Rough Ideas

by Stephen Hough

Author	: Stephen Hough
Publisher	: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages	: 464
Release	: 2020-02-04
Genre	: Music
ISBN	: 0374721408

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A collection of essays on music and life by the famed classical pianist and composer Stephen Hough is one of the world’s leading pianists, winning global acclaim and numerous awards, both for his concerts and his recordings. He is also a writer, composer, and painter, and has been described by The Economist as one of “Twenty Living Polymaths.” Hough writes informally and engagingly about music and the life of a musician, from the broader aspects of what it is to walk out onto a stage or to make a recording, to specialist tips from deep inside the practice room: how to trill, how to pedal, how to practice. He also writes vividly about people he’s known, places he’s traveled to, books he’s read, paintings he’s seen; and he touches on more controversial subjects, such as assisted suicide and abortion. Even religion is there—the possibility of the existence of God, problems with some biblical texts, and the challenges involved in being a gay Catholic. Rough Ideas is an illuminating, constantly surprising introduction to the life and mind of one of our great cultural figures.

The Classical Tradition

by Anthony Grafton

Author	: Anthony Grafton
Publisher	: Harvard University Press
Total Pages	: 1188
Release	: 2010-10-25
Genre	: History
ISBN	: 9780674035720

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The legacy of ancient Greece and Rome has been imitated, resisted, misunderstood, and reworked by every culture that followed. In this volume, some five hundred articles by a wide range of scholars investigate the afterlife of this rich heritage in the fields of literature, philosophy, art, architecture, history, politics, religion, and science.

The Vintage Guide to Classical Music

by Jan Swafford

Author	: Jan Swafford
Publisher	: Vintage
Total Pages	: 626
Release	: 1992-12-15
Genre	: Music
ISBN	: 0679728058

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The most readable and comprehensive guide to enjoying over five hundred years of classical music -- from Gregorian chants, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to Johannes Brahms, Igor Stravinsky, John Cage, and beyond. The Vintage Guide to Classical Music is a lively -- and opinionated -- musical history and an insider's key to the personalities, epochs, and genres of the Western classical tradition. Among its features: -- chronologically arranged essays on nearly 100 composers, from Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300-1377) to Aaron Copland (1900-1990), that combine biography with detailed analyses of the major works while assessing their role in the social, cultural, and political climate of their times; -- informative sidebars that clarify broader topics such as melody, polyphony, atonality, and the impact of the early-music movement; -- a glossary of musical terms, from a cappella to woodwinds; -- a step-by-step guide to building a great classical music library. Written with wit and a clarity that both musical experts and beginners can appreciate, The Vintage Guide to Classical Music is an invaluable source-book for music lovers everywhere.

Dvorak's Prophecy: And the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music

by Joseph Horowitz

Author	: Joseph Horowitz
Publisher	: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages	: 256
Release	: 2021-11-23
Genre	: Music
ISBN	: 0393881253

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A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 A provocative interpretation of why classical music in America "stayed white"—how it got to be that way and what can be done about it. In 1893 the composer Antonín Dvorák prophesied a “great and noble school” of American classical music based on the “negro melodies” he had excitedly discovered since arriving in the United States a year before. But while Black music would foster popular genres known the world over, it never gained a foothold in the concert hall. Black composers found few opportunities to have their works performed, and white composers mainly rejected Dvorák’s lead. Joseph Horowitz ranges throughout American cultural history, from Frederick Douglass and Huckleberry Finn to George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and the work of Ralph Ellison, searching for explanations. Challenging the standard narrative for American classical music fashioned by Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, he looks back to literary figures—Emerson, Melville, and Twain—to ponder how American music can connect with a “usable past.” The result is a new paradigm that makes room for Black composers, including Harry Burleigh, Nathaniel Dett, William Levi Dawson, and Florence Price, while giving increased prominence to Charles Ives and George Gershwin. Dvorák’s Prophecy arrives in the midst of an important conversation about race in America—a conversation that is taking place in music schools and concert halls as well as capitols and boardrooms. As George Shirley writes in his foreword to the book, “We have been left unprepared for the current cultural moment. [Joseph Horowitz] explains how we got there [and] proposes a bigger world of American classical music than what we have known before. It is more diverse and more equitable. And it is more truthful.”

