Music

A deep dive into the meaning behind the hatred of jazz.

A rock guitarist plays four notes in front of one thousand people, while a jazz guitarist plays one thousand notes in front of four people. You might laugh or groan at this jazz joke, but what is it about jazz that makes people want to disparage it in the first place?

Andrew S. Berish's Hating Jazz listens to the voices who have denounced, disparaged, and mocked the music. By focusing on the rejection of the music, Berish says, we see more holistically jazz's complicated place in American cultural life. Jazz is a display of Black creativity and genius, an art form that is deeply embedded in African American life. Though the explicit racial tenor of jazz jokes has become muted over time, making fun of jazz, either in a lighthearted or aggressive way, is also an engagement with the place of Blackness in America. An individual's taste in music may seem personal, but Berish's analysis of jazz hatred demonstrates that musical preferences and trends are a social phenomenon. Criticism of jazz has become inextricable from the ways we understand race in America, past and present. In addition to this form of criticism, Berish also considers jazz hate as a form of taste discrimination and as a conflict over genre boundaries within different jazz cultures.

Both enlightening and original, Hating Jazz shows that our response to music can be a social act, unique to our historical moment and cultural context--we react to music in certain ways because of who we are, where we are, and when we are.

The cassette tape was revolutionary. Cheap, portable, and reusable, this small plastic rectangle changed music history. Make your own tapes! Trade them with friends! Tape over the ones you don't like! The cassette tape upended pop culture, creating movements and uniting communities.

This entertaining book charts the journey of the cassette from its invention in the early 1960s to its Walkman-led domination in the 1980s to decline at the birth of compact discs to resurgence among independent music makers. Scorned by the record industry for "killing music," the cassette tape rippled through scenes corporations couldn't control. For so many, tapes meant freedom--to create, to invent, to connect.

Marc Masters introduces readers to the tape artists who thrive underground; concert tapers who trade bootlegs; mixtape makers who send messages with cassettes; tape hunters who rescue forgotten sounds; and today's labels, which reject streaming and sell music on cassette. Their stories celebrate the cassette tape as dangerous, vital, and radical.

The release of the song "Hound Dog" in 1953 marked a turning point in American popular culture, and throughout its history, the hit ballad bridged divides of race, gender, and generational conflict. Ben Wynne's A Hound Dog Tale discusses the stars who made this rock 'n' roll standard famous, from Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton to Elvis Presley, along with an eclectic cast of characters, including singers, songwriters, musicians, record producers and managers, famous television hosts, several lawyers, and even a gangster or two.

Wynne's examination of this American classic reveals how "Hound Dog" reflected the values and issues of 1950s American society, and sheds light on the lesser-known elements of the song's creation and legacy. A Hound Dog Tale will capture the imagination of anyone who has ever tapped a foot to the growl of a blues riff or the bark of a rock 'n' roll guitar.

"How Music Works" is David Byrne s buoyant celebration of a subject he has spent a lifetime thinking about. Drawing on his work over the years with Talking Heads, Brian Eno, and myriad collaboratorsalong with journeys to Wagnerian opera houses, African villages, and anywhere music existsByrne shows how music emerges from cultural circumstance as much as individual creativity. It is his magnum opus, and an impassioned argument about music s liberating, life-affirming power."

A rich collection of essays tracing the relationship between art and sound.

In the 1970s David Toop became preoccupied with the possibility that music was no longer bounded by formalities of audience: the clapping, the booing, the short attention span, the demand for instant gratification. Considering sound and listening as foundational practices in themselves leads music into a thrilling new territory: stretched time, wilderness, video monitors, singing sculptures, weather, meditations, vibration and the interior resonance of objects, interspecies communications, instructional texts, silent actions, and performance art.

Toop sought to document the originality and unfamiliarity of this work from his perspective as a practitioner and writer. The challenge was to do so without being drawn back into the domain of music while still acknowledging the vitality and hybridity of twentieth-century musics as they moved toward art galleries, museums, and site-specificity. Toop focused on practitioners, whose stories are as compelling as the theoretical and abstract implications of their works.

Inflamed Invisible collects more than four decades of David Toop's essays, reviews, interviews, and experimental texts, drawing us into the company of artists and their concerns, not forgetting the quieter, unsung voices. The volume is an offering, an exploration of strata of sound that are the crossing points of sensory, intellectual, and philosophical preoccupations, layers through which objects, thoughts and air itself come alive as the inflamed invisible.

A spectacular musical and scientific journey from the Bronx to the cosmic horizon that reveals the astonishing links between jazz, science, Einstein, and Coltrane

More than fifty years ago, John Coltrane drew the twelve musical notes in a circle and connected them by straight lines, forming a five-pointed star. Inspired by Einstein, Coltrane put physics and geometry at the core of his music.

Physicist and jazz musician Stephon Alexander follows suit, using jazz to answer physics' most vexing questions about the past and future of the universe. Following the great minds that first drew the links between music and physics-a list including Pythagoras, Kepler, Newton, Einstein, and Rakim -- The Jazz of Physics reveals that the ancient poetic idea of the "Music of the Spheres," taken seriously, clarifies confounding issues in physics.

The Jazz of Physics will fascinate and inspire anyone interested in the mysteries of our universe, music, and life itself.

Whether along race, class or generational lines, hip-hop music has been a source of controversy since the beats got too big and the voices too loud for the block parties that spawned them. America has condemned and commended this music and the culture that inspires it. Dubbed "the Hip-Hop Intellectual" by critics and fans for his pioneering explorations of rap music in the academy and beyond, Michael Eric Dyson is uniquely situated to probe the most compelling and controversial dimensions of hip-hop culture. Know What I Mean? addresses salient issues within hip hop: the creative expression of degraded youth that has garnered them global exposure; the vexed gender relations that have made rap music a lightning rod for pundits; the commercial explosion that has made an art form a victim of its success; the political elements that have been submerged in the most popular form of hip hop; and the intellectual engagement with some of hip hop's most influential figures. In spite of changing trends, both in the music industry and among the intelligentsia, Dyson has always supported and interpreted this art that bloomed unwatered, and in many cases, unwanted from our inner cities. For those who wondered what all the fuss is about in hip hop, Dyson's bracing and brilliant book breaks it all down.

