and very little talent, he embarked on an alternative career - a chaotic journey which would take him from the halls and youth clubs of North London to the stages of Glastonbury, the London Palladium and The Royal Albert Hall. Hilarious and blissfully nostalgic, this is a riotous account of a bedroom dreamer's attempts to conquer the world armed with nothing more than a chancer's enthusiasm and a simple philosophy: how hard can it be? *** 'At the heart of this entertaining memoir is a little boy in his back garden in Finchley, banging out a rhythm on saucepans with a couple of wooden spoons' Daily Mail'A rocking whirlwind of a tale' DANNY BAKER'Wonderful . . . will increase your zest for life' RICHARD AYOADE'Entertaining . . . what comes through every anecdote is the author's genuine enthusiasm for music' Spectator
How Does It Feel?: A Life of Musical Misadventures
by Mark KermodeFollowing a formative encounter with the British pop movie Slade in Flame in 1975, Mark Kermode decided that musical superstardom was totally attainable. And so, armed with a homemade electric guitar and very little talent, he embarked on an alternative career - a chaotic journey which would take him from the halls and youth clubs of North London to the stages of Glastonbury, the London Palladium and The Royal Albert Hall.HOW DOES IT FEEL? follows a lifetime of musical misadventures which have seen Mark striking rockstar poses in the Sixth Form Common Room, striding around a string of TV shows dressed from head to foot in black leather, getting heckled off stage by a bunch of angry septuagenarians on a boat on the Mersey, showing Timmy Mallet how to build a tea-chest bass - and winning the International Street Entertainers of the Year award as part of a new wave of skiffle. Really. Hilarious, self-deprecating and blissfully nostalgic, this is a riotous account of a bedroom dreamer's attempts to conquer the world armed with nothing more than a chancer's enthusiasm and a simple philosophy: how hard can it be?
How Does It Feel?: A Life of Musical Misadventures
by Mark KermodeFollowing a formative encounter with the British pop movie Slade in Flame in 1975, Mark Kermode decided that musical superstardom was totally attainable. And so, armed with a homemade electric guitar and very little talent, he embarked on an alternative career - a chaotic journey which would take him from the halls and youth clubs of North London to the stages of Glastonbury, the London Palladium and The Royal Albert Hall.HOW DOES IT FEEL? follows a lifetime of musical misadventures which have seen Mark striking rockstar poses in the Sixth Form Common Room, striding around a string of TV shows dressed from head to foot in black leather, getting heckled off stage by a bunch of angry septuagenarians on a boat on the Mersey, showing Timmy Mallet how to build a tea-chest bass - and winning the International Street Entertainers of the Year award as part of a new wave of skiffle. Really. Hilarious, self-deprecating and blissfully nostalgic, this is a riotous account of a bedroom dreamer's attempts to conquer the world armed with nothing more than a chancer's enthusiasm and a simple philosophy: how hard can it be?Written and Read by Mark KermodeMusic samples from the album 'Drive Train' are reproduced with kind permission from The Dodge Brothers(P) Orion Publishing Group 2018
How Shostakovich Changed My Mind
by Stephen JohnsonA powerful look at the extraordinary healing effect of music on sufferers of mental illness, including author Stephen Johnson's struggle with bipolar disorder.BBC music broadcaster Stephen Johnson explores the power of Shostakovich’s music during Stalin’s reign of terror, and writes of the extraordinary healing effect of music on sufferers of mental illness. Johnson looks at neurological, psychotherapeutic and philosophical findings, and reflects on his own experience, where he believes Shostakovich’s music helped him survive the trials and assaults of bipolar disorder.There is no escapism, no false consolation in Shostakovich’s greatest music: this is some of the darkest, saddest, at times bitterest music ever composed. So why do so many feel grateful to Shostakovich for having created it—not just Russians, but westerners like Stephen Johnson, brought up in a very different, far safer kind of society? The book includes interviews with the members of the orchestra who performed Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony during the siege of that city.
How to Play Harmonica: A Complete Guide for Beginners (How to Play)
by Blake Brocksmith Gary Dorfman Douglas LichtermanThis easy-to-understand beginner’s guide provides an introduction to playing the harmonica and includes helpful information about basic techniques, tools, and music knowledge.Learn to play the harmonica with this step-by-step guide perfect for beginners. With just this book and your harmonica in hand, you’ll learn basic music skills, discover how and why your harmonica works, play some simple tunes, and start to improvise your own music.