The Classical Guitar Collection

by Julian Bream

Author	: Julian Bream
Publisher	: Faber Music Ltd
Total Pages	: 103
Release	: 2021-11-15
Genre	: Music
ISBN	: 0571591760

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The full eBook version of The Classical Guitar Collection in fixed-layout format. The Classical Guitar Collection contains 48 classical guitar solos from classical greats such as Mozart, Grieg, Purcell and J.S. Bach. This collection features many of Julian Bream's classic arrangements of well-known guitar masterpieces for Intermediate to Advanced level guitar students. Contents: - Valtz Op.7 No.6) (Aguado) - Asturias (Leyenda) (Albeniz) - Spanish Romance (Anon) - Scherzo (Op.107) (Arnold) - Arietta (Op.107) (Arnold) - I (Two Preludes) (J.S. Bach) - Courante (from suite in E minor) (J.S. Bach) - Sarabande (from suite in E minor) (J.S. Bach) - Bouree in E minor (BWV 996) (J.S. Bach) - Aria (Brescianello) - Gavotta (Brescianello) - Allemande (suite in E minor)(Buxtehude) - Courante (from suite in E minor) (Buxtehude) - Sarabande (from suite in E minor) (Buxtehude) - Gigue (from suite in E minor) (Buxtehude) - Sicilienne (Op. 34 No.2) (Carulli) - Sonata 2 (Cimarosa) - La Fille aux Chevaux de Lin (Two Preludes) (Debussy) - Minstrels (Two Preludes) (Debussy) - Andante Sostenuto (from Sonata in F major) (Diabelli) - Ejercicio: Allegretto (Ferrer) - Vals (Ferrer) - Sarabande (suite in A minor) (Froberger) - Gigue (suite in A minor) (Froberger) - Valse (Three Lyric Pieces op.12) (Grieg) - Watchman's Song (Three Lyric Pieces) (Grieg) - Fairy Dance (Three Lyric Pieces) (Grieg) - Etude Allegro Spiritoso (Guiliani) - Lecon (Guiliani) - La Catedral (Mangore) - A Winter Landscape (Little Suite For Guitar) (Maw) - Landler (Op.9 No.4) (Mertz) - Landler (Op.9 No.5) (Mertz) - Gaillarde (Morlaye) - Larghetto and Allegro (Mozart) - Air (Four pieces) (Purcell) - Rondo (Four Pieces) (Purcell) - Minuet (Four Pieces) (Purcell) - Hornpipe (Four Pieces) (Purcell) - Maria Luisa: Mazurka (Sagreras) - Nostalgia: Petite Melodie (Sagreras) - Theme with Variations (Schumann) - Into The Dreaming (Sculthorpe) - Etude (Op.31 No.23) (Sor) - Waltz (Op.7 No.1 (Strauss) - Waltz (Op.7 No.3) (Strauss) - Capricho Arabe (Tarrega) - Recurdos de la Alhambra (Tarrega)

Postclassicisms

by The Postclassicisms Collective

Author	: The Postclassicisms Collective
Publisher	: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages	: 251
Release	: 2019-12-27
Genre	: History
ISBN	: 022667231X

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Made up of nine prominent scholars, The Postclassicisms Collective aims to map a space for theorizing and reflecting on the values attributed to antiquity. The product of these reflections, Postclassicisms takes up a set of questions about what it means to know and care about Greco-Roman antiquity in our turbulent world and offers suggestions for a discipline in transformation, as new communities are being built around the study of the ancient Greco-Roman world. Structured around three primary concepts—value, time, and responsibility—and nine additional concepts, Postclassicisms asks scholars to reflect upon why they choose to work in classics, to examine how proximity to and distance from antiquity has been—and continues to be—figured, and to consider what they seek to accomplish within their own scholarly practices. Together, the authors argue that a stronger critical self-awareness, an enhanced sense of the intellectual history of the methods of classics, and a greater understanding of the ethical and political implications of the decisions that the discipline makes will lead to a more engaged intellectual life, both for classicists and, ultimately, for society. A timely intervention into the present and future of the discipline, Postclassicisms will be required reading for professional classicists and students alike and a model for collaborative disciplinary intervention by scholars in other fields.