Jane Sapp is a nationally admired cultural worker, musician, educator, and activist whose approach to social transformation is rooted in African American musical traditions and made available here as a resource for communities around the world. Jane actively engages people in creative cultural processes, writing songs together, telling stories, shaping festivals, and designing museums of local culture. In this volume, Jane tells the story of her childhood, nurtured by the Black community while living in the brutal world of the Jim Crow South. She describes her participation in the Black Power movement and introduces us to mentors who shaped her path to becoming a cultural worker. She shares the songs she has written with young people and has sung with people of all ages. She tells the stories behind each song and offers suggestions for teachers and chorus leaders. This book is an inspiration and an affirmation for cultural workers, activists, artists, and justice-seekers. At the same time, its stories, music scores, and accompanying podcast episodes make it a practical resource for educators, chorus leaders, and others seeking to engage with the power of music, and the arts more generally, as they join with communities to make a better world.

Few people in recent memory have dedicated themselves as devotedly to the story of twentieth- century American music as Rob Kapilow, the composer, conductor, and host of the hit NPR music radio program, What Makes It Great? Now, in Listening for America, he turns his keen ear to the Great American Songbook, bringing many of our favorite classics to life through the songs and stories of eight of the twentieth century's most treasured American composers--Kern, Porter, Gershwin, Arlen, Berlin, Rodgers, Bernstein, and Sondheim. Hardly confi ning himself to celebrating what makes these catchy melodies so unforgettable, Kapilow delves deeply into how issues of race, immigration, sexuality, and appropriation intertwine in masterpieces like Show Boat and West Side Story. A book not just about musical theater but about America itself, Listening for America is equally for the devotee, the singer, the music student, or for anyone intrigued by how popular music has shaped the larger culture, and promises to be the ideal gift book for years to come.

The second volume of Sondheim's collected lyrics is both a remarkable glimpse into the brilliant mind of a legend, and a continuation of the acclaimed and best-selling Finishing the Hat.

Picking up where he left off in Finishing the Hat, Sondheim gives us all the lyrics, along with excluded songs and early drafts, of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Sunday in the Park with George, Into the Woods, Assassins and Passion. Here, too, is an in-depth look at the evolution of Wise Guys, which subsequently was transformed into Bounce and eventually became Road Show. Sondheim takes us through his contributions to both television and film, some of which may surprise you, and covers plenty of never-before-seen material from unproduced projects as well. There are abundant anecdotes about his many collaborations, and readers are treated to rare personal material in this volume, as Sondheim includes songs culled from commissions, parodies and personal special occasions--such as a hilarious song for Leonard Bernstein's seventieth birthday. As he did in the previous volume, Sondheim richly annotates his lyrics with invaluable advice on songwriting, discussions of theater history and the state of the industry today, and exacting dissections of his work, both the successes and the failures.

Filled with even more behind-the-scenes photographs and illustrations from Sondheim's original manuscripts, Look, I Made a Hat is fascinating, devourable and essential reading for any fan of the theater or this great man's work.

A comprehensive and immersive survey of thirty-five Beethoven piano sonatas

"Beethoven piano sonatas accompany every pianist, amateur or professional for his or her entire life and constitute one of the most miraculous constants of the human civilization. To help us around the exciting journey through those masterpieces Jan Marisse Huizing combines his expertise, knowledge, and above all his unconditional love for this music."-- Alexander Melnikov, pianist

Beethoven's piano sonatas are among the iconic cornerstones of the classical music repertoire. Jan Marisse Huizing offers an in-depth study of the sonatas using available autographs, first editions, recordings, and nearly three hundred musical examples.

Digging into the historical background and historical performance practice, the book provides illuminating detail on Beethoven's pianism as well as his characteristics of notation, form and content, "types of touch," articulation, beaming, pedal indications, character, rubato, meter, metric constructions, tempo, and metronome marks.

Packed with anecdotes, quotations, and considerable new information, the book will inspire all involved with these masterworks, playing a fortepiano or modern Grand, giving the sense of the composer sitting beside them as he translates his inspiration and ideas into his notation.

The English National Opera Guides were originally conceived in partnership with the English National Opera and edited by Nicholas John, the ENO's dramaturg, who died tragically in an accident in the Alps. Most of the guides are devoted to a single opera, which is described in detail--with many articles that cover its history and information about the composer and his times. The complete libretto is included in both the original language and in a modern singing translation--except where the opera was written in English. Each has a thematic guide to the most important musical themes in musical notation and each guide is lavishly illustrated. They also contain a bibliography and a discography which is updated at each reprint. The ENO guides are widely regarded as the best series of their kind and excellent value.

This inexpensive compilation draws upon authoritative sources to present favorite piano works of the Baroque era. Unlike many other anthologies of music from the era, which vary widely in the quality of their content, this collection comprises only the greatest works of the period. Intermediate and advanced pianists will find these carefully chosen pieces a rewarding and satisfying reflection of the glories of the Baroque.
Selections include Johann Sebastian Bach's Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue as well as the French Suite No. 5; Fantasia in C Minor, BWV 906; and preludes and fugues from The Well-Tempered Clavier. Other works by Bach include the great composer's transcriptions for keyboard of five violin concertos by Vivaldi, reprinted from the definitive Bach-Gesellschaft edition. Other selