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Music

A FIRST BOOK OF RAGTIME FOR PIANO

A FIRST BOOK OF RAGTIME FOR PIANO

By: Dutkanicz, David
$6.95
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This compilation of easy-to-play ragtime favorites features 24 rollicking melodies by "The Big Three" of ragtime -- Scott Joplin, James Scott, and Joseph Lamb -- plus pieces by Eubie Blake, Tom Turpin, and other artists. Popular tunes include "Maple Leaf Rag," "The Entertainer," and "Tiger Rag." Novices of all ages will delight in these simplified arrangements of carefully selected pieces. The editor provides suggested fingerings and comments on each piece that include background on the composers and tips for performance.
Along with the twenty-four piano arrangements, this collection includes a free MP3 download for every piece, which will help beginning pianists develop an ear for the melodies. The MP3s may be downloaded individually or collectively.
ABSOLUTELY ON MUSIC: CONVERSATIONS

ABSOLUTELY ON MUSIC: CONVERSATIONS

By: Ozawa, Seiji
$19.00
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A deeply personal, intimate conversation about music and writing between the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author and the former conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra.

In Absolutely on Music, internationally Haruki Murakami sits down with his friend Seiji Ozawa, the revered former conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, for a series of conversations on their shared passion: music. Over the course of two years, Murakami and Ozawa discuss everything from Brahms to Beethoven, from Leonard Bernstein to Glenn Gould, from Bartók to Mahler, and from pop-up orchestras to opera. They listen to and dissect recordings of some of their favorite performances, and Murakami questions Ozawa about his career conducting orchestras around the world.

Culminating in Murakami's ten-day visit to the banks of Lake Geneva to observe Ozawa's retreat for young musicians, the book is interspersed with ruminations on record collecting, jazz clubs, orchestra halls, film scores, and much more. A deep reflection on the essential nature of both music and writing, Absolutely on Music is an unprecedented glimpse into the minds of two maestros.

ADVENTURES OF A CELLO

ADVENTURES OF A CELLO

By: Prieto, Carlos
$24.95
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This is a biography of a celebrated Stradivarius cello and an overview of cello music and musicians by world-famous concert cellist Carlos Prieto. This work recounts the adventurous life of his beloved 'Cello Prieto, ' tracing its history through each of its previous owners from Stradivari in 1720 to the author himself
ALIEN LISTENING: VOYAGER'S GOLDEN RECORD AND MUSIC FROM EARTH

ALIEN LISTENING: VOYAGER'S GOLDEN RECORD AND MUSIC FROM EARTH

By: Rehding, Alexander
$32.00
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An examination of NASA's Golden Record that offers new perspectives and theories on how music can be analyzed, listened to, and thought about--by aliens and humans alike.

In 1977 NASA shot a mixtape into outer space. The Golden Record aboard the Voyager spacecrafts contained world music and sounds of Earth to represent humanity to any extraterrestrial civilizations. To date, the Golden Record is the only human-made object to have left the solar system. Alien Listening asks the big questions that the Golden Record raises: Can music live up to its reputation as the universal language in communications with the unknown? How do we fit all of human culture into a time capsule that will barrel through space for tens of thousands of years? And last but not least: Do aliens have ears?

The stakes could hardly be greater. Around the extreme scenario of the Golden Record, Chua and Rehding develop a thought-provoking, philosophically heterodox, and often humorous Intergalactic Music Theory of Everything, a string theory of communication, an object-oriented ontology of sound, and a Penelopean model woven together from strands of music and media theory. The significance of this exomusicology, like that of the Golden Record, ultimately takes us back to Earth and its denizens. By confronting the vast temporal and spatial distances the Golden Record traverses, the authors take listeners out of their comfort zone and offer new perspectives in which music can be analyzed, listened to, and thought about--by aliens and humans alike.

