Said's essays and articles on music. Addressing the work of a variety of composers, musicians, and performers, Said carefully draws out music's social, political, and cultural contexts and, as a classically trained pianist, provides rich and often surprising assessments of classical music and opera."Music at the Limits" offers both a fresh perspective on canonical pieces and a celebration of neglected works by contemporary composers. Said faults the Metropolitan Opera in New York for being too conservative and laments the way in which opera superstars like Pavarotti have "reduced opera performance to a minimum of intelligence and a maximum of overproduced noise." He also reflects on the censorship of Wagner in Israel; the worrisome trend of proliferating music festivals; an opera based on the life of Malcolm X; the relationship between music and feminism; the pianist Glenn Gould; and the works of Mozart, Bach, Richard Strauss, and others.Said wrote his incisive critiques as both an insider and an authority. He saw music as a reflection of his ideas on literature and history and paid close attention to its composition and creative possibilities. Eloquent and surprising, "Music at the Limits" preserves an important dimension of Said's brilliant intellectual work and cements his reputation as one of the most influential and groundbreaking scholars of the twentieth century.

    This extended special edition of Mark Lewisohn's magisterial book Tune In is a true collector's item, featuring hundreds of thousands of words of extra material, as well as many extra photographs. It is the complete, uncut and definitive biography of the Beatles' early years, from their family backgrounds through to the moment they're on the cusp of their immense breakthrough at the end of 1962. The ebook of the extended special edition comes in two parts, mirroring the two hardbacks that make up the deluxe print edition. Each part is sold separately and this is Part One, taking the story from the very beginning to their first, famous trip to Hamburg in 1960. Readers wishing to buy the whole extended special edition of Tune In in ebook should be sure to buy Part One and Part Two. Mark Lewisohn's biography is the first true and accurate account of the Beatles, a contextual history built upon impeccable research and written with energy, style, objectivity and insight. This extended special edition is for anyone who wishes to own the complete story in all its stunning and extraordinary detail. This is, genuinely and without question, the lasting word from the world-acknowledged authority.

    In 1967 he returned to the UK and joined Radio One at its start. His late-night radio shows were cult listening for music fans of all ages, and many bands admit that without his support, they would never have made it.While Radio One changed, he remained a constant factor in its schedules, and in 1998 he was awarded the OBE for his services to broadcasting. It was in that year that he also began his multi-award- winning show Home Truths on Radio Four. Mick Wall tells the story of arguably the most influential man in the history of British rock music, speaking to those who knew him well to build up a complete portrait of this hugely popular figure.

    Revised and enlivened commentaries closely examine the scores to clarify their historical significance.

    Opera is the popular entertainment of the day and the castrati are its reigning divas. Tito Amato, mutilated as a boy to preserve his enchanting soprano voice, returns to the city of his birth with his friend Felice, a castrato whose voice has failed.Disaster strikes Tito's opera premier when the singer loses one beloved friend to poison and another to unjust accusation and arrest. Alarmed that the merchant-aristocrat who owns the theater is pressing the authorities to close the case, Tito races the executioner to find the real killer. The possible suspects could people the cast of one of his operas: a libertine nobleman and his spurned wife, a jealous soprano, an ambitious composer, and a patrician family bent on the theater's ruin.With carnival gaiety swirling around him and rousing Venetian passions to an ominous crescendo, Tito finds that the most astonishing secrets lurk behind the masks of his own family and friends.

    Sample these nuggets of wit and wisdom chipped from the tablets of Stone:On etiquette: "I've never turned blue in someone else's bathroom. I consider that the height of bad manners."On Mick Jagger: "My aim is always to try to introduce a bit of levity into his life."On the police: "There was a knock on our dressing-room door. Our manager shouted, 'Keith! Ron! The Police are here!' Oh, man, we panicked, flushed everything down the john. Then the door opened and it was Stewart Copeland and Sting."On family: "My father. I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow."On dental care: "Miraculously, due to abstinence and prayer, my teeth grew back."

    S. Bach in countless performances and recordings, the composer himself still comes across only as an enigmatic figure in a single familiar portrait. As we mark the 250th anniversary of Bach's death, author Christoph Wolff presents a new picture that brings to life this towering figure of the Baroque era. This engaging new biography portrays Bach as the living, breathing, and sometimes imperfect human being that he was, while bringing to bear all the advances of the last half-century of Bach scholarship. Wolff demonstrates the intimate connection between the composer's life and his music, showing how Bach's superb inventiveness pervaded his career as musician, composer, performer, scholar, and teacher. And throughout, we see Bach in the broader context of his time: its institutions, traditions, and influences. With this highly readable book, Wolff sets a new standard for Bach biography.