How to Play Ukulele: A Complete Guide for Beginners (How to Play)
by Dan ScanlanLearn to play the ukulele with this beginner’s guide that features information about basic techniques, tools, and music knowledge.What do George Clooney, Zooey Deschanel, Ryan Gosling and James Franco all have in common? Answer: they all play the ukulele and now, with this easy step-by-step guide, you can too! With just this book and your ukulele in hand, you’ll learn basic music skills, how to care for your instrument, and how to play some simple tunes. Whether you’re looking to impress your friends with spontaneous singalongs, or just want to strum solo, How to Play Ukulele is the perfect entryway to the wonderful world of ukulele.
The Hum of the World: A Philosophy of Listening
by Lawrence KramerThe Hum of the World is an invitation to contemplate what would happen if we heard the world as attentively as we see it. Balancing big ideas with playful wit and lyrical prose, this imaginative volume identifies the role of sound in Western experience as the primary medium in which the presence and persistence of life acquire tangible form. The positive experience of aliveness is not merely in accord with sound, but inaccessible, even inconceivable, without it. Lawrence Kramer’s poetic book roves freely over music, media, language, philosophy, and science from the ancient world to the present, along the way revealing how life is apprehended through sounds ranging from pandemonium to the faint background hum of the world. Easily moving from reflections on pivotal texts and music to the introduction of elemental concepts, this warm meditation on auditory culture uncovers the knowledge and pleasure made available when we recognize that the world is alive with sound.
The Hymnal: A Reading History
by Christopher N. PhillipsUnderstanding the culture of living with hymnbooks offers new insight into the histories of poetry, literacy, and religious devotion.It stands barely three inches high, a small brick of a book. The pages are skewed a bit, and evidence of a small handprint remains on the worn, cheap leather covers that don’t quite close. The book bears the marks of considerable use. But why—and for whom—was it made? Christopher N. Phillips’s The Hymnal is the first study to reconstruct the practices of reading and using hymnals, which were virtually everywhere in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Isaac Watts invented a small, words-only hymnal at the dawn of the eighteenth century. For the next two hundred years, such hymnals were their owners’ constant companions at home, school, church, and in between. They were children's first books, slaves’ treasured heirlooms, and sources of devotional reading for much of the English-speaking world. Hymnals helped many people learn to memorize poetry and to read; they provided space to record family memories, pass notes in church, and carry everything from railroad tickets to holy cards to business letters. In communities as diverse as African Methodists, Reform Jews, Presbyterians, Methodists, Roman Catholics, and Unitarians, hymnals were integral to religious and literate life. An extended historical treatment of the hymn as a read text and media form, rather than a source used solely for singing, this book traces the lives people lived with hymnals, from obscure schoolchildren to Emily Dickinson. Readers will discover a wealth of connections between reading, education, poetry, and religion in Phillips’s lively accounts of hymnals and their readers.
I Got Something to Say: Gender, Race, and Social Consciousness in Rap Music
by Matthew OwareWhat do millennial rappers in the United States say in their music? This timely and compelling book answers this question by decoding the lyrics of over 700 songs from contemporary rap artists. Using innovative research techniques, Matthew Oware reveals how emcees perpetuate and challenge gendered and racialized constructions of masculinity, femininity, and sexuality. Male and female artists litter their rhymes with misogynistic and violent imagery. However, men also express a full range of emotions, from arrogance to vulnerability, conveying a more complex manhood than previously acknowledged. Women emphatically state their desires while embracing a more feminist approach. Even LGBTQ artists stake their claim and express their sexuality without fear. Finally, in the age of Black Lives Matter and the presidency of Donald J. Trump, emcees forcefully politicize their music. Although complicated and contradictory in many ways, rap remains a powerful medium for social commentary.
I Saw Eternity the Other Night: King's College, Cambridge, and an English Singing Style
by Timothy DayThe sound of the choir of King's College, Cambridge - its voices perfectly blended, its emotions restrained, its impact sublime - has become famous all over the world, and for many, the distillation of a particular kind of Englishness. This is especially so at Christmas time, with the broadcast of the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, whose centenary is celebrated this year. How did this small band of men and boys in a famous fenland town in England come to sing in the extraordinary way they did in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries?It has been widely assumed that the King's style essentially continues an English choral tradition inherited directly from the Middle Ages. In this original and illuminating book, Timothy Day shows that this could hardly be further from the truth. Until the 1930s, the singing at King's was full of high Victorian emotionalism, like that at many other English choral foundations well into the twentieth century.The choir's modern sound was brought about by two intertwined revolutions, one social and one musical. From 1928, singing with the trebles in place of the old lay clerks, the choir was fully made up of choral scholars - college men, reading for a degree. Under two exceptional directors of music - Boris Ord from 1929 and David Willcocks from 1958 - the style was transformed and the choir broadcast and recorded until it became the epitome of English choral singing, setting the benchmark for all other choral foundations either to imitate or to react against. Its style has now been taken over and adapted by classical performers who sing both sacred and secular music in secular settings all over the world with a precision inspired by the King's tradition.I Saw Eternity the Other Night investigates the timbres of voices, the enunciation of words, the use of vibrato. But the singing of all human beings, in whatever style, always reflects in profound and subtle ways their preoccupations and attitudes to life. These are the underlying themes explored by this book.