ARIADNE AUF NAXOS LIBRETTO

$8.00
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BACH’S ARCHITECTURE OF GRATITUDE

BACH’S ARCHITECTURE OF GRATITUDE

By: Crooks, James
$29.95
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Every lover of music finds themselves, at privileged moments, in ecstasy - certain that what they are hearing has captured, somehow, an incontrovertible truth. In Bach's Architecture of Gratitude James Crooks explores this profound aesthetic experience in a case study of J.S. Bach's Mass in B Minor - widely considered among the greatest works of the western choral canon. The book begins with an investigation of compositional principles - of what we might call the mass's musical architecture. Crooks argues that in its cathedral-like structure, Bach gives us a detailed map of the spiritual journey it triggers. This journey culminates in our apprehension of the world as a gift. And that means, in turn, that the mode of knowing appropriate to its musical ecstasy is gratitude. In the gratitude of aesthetic experience, we learn something crucial about the genuine nature of our own identity, our relations with others, and the character of the things around us. Bach's genius lies in his capacity to frame these lessons in the mass's choruses, solos, and duets. Spotlighting the wisdom embedded in gratitude, Bach's Architecture of Gratitude celebrates music as a pathway to understanding our deepest selves and our intimacy with the world.
Ballad of Bob Dylan: A Portrait

Ballad of Bob Dylan: A Portrait

By: Epstein, Daniel Mark
$15.99
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Drawing on revelatory interviews, a rich analysis oflyrics, and a lifelong study of one of the greatest songwriters of our time, Daniel Mark Epstein delivers a singular, nuanced, and insightful examination ofBob Dylan--the poet, the musician, and the man. Interweaving in-depthconversations with Dylan collaborators and contemporaries, including Eric Andersen, Tom Paxton, Woody Guthrie's daughter Nora Guthrie, Ramblin'Jack Elliott, Pete Seeger, Maria Muldaur, John P.Hammond, and many others, Epstein crafts a vivid and unforgettable portrait ofthe inimitable poet and performer. Readers of Christopher Ricks' Dylan's Visions of Sin, the Dylanautobiography, Chronicles, or Sean Wilentz's Dylan inAmerica, as well as fans enthralled by expository musician stories, such asKeith Richards' Life and PattiSmith's Just Kids, will be captivatedby Epstein's unprecedented and incisive look at Bob Dylan, music's mostineffable creator.
BEAUTIFUL ONES

BEAUTIFUL ONES

By: Prince
$30.00
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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER - The brilliant coming-of-age-and-into-superstardom story of one of the greatest artists of all time, in his own words--featuring never-before-seen photos, original scrapbooks and lyric sheets, and the exquisite memoir he began writing before his tragic death

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST MUSIC BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE WASHINGTON POST AND THE GUARDIAN - NOMINATED FOR THE NAACP IMAGE AWARD

Prince was a musical genius, one of the most beloved, accomplished, and acclaimed musicians of our time. He was a startlingly original visionary with an imagination deep enough to whip up whole worlds, from the sexy, gritty funk paradise of "Uptown" to the mythical landscape of Purple Rain to the psychedelia of "Paisley Park." But his most ambitious creative act was turning Prince Rogers Nelson, born in Minnesota, into Prince, one of the greatest pop stars of any era.

The Beautiful Ones is the story of how Prince became Prince--a first-person account of a kid absorbing the world around him and then creating a persona, an artistic vision, and a life, before the hits and fame that would come to define him. The book is told in four parts. The first is the memoir Prince was writing before his tragic death, pages that bring us into his childhood world through his own lyrical prose. The second part takes us through Prince's early years as a musician, before his first album was released, via an evocative scrapbook of writing and photos. The third section shows us Prince's evolution through candid images that go up to the cusp of his greatest achievement, which we see in the book's fourth section: his original handwritten treatment for Purple Rain--the final stage in Prince's self-creation, where he retells the autobiography of the first three parts as a heroic journey.

The book is framed by editor Dan Piepenbring's riveting and moving introduction about his profound collaboration with Prince in his final months--a time when Prince was thinking deeply about how to reveal more of himself and his ideas to the world, while retaining the mystery and mystique he'd so carefully cultivated--and annotations that provide context to the book's images.

This work is not just a tribute to an icon, but an original and energizing literary work in its own right, full of Prince's ideas and vision, his voice and image--his undying gift to the world.

BEETHOVEN, A LIFE

BEETHOVEN, A LIFE

By: Caeyers, Jan
$29.95
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The authoritative Beethoven biography, endorsed by and produced in close collaboration with the Beethoven-Haus Bonn, is timed for the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth.