    However, it will take time before America can commit ground troops to the battle. Col. John Randal and the men in the American Volunteer Group who have been serving with Raiding Forces are back in US Army uniform serving under their own flag. Raiding Forces is being expanded into a joint US/UK outfit. As it is, reorganizing events in remote parts of the world require Col. Randal and a team of his Raiders to carry out a pair of long range operations of national strategic importance. Meanwhile, there is a mole in Middle East Command HQ that Rommel calls his “Good Source” and the German 621 Radio Intercept Company is providing the Desert Fox with the Allied Order of Battle that have become serious threats. Lady Jane is under suspicion of being the mole and Raiding Forces has been ordered to track down and kill the 621st’s Nazi commander. The action is nonstop.

     Deneys Reitz was an unusual soldier. Having fought against the British in the Boer War, in 1917 he decided to go to London, in order to join the British Army. Presenting himself at a recruiting office in Chelsea, he enlisted as a private soldier. Shortly afterwards he was commissioned, and was sent to the Western Front in September 1917. Whilst on the Western Front, he witnessed the German spring offensive in 1918, and the allied counter-attack which followed. He was wounded twice as well as being gassed. Reitz experienced more than his fair share of the difficulties of trench warfare, from finding himself living in a trench whose sides were built out of sandbag-covered corpses, to being stretchered into a Casualty Clearing Station with serious wounds.

    The wagon trains, Indian attacks, a lone survivor, and her tale of life among the Kumeyaay. Parts of this story are factual: the trail blazing Butterfield Overland Mail, the unfolding conflicts in California over the issue of slavery, and the looming Civil War. Woven into this historical fabric are the stories of Abby, a young girl raised by Indians; John Jay Butterfield, scion of the founder of the Overland Mail; Waterman Ormsby, reporter for the New York Herald; and many other compelling personages drawn from fact and fiction. Join author Marian Sepulveda as she guides you through this unique chapter in early California lore.

    When he is finally ready to turn a new page in life, he shoots for the moon and moves to the town of Moville to work in mining. Feeling like he is one step closer to his dream, little did he know that the life of a miner is more fraught with peril and disappointment than he'd imagined. The moment he discovers that a vicious killer is out there, taking the lives of innocent miners for no apparent reason, he is willing to risk it all to track him down. Will Jack manage to find the answer behind the enigma of the horrible murders? Or will the truth behind them remain forever hidden, haunting the small town?While trying to connect all dots and solve the intriguing mystery, Jack meets Charlotte Campbell, the town's head schoolteacher. Although they get off to a rocky start, he will soon realize that he's not alone in the battle against the town's enemies. Together they will fight the forces that wreak havoc in Moville, a lifetime adventure that will bring them closer. Even though their attraction is impossible to deny, their affection cannot be expressed as long as a criminal is out there. Will they finally have a chance at love, or will their romance be doomed to be lost forever?As the days go by and the murderers continue to bring chaos to what was once a thriving town, Jack feels like his dream is being shattered into a million pieces. Will his valor and wit win out in the end, leading him to the life he has been eagerly waiting for? Or will the cruel felon stop him from riding down the trail to happiness?"A Town of Lawlessness" is a historical adventure novel of approximately 80,000 words. No cliffhangers, only pure unadulterated action.

    He examines the myths and misconceptions that have grown up around progressive rock and paints a vivid, colourful picture of the Seventies based on hundreds of hours of his own interviews with musicians, music business insiders, journalists and DJs, and from the personal testimonies of those who were fans of the music in that extraordinary decade.

    The various paths are made clear by a concentration on the major works and turningpoints in the music of our time: the new rhythmic force that came in with The Rite of Spring, the unbounded universe of Schoenberg's atonality, the undreamed-of possibilities opened up by electronics, the role of chance in the music of John Cage and the astonishing diversity of minimalism.

    Illustrated with previously unseen photographs and drawing on over 300 hours of interviews with band members, producers, friends, former lovers and associates, this biography traces the artist's life from his Minneapolis roots through controversial stardom to his rejection of the Prince persona.

    Even as everything else about the world of music changes, the piano lesson retains its appeal. Drawing on her own lifelong experience as a student and teacher, Tunstall writes about the mysteries and delights of piano teaching and learning. What is it that happens in a piano lesson to make it such a durable ritual? In a world where music is heard more often on the telephone and in the elevator than in the concert hall, why does the piano lesson still have meaning in the lives of children? What does it matter whether one more child learns to play Bach's Minuet in G? "Note by Note" is in part a memoir in which Tunstall recalls her own childhood piano teachers and their influence. As she observes, the piano lesson is unlike the experience of being coached on an athletic team or taught in a classroom, in that it is a one-on-one, personal communication. Physically proximate, mutually concentrating on the transfer of a skill that is often arduous, complicated and frustrating, teacher and student occasionally experience breakthroughs-moments of joy when the student has learned something, mastered a musical passage or expressed a feeling through music. The relationship is not only one-way: teaching the piano is a lifelong endeavor of particular intensity and power.Anyone who has ever studied the piano-or wanted to-will cherish this gem of a book.