Identifying and Interpreting Incongruent Film Music (Palgrave Studies in Audio-Visual Culture)
by David IrelandThis book explores the concept of incongruent film music, challenging the idea that this label only describes music that is inappropriate or misfitting for a film’s images and narrative. Defining incongruence as a lack of shared properties in the audiovisual relationship, this study examines various types of incongruence between a film and its music and considers the active role that it can play in the construction of a film’s meaning and influencing audience response. Synthesising findings from research in the psychology of music in multimedia, as well as from ideas sourced in semiotics, film music, and poststructuralist theory, this interdisciplinary book provides a holistic perspective that reflects the complexity of moments of film-music incongruence. With case studies including well-known films such as Gladiator and The Shawshank Redemption, this book combines scene analysis and empirical audience reception tests to emphasise the subjectivity, context-dependency, and multi-dimensionality inherent in identifying and interpreting incongruent film music.
I'm Not Like Everybody Else: Biopolitics, Neoliberalism, and American Popular Music (Provocations)
by Jeffrey T. NealonDespite the presence of the Flaming Lips in a commercial for a copier and Iggy Pop’s music in luxury cruise advertisements, Jeffrey T. Nealon argues that popular music has not exactly been co-opted in the American capitalist present. Contemporary neoliberal capitalism has, in fact, found a central organizing use for the values of twentieth-century popular music: being authentic, being your own person, and being free. In short, not being like everybody else. Through a consideration of the shift in dominant modes of power in the American twentieth and twenty-first centuries, from what Michel Foucault calls a dominant “disciplinary” mode of power to a “biopolitical” mode, Nealon argues that the modes of musical “resistance” need to be completely rethought and that a commitment to musical authenticity or meaning—saying “no” to the mainstream—is no longer primarily where we might look for music to function against the grain. Rather, it is in the technological revolutions that allow biopolitical subjects to deploy music within an everyday set of practices (MP3 listening on smartphones and iPods, streaming and downloading on the internet, the background music that plays nearly everywhere) that one might find a kind of ambient or ubiquitous answer to the “attention capitalism” that has come to organize neoliberalism in the American present. In short, Nealon stages the final confrontation between “keepin’ it real” and “sellin’ out.”
The Indispensable Composers: A Personal Guide
by Anthony TommasiniAn exploration into the question of greatness from the Chief Classical Music Critic of the New York TimesWhen he began to listen to the great works of classical music as a child, Anthony Tommasini had many questions. Why did a particular piece move him? How did the music work? Over time, he realized that his passion for this music was not enough. He needed to understand it. Take Bach, for starters. Who was he? How does one account for his music and its unshakeable hold on us today? As a critic, Tommasini has devoted particular attention to living composers and overlooked repertory. But, like all classical music lovers, the canon has remained central for him. In 2011, in his role as the Chief Classical Music Critic for the New York Times, he wrote a popular series in which he somewhat cheekily set out to determine the all-time top ten composers. Inviting input from readers, Tommasini wrestled with questions of greatness. Readers joined the exercise in droves. Some railed against classical music’s obsession with greatness but then raged when Mahler was left off the final list. This intellectual game reminded them why they loved music in the first place. Now in THE INDISPENSABLE COMPOSERS, Tommasini offers his own personal guide to the canon--and what greatness really means in classical music. What does it mean to be canonical now? Who gets to say? And do we have enough perspective on the 20th century to even begin assessing it? To make his case, Tommasini draws on elements of biography, the anxiety of influence, the composer's relationships with colleagues, and shifting attitudes toward a composer's work over time. Because he has spent his life contemplating these titans, Tommasini shares impressions from performances he has heard or given or moments when his own biography proves revealing. As he argues for his particular pantheon of indispensable composers, Anthony Tommasini provides a masterclass in what to listen for and how to understand what music does to us.
The Individualist: Digressions, Dreams and Dissertations
by Todd RundgrenThe author, a multi-talented producer and musician with such hits as "Hello It's Me," "Can We Still Be Friends," "Earth Mother," and "Everybody" describes in one-page anecdotes his childhood and adult life. He discusses the struggle growing up with a neglectful father, his antics with his best friend, memories of childhood injuuries--all with summary conclusions and witty, and sometimes profound, philosophy.