With unprecedented access to the archives at the Beethoven House in Bonn, renowned Beethoven conductor and scholar Jan Caeyers expertly weaves together a deeply human and complex image of Beethoven--his troubled youth, his unpredictable mood swings, his desires, relationships, and conflicts with family and friends, the mysteries surrounding his affair with the "immortal beloved," and the dramatic tale of his deafness. Caeyers also offers new insights into Beethoven's music and its gradual transformation from the work of a skilled craftsman into that of a consummate artist.

Demonstrating an impressive command of the vast scholarship on this iconic composer, Caeyers brings Beethoven's world alive with elegant prose, memorable musical descriptions, and vivid depictions of Bonn and Vienna--the cities where Beethoven produced and performed his works. Caeyers explores how Beethoven's career was impacted by the historical and philosophical shifts taking place in the music world, and conversely, how his own trajectory changed the course of the music industry. Equal parts absorbing cultural history and lively biography, Beethoven, A Life paints a complex portrait of the musical genius who redefined the musical style of his day and went on to become one of the great pillars of Western art music.

BEGIN AGAIN: A Biography of John Cage

BEGIN AGAIN: A Biography of John Cage

By: Silverman, Kenneth
$24.95
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A man of extraordinary and seemingly limitless talents--musician, inventor, composer, poet, and even amateur mycologist--John Cage became a central figure of the avant-garde early in his life and remained at that pinnacle until his death in 1992 at the age of eighty. Award-winning biographer Kenneth Silverman gives us the first comprehensive life of this remarkable artist. Silverman begins with Cage's childhood in interwar Los Angeles and his stay in Paris from 1930 to 1931, where immersion in the burgeoning new musical and artistic movements triggered an explosion of his creativity. Cage continued his studies in the United States with the seminal modern composer Arnold Schoenberg, and he soon began the experiments with sound and percussion instruments that would develop into his signature work with prepared piano, radio static, random noise, and silence. Cage's unorthodox methods still influence artists in a wide range of genres and media. Silverman concurrently follows Cage's rich personal life, from his early marriage to his lifelong personal and professional partnership with choreographer Merce Cunningham, as well as his friendships over the years with other composers, artists, philosophers, and writers.

Drawing on interviews with Cage's contemporaries and friends and on the enormous archive of his letters and writings, and including photographs, facsimiles of musical scores, and Web links to illustrative sections of his compositions, Silverman gives us a biography of major significance: a revelatory portrait of one of the most important cultural figures of the twentieth century.

BIG BOOK OF BLUES GUITAR: THE HISTORY, THE GREATS AND HOW TO PLAY

BIG BOOK OF BLUES GUITAR: THE HISTORY, THE GREATS AND HOW TO PLAY

By: Lovato, Andrew
$19.95
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The blues are the heart and soul of American music. They form the core of countless other genres and move listeners across the globe with a sound that can stir our emotions at their deepest point. Now, Andrew Lovato, an esteemed musician and educator, combines in one volume a wealth of information about the world of the blues and a teaching methodology that can help any reader feel the music come to life under his or her fingers.

The book covers the history of the guitar and of the blues, including a personal appreciation of the great musicians who have shaped the genre and created such an awe-inspiring legacy. Lovato's system of blues guitar instruction, built on his lifetime of teaching, can bring musicians of any level to a rewarding and creative lifelong relationship with the guitar as well as immersion in its blissful union with the blues.
BOB DYLAN: HOW THE SONGS WORK

BOB DYLAN: HOW THE SONGS WORK

By: Hampton, Timothy
$21.95
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A career-spanning account of the artistry and politics of Bob Dylan's songwriting

Bob Dylan's reception of the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature has elevated him beyond the world of popular music, establishing him as a major modern artist. However, until now, no study of his career has focused on the details and nuances of the songs, showing how they work as artistic statements designed to create meaning and elicit emotion. Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work (originally published as Bob Dylan's Poetics) is the first comprehensive book on both the poetics and politics of Dylan's compositions. It studies Dylan, not as a pop hero, but as an artist, as a maker of songs. Focusing on the interplay of music and lyric, it traces Dylan's innovative use of musical form, his complex manipulation of poetic diction, and his dialogues with other artists, from Woody Guthrie to Arthur Rimbaud. Moving from Dylan's earliest experiments with the blues, through his mastery of rock and country, up to his densely allusive recent recordings, Timothy Hampton offers a detailed account of Dylan's achievement. Locating Dylan in the long history of artistic modernism, the book studies the relationship between form, genre, and the political and social themes that crisscross Dylan's work. Bob Dylan: How the Songs Work offers both a nuanced engagement with the work of a major artist and a meditation on the contribution of song at times of political and social change.

