Book picks similar to
Orchestration by Walter Piston
music
music-theory
non-fiction
música
Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock 'n' Roll
Greil Marcus - 1975
Now, firmly established as a classic, the fourth edition features a completely new introduction as well as an entirely updated discography that includes CDs for the first time.
Björk's Homogenic
Emily MacKay - 2017
With the release of her conceptual app-album Biophilia in 2011, and a huge retrospective exhibition at New York's Museum of Modern Art coinciding with her most recent album, Vulnicura, in 2015, her status as artpop auteur has been secured. The album that made all this possible, though is 1997's Homogenic, a turning point in Björk's career and still among her finest musical achievements. Produced under great strain, it moves beyond the stylistic magpie rush of Debut and the urbanophile future-pop of Post, to something darker, stronger and braver, full of dramatic assertions of independence, sharp, stuttering beats, rich strings and raw outbursts of noise. It created, as the Alexander McQueen designed sleeve clearly asserted, a new Björk, one who would never stop hunting.
Capturing Music: The Story of Notation
Thomas Forrest Kelly - 2014
But before this instant accessibility and dizzying array of formats before CDs, the eight-track tape, the radio, and the turntable there was only one recording technology: music notation. It allowed singers and soloists to travel across great distances and perform their work with stunning fidelity, a feat that we now very much take for granted. Thomas Forrest Kelly transports us to the lively and complex world of monks and monasteries, of a dove singing holy chants into the ear of a saint, and of bustling activity in the Cathedral of Notre Dame an era when the only way to share even the simplest song was to learn it by rote, church to church and person to person. With clarity and a sense of wonder, Kelly tells a story that spans five hundred years, leading us on a journey through medieval Europe and showing how we learned to keep track of rhythm, melody, and precise pitch with a degree of accuracy previously unimagined.Kelly reveals the technological advances that led us to the system of notation we use today, placing each step of its evolution in its cultural and intellectual context. Companion recordings by the renowned Blue Heron ensemble are paired with vibrant illuminated manuscripts, bringing the art to life and allowing readers to experience something of the marvel that medieval writers must have felt when they figured out how to capture music for all time."
Gateways to Art: Understanding the Visual Arts
Debra J. Dewitte - 2011
Short chapters can be read in any order, with new vocabulary defined on the page as it occurs. Eight “Gateways to Art” images (from around the world and all eras) support the common course goal of learning to interpret art in multiple ways and help students build on what they already know. The text is balanced and global, with over 1,000 illustrations—from around the world, and from everyday life.
The Dark Side of the Moon: The Making of the Pink Floyd Masterpiece
John Harris - 2005
A stunning exploration of madness, death, anxiety, and alienation, it remained on the Billboard charts for 724 weeks--the longest consecutive run for an LP ever--and has sold 30 million copies worldwide. It still sells some quarter million copies every year. Besides being perhaps rock's most fully realized and elegant concept album, The Dark Side of the Moon was among the most technically advanced records of its time, perfectly blending studio wizardry and fearless innovation. The rich story behind The Dark Side of the Moon is now skillfully illuminated by acclaimed journalist John Harris's exploration of the album's many secrets and the band's fractured history, including the mental collapse of group founder Syd Barrett. Drawing on original interviews with bassist and chief lyricist Roger Waters, guitarist Dave Gilmour, drummer Nick Mason, keyboardist Richard Wright, and the album's supporting cast, The Dark Side of the Moon is a must-have for the millions of devoted fans looking for the definitive story of one of the most timeless, compelling, and mysterious albums ever made.
Hanon: The Virtuoso Pianist Sixty Exercises for Piano Complete Edition
Charles-Louis Hanon - 1873
Since the first release of this classic Schirmer edition over 100 years ago, almost anyone who has taken piano lessons for more than two years has played from The Virtuoso Pianist . Millions of copies have been sold of these progressive exercises which guide a player's technique, building finger independence and strength. This was the first American edition released of this music, and remains a classic at a remarkably affordable price.
A Change Is Gonna Come: Music, Race & the Soul of America
Craig Werner - 1998
. . extraordinarily far-reaching. . . . highly accessible."-Notes"No one has written this way about music in a long, long time. Lucid, insightful, with real spiritual, political, intellectual, and emotional grasp of the whole picture. A book about why music matters, and how, and to whom."-Dave Marsh, author of Louie, Louie and Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story"This book is urgently needed: a comprehensive look at the various forms of black popular music, both as music and as seen in a larger social context. No one can do this better than Craig Werner."-Henry Louis Gates, Jr., W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of the Humanities, Harvard University"[Werner has] mastered the extremely difficult art of writing about music as both an aesthetic and social force that conveys, implies, symbolizes, and represents ideas as well as emotion, but without reducing its complexities and ambiguities to merely didactic categories."-African American ReviewA Change Is Gonna Come is the story of more than four decades of enormously influential black music, from the hopeful, angry refrains of the Freedom movement, to the slick pop of Motown; from the disco inferno to the Million Man March; from Woodstock's "Summer of Love" to the war in Vietnam and the race riots that inspired Marvin Gaye to write "What's Going On."Originally published in 1998, A Change Is Gonna Come drew the attention of scholars and general readers alike. This new edition, featuring four new and updated chapters, will reintroduce Werner's seminal study of black music to a new generation of readers.Craig Werner is Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, and author of many books, including Playing the Changes: From Afro-Modernism to the Jazz Impulse and Up Around the Bend: An Oral History of Creedence Clearwater Revival. His most recent book is Higher Ground: Stevie Wonder, Aretha Franklin, Curtis Mayfield, and the Rise and Fall of American Soul.