The Case for Classical Christian Education

by Douglas Wilson

Author	: Douglas Wilson
Publisher	: Crossway
Total Pages	: 256
Release	: 2002-11-12
Genre	: Religion
ISBN	: 1433516462

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Newspapers are filled with stories about poorly educated children, ineffective teachers, and cash-strapped school districts. In this greatly expanded treatment of a topic he first dealt with in Rediscovering the Lost Tools of Learning, Douglas Wilson proposes an alternative to government-operated school by advocating a return to classical Christian education with its discipline, hard work, and learning geared to child development stages. As an educator, Wilson is well-equipped to diagnose the cause of America's deteriorating school system and to propose remedies for those committed to their children's best interests in education. He maintains that education is essentially religious because it deals with the basic questions about life that require spiritual answers-reading and writing are simply the tools. Offering a review of classical education and the history of this movement, Wilson also reflects on his own involvement in the process of creating educational institutions that embrace that style of learning. He details elements needed in a useful curriculum, including a list of literary classics. Readers will see that classical education offers the best opportunity for academic achievement, character growth, and spiritual education, and that such quality cannot be duplicated in a religiously-neutral environment.

Listen to This

by Alex Ross

Author	: Alex Ross
Publisher	: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages	: 384
Release	: 2010-09-28
Genre	: Music
ISBN	: 1429977612

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One of The Telegraph's Best Music Books 2011 Alex Ross's award-winning international bestseller, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, has become a contemporary classic, establishing Ross as one of our most popular and acclaimed cultural historians. Listen to This, which takes its title from a beloved 2004 essay in which Ross describes his late-blooming discovery of pop music, showcases the best of his writing from more than a decade at The New Yorker. These pieces, dedicated to classical and popular artists alike, are at once erudite and lively. In a previously unpublished essay, Ross brilliantly retells hundreds of years of music history—from Renaissance dances to Led Zeppelin—through a few iconic bass lines of celebration and lament. He vibrantly sketches canonical composers such as Schubert, Verdi, and Brahms; gives us in-depth interviews with modern pop masters such as Björk and Radiohead; and introduces us to music students at a Newark high school and indie-rock hipsters in Beijing. Whether his subject is Mozart or Bob Dylan, Ross shows how music expresses the full complexity of the human condition. Witty, passionate, and brimming with insight, Listen to This teaches us how to listen more closely.

The Life of Music

by Nicholas Kenyon

Author	: Nicholas Kenyon
Publisher	: Yale University Press
Total Pages	: 387
Release	: 2021-06-08
Genre	: Music
ISBN	: 0300260601

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Nicholas Kenyon explores the enduring appeal of the classical canon at a moment when we can access all music—across time and cultures Immersed in music for much of his life as writer, broadcaster and concert presenter, former director of the BBC Proms, Nicholas Kenyon has long championed an astonishingly wide range of composers and performers. Now, as we think about culture in fresh ways, Kenyon revisits the stories that make up the classical tradition and foregrounds those which are too often overlooked. This inclusive, knowledgeable, and enthusiastic guide highlights the achievements of the women and men, amateurs and professionals, who bring music to life. Taking us from pianist Myra Hess’s performance in London during the Blitz, to John Adams’s composition of a piece for mourners after New York’s 9/11 attacks, to Italian opera singers singing from their balconies amidst the 2020 pandemic, Kenyon shows that no matter how great the crisis, music has the power to bring us together. His personal, celebratory account transforms our understanding of how classical music is made—and shows us why it is more relevant than ever.