BOOK OF WORLD FAMOUS MUSIC: Classical, Popular, and Folk

BOOK OF WORLD FAMOUS MUSIC: Classical, Popular, and Folk

By: Fuld, James J
$19.95
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CAMILLE SAINT-SAENS AND HIS WORLD

CAMILLE SAINT-SAENS AND HIS WORLD

$20.00
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A revealing look at French composer and virtuoso Camille Saint-Saëns

Camille Saint-Saëns--perhaps the foremost French musical figure of the late nineteenth century and a composer who wrote in nearly every musical genre, from opera and the symphony to film music--is now being rediscovered after a century of modernism overshadowed his earlier importance. In a wide-ranging and trenchant series of essays, articles, and documents, Camille Saint-Saëns and His World deconstructs the multiple realities behind the man and his music. Topics range from intimate glimpses of the private and playful Saint-Saëns, to the composer's interest in astronomy and republican politics, his performances of Mozart and Rameau over eight decades, and his extensive travels around the world. This collection also analyzes the role he played in various musical societies and his complicated relationship with such composers as Liszt, Massenet, Wagner, and Ravel. Featuring the best contemporary scholarship on this crucial, formative period in French music, Camille Saint-Saëns and His World restores the composer to his vital role as innovator and curator of Western music.

The contributors are Byron Adams, Leon Botstein, Jean-Christophe Branger, Michel Duchesneau, Katharine Ellis, Annegret Fauser, Yves Gérard, Dana Gooley, Carolyn Guzski, Carol Hess, D. Kern Holoman, Léo Houziaux, Florence Launay, Stéphane Leteuré, Martin Marks, Mitchell Morris, Jann Pasler, William Peterson, Michael Puri, Sabina Teller Ratner, Laure Schnapper, Marie-Gabrielle Soret, Michael Stegemann, and Michael Strasser.

CELLO SONATA, VIOLIN SONATA, SONATA FOR FLUTE, VIOLA, AND HARP

CELLO SONATA, VIOLIN SONATA, SONATA FOR FLUTE, VIOLA, AND HARP

By: Debussy, Claude
$11.95
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This volume contains Debussy's last three chamber works, written between 1915 and 1917, all of them sonatas of individual charm and distinctive twentieth-century character. Debussy described his Cello Sonata, rich in its unconventional, sometimes surrealistic effects, as Pierrot angry at the moon. The Violin Sonata integrates jazz influences with Debussy's customary impressionism. Of the Sonata for Flute, Viola and Harp, a work sparkling with spontaneity and innovation, Debussy commented, I don't known whether it should move us to laughter or to tears. Perhaps both. All three of these frequently performed and recorded works are reprinted from authoritative French editions.

CLASSICAL MUSIC IN AMERICA

CLASSICAL MUSIC IN AMERICA

By: Horowitz, Joseph
$19.95
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"An opinionated, stimulating account of how classical music failed to establish fruitful roots in America," Classical Music in America chronicles "a cultural attitude that has produced many fine artists and striking moments--but no institutional or intellectual support to sustain them" (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). "An admirable, scholarly volume" (Times Literary Supplement), this "formidable book ... shows how American classical music became a 'performance culture, ' an ersatz-European showplace for celebrity virtuosos, rather than a native-born genre" (The New Yorker). "As a comprehensive, convincing analysis of the contemporary dilemma" of reconciling European heritage with American vision "and a riveting portrait of the century and a half of events and personalities which brought it about, Mr Horowitz's account would be hard to beat" (The Economist). "Anyone seeking to understand why American classical music has come to so dead an end--and wondering how it might yet escape a final descent into cultural irrelevance--should read Classical Music in America with close attention" (Commentary).
COLLECTED ESSAYS & MEMOIRS: Omni-Americans, South to a Very Old Place, Hero and the Blues, Stomping the Blues, Blue Devils of Nada

COLLECTED ESSAYS & MEMOIRS: Omni-Americans, South to a Very Old Place, Hero and the Blues, Stomping the Blues, Blue Devils of Nada

By: Murray, Albert
$45.00
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Editors Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Paul Devlin present a definitive edition of Albert Murray's collected nonfiction, including his 1971 memoir South to a Very Old Place, inspiration for Imani Perry's South to America.

In his 1970 classic The Omni-Americans, Albert Murray (1916-2013) took aim at protest writers and social scientists who accentuated the "pathology" of race in American life. Against narratives of marginalization and victimhood, Murray argued that black art and culture, particularly jazz and blues, stand at the very headwaters of the American mainstream, and that much of what is best in American art embodies the "blues-hero tradition"-- a heritage of grace, wit, and inspired improvisation in the face of adversity. Murray went on to refine these ideas in The Blue Devils of Nada and From the Briarpatch File, and all three landmark collections of essays are gathered here for the first time, together with Murray's memoir South to a Very Old Place--inspiration for Imani Perry's South to America, his brilliant lecture series The Hero and the Blues, his masterpiece of jazz criticism Stomping the Blues, and eight previously uncollected pieces.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.

COMPARING NOTES: HOW WE MAKE SENSE OF MUSIC

COMPARING NOTES: HOW WE MAKE SENSE OF MUSIC

By: Ockelford, Adam
$17.95
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How does music work? Indeed, what is (or isn't) music? We are all instinctively musical, but why? Adam Ockelford has the answers.

A tap of the foot, a rush of emotion, the urge to hum a tune; without instruction or training we all respond intuitively to music. Comparing Notes explores what music is, why all of us are musical, and how abstract patterns of sound that might not appear to mean anything can, in fact, be so meaningful. Taking the reader on a clear and compelling tour of major twentieth century musical theories, Professor Adam Ockelford arrives at his own important psychologically grounded theory of how music works. From pitch and rhythm to dynamics and timbre, he shows how all the elements of music cohere through the principle of imitation to create an abstract narrative in sound that we instinctively grasp, whether listening to Bach or the Beatles. Authoritative, engaging, and full of wonderful examples from across the musical spectrum, Comparing Notes is essential reading for anyone who's ever loved a song, sonata, or symphony, and wondered why.

COMPLETE CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE

COMPLETE CLASSICAL MUSIC GUIDE

By: DK
$25.00
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What makes Mozart's music so great? Why does a minor chord sound sad and a major chord sound happy? What's the difference between opera and operetta? From Bach to Bernstein, this definitive guide offers a complete survey of the history of classical music.

Whether you already love classical music or you're just beginning to explore it, The Complete Classical Music Guide invites you to discover the spirituality of Byrd's masses, the awesome power of Handel's Messiah, and the wonders of Wagner's operas, as well as hundreds of more composers and their masterpieces. This guide takes you on a journey through more than 1,000 years, charting the evolution of musical instruments, styles, and genres. Biographies of major and lesser-known composers offer rich insights into their music and the historical and cultural contexts that influenced their genius.

The book explores the features that defined each musical era - from the ornate brilliance of the Baroque, through the drama of Romantic music, to contemporary genres such as minimalism and electronic music. Timelines, quotes, and color photographs give a voice to this music and the exceptionally gifted individuals who created it.

COMPLETE SUITES FOR UNACCOMPANIED CELLO

COMPLETE SUITES FOR UNACCOMPANIED CELLO

By: Bach, Johann Sebastian
$16.95
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This superbly produced volume brings together a group of Bach's most performed compositions: nine works that masterfully reveal the deeply resonant glories of the cello and the viola da gamba. Reprinted here from the definitive Bach-Gesellschaft edition published by Breitkopf & Härtel of Leipzig, they include the six suites for unaccompanied cello (BWV 1007-1012) and three sonatas for viola da gamba and harpsichord (BWV 1027-1029), the latter most commonly played today on the cello. Alternative versions of the last two cello suites -- providing notation at concert pitch for the scordatura Suite No. 5, and normal cello clefs in place of the original alto and soprano clefs of Suite No. 6 -- appear in an appendix.
The cello suites, long neglected until Pablo Casals began to perform them early in the twentieth century, richly demonstrate Bach's intuitive feel for the cello, and his technical grasp of this instrument's extraordinary capabilities for musical expression. The three sonatas, among the few duo sonatas Bach composed, exuberantly demonstrate how Bach freed the harpsichord from a mere accompanying role and made it an equal partner in the duo texture.
This sturdily bound playing edition features wide margins and large noteheads clearly printed on fine-quality paper. It offers both amateur and professional musicians -- along with music lovers who enjoy following a live or recorded performance, score in hand -- a lifetime of pleasurable study and intimate enjoyment of a select group of Bach's most universally loved and admired works.

CONCISE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF MUSIC

CONCISE OXFORD DICTIONARY OF MUSIC

By: Bourne, Joyce
$18.99
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Derived from the classic Oxford Dictionary of Music, this is the most authoritative dictionary of music available in paperback. It is a rich mine of information for lovers of music of all periods and styles. Fully revised and updated, the 5th edition of this established reference work contains over 200 new entries, including information on approximately 150 new performers. Written by Michael Kennedy, a renowned authority on classical music, the dictionary includes over 14,000 entries on terms from "allegro" to "zingaro," and on works from "Aida "to "Tosca," as well as instruments and their history, composers, librettists, musicians, singers, and orchestras. It also boasts comprehensive works lists for major composers. It remains the essential reference for music students and teachers, and fascinating reading for all other music enthusiasts.
COSI FAN TUTTI

COSI FAN TUTTI

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(Vocal Score). Italian/English. Translated by Martin.

COUNTESS MARITZA LIBRETTO

$8.00
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DIALOGUES OF THE CARMELITES LIBRET

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DON GIOVANNI MOMENT

DON GIOVANNI MOMENT

$24.50
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Mozart's Don Giovanni is an operatic masterpiece full of iconic and mythical tensions that still resonate today. The work redefines the terms of power, seduction, and morality, and the resulting conflict between the aesthetic and the ethical is deeply rooted in the Enlightenment and romanticism.

The Don Giovanni Moment is the first book to examine the aesthetic and moral legacy of Mozart's opera in the literature, philosophy, and culture of the nineteenth century. The prominent scholars in this collection address the opera's impact on the philosophical visions of Kierkegaard, Goethe, and Williams and its influence on the literary and dramatic works of Pushkin, Hoffmann, Mörike, Byron, Wagner, Strauss, and Shaw. Through a close and careful analysis of Don Giovanni's literary and philosophical reception and its many appropriations, rewritings, and retellings, these contributors treat the opera as a vantage point from which theory and philosophy can reconsider romanticism's central themes.

As lively and passionate as the opera itself, these essays continue the spirited debate over the meaning and character of Don Giovanni and its powerful legacy. Together they prove that Mozart's brilliant artistic achievement is as potent and relevant today as when it was first performed two centuries ago.

ENCYCLOPDIA OF POP, ROCK, AND SOUL

ENCYCLOPDIA OF POP, ROCK, AND SOUL

By: Stambler, Irwin
$19.95
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Featuring more than 600 entries in all, this reference book covers four decades of popular music, providing information on artists' career histories, vital statistics, chart positions, and influences on the music world. Black-and-white photographs.
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF JAZZ

ENCYCLOPEDIA OF JAZZ

By: Feather, Leonard
$22.95
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The first appearance of Leonard Feather's Encyclopedia of Jazz was heralded by critics, musicians, and record collectors as a major contribution to the literature of jazz. Never before had America's native music been treated so meticulously, objectively, and comprehensively. The appearance of two later volumes, The Encyclopedia of Jazz in the Sixties and The Encyclopedia of Jazz in the Seventies (with Ira Gitler) only confirmed the initial enthusiasm and the judgement that here were basic books for any music library.This marks the first paperback publication of this book, soon to be followed by paperback editions of the other two volumes. With more than 2,000 biographies and 200 photos, it spans the history of jazz from its origins to 1959. But more than a biographical dictionary, the book also features essays on the jazz tradition, its major players and composers, the relationship between jazz and classical music (written by Gunther Schuller), a social history of jazz in America, the jazzman as critic, and a grammar of jazz language that can serve as an ideal introduction for young listeners. In addition, Leonard Feather provides a chronology, list of international critic polls, musicians birthdays and birthplaces, a bibliography, and a discography of recommended recordings. For anyone seriously--or even casually--interested in the development of jazz and blues, this classic reference work can guide you unerringly through the many dimensions of the music's wonderful history.
EXPERIMENTING THE HUMAN

EXPERIMENTING THE HUMAN

By: Barrett, G Douglas
$27.50
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An engaging argument about what experimental music can tell us about being human.

In Experimenting the Human, G Douglas Barrett argues that experimental music speaks to the contemporary posthuman, a condition in which science and technology decenter human agency amid the uneven temporality of postwar global capitalism. Time moves forward for some during this period, while it seems to stand still or even move backward for others. Some say we're already posthuman, while others endure the extended consequences of never having been considered fully human in the first place. Experimental music reflects on this state, Barrett contends, through its interdisciplinary involvements in postwar science, technology, and art movements.

Rather than pursuing the human's beyond, experimental music addresses the social and technological conditions that support such a pursuit. Barrett locates this tendency of experimentalism throughout its historical entanglements with cybernetics, and in his intimate analysis of Alvin Lucier's neurofeedback music, Pamela Z's BodySynth performances, Nam June Paik's musical robotics, Pauline Oliveros's experiments with radio astronomy, and work by Laetitia Sonami, Yasunao Tone, and Jerry Hunt. Through a unique meeting of music studies, media theory, and art history, Experimenting the Human provides fresh insights into what it means to be human.

FANTASIES OF NINA SIMONE

FANTASIES OF NINA SIMONE

By: Stein, Jordan Alexander
$30.00
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Since her death in 2003, Nina Simone has been the subject of an astonishing number of rereleased, remastered, and remixed albums and compilations as well as biographies, films, viral memes, samples, and soundtracks. In Fantasies of Nina Simone, Jordan Alexander Stein uses an archive of Simone's performances, images, and writings to examine the space between our collective and individual fantasies about Simone the performer, civil rights activist, and icon, and her own fantasies about herself. Stein outlines how Simone gave voice to personal fantasies through releasing dozens of covers of her white male contemporaries. With her covers of George Harrison, the Bee Gees, Bob Dylan, and others, Simone explored and claimed the power and perspective that come with race and gender privilege. Looking at examples from Simone's four-decade genre-bending career-from songbook standards, jazz, and pop to folk, junkanoo, and reggae-and at her work's many uptakes and afterlives, Stein mobilizes the psychoanalytic concept of fantasy to build a black feminist history with and for this multifaceted performing artist.
FRANZ LISZT AND HIS WORLD

FRANZ LISZT AND HIS WORLD

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No nineteenth-century composer had more diverse ties to his contemporary world than Franz Liszt (1811-1886). At various points in his life he made his home in Vienna, Paris, Weimar, Rome, and Budapest. In his roles as keyboard virtuoso, conductor, master teacher, and abbé, he reinvented the concert experience, advanced a progressive agenda for symphonic and dramatic music, rethought the possibilities of church music and the oratorio, and transmitted the foundations of modern pianism.

The essays brought together in Franz Liszt and His World advance our understanding of the composer with fresh perspectives and an emphasis on historical contexts. Rainer Kleinertz examines Wagner's enthusiasm for Liszt's symphonic poem Orpheus; Christopher Gibbs discusses Liszt's pathbreaking Viennese concerts of 1838; Dana Gooley assesses Liszt against the backdrop of antivirtuosity polemics; Ryan Minor investigates two cantatas written in honor of Beethoven; Anna Celenza offers new insights about Liszt's experience of Italy; Susan Youens shows how Liszt's songs engage with the modernity of Heinrich Heine's poems; James Deaville looks at how publishers sustained Liszt's popularity; and Leon Botstein explores Liszt's role in the transformation of nineteenth-century preoccupations regarding religion, the nation, and art.


Franz Liszt and His World also includes key biographical and critical documents from Liszt's lifetime, which open new windows on how Liszt was viewed by his contemporaries and how he wished to be viewed by posterity. Introductions to and commentaries on these documents are provided by Peter Bloom, José Bowen, James Deaville, Allan Keiler, Rainer Kleinertz, Ralph Locke, Rena Charnin Mueller, and Benjamin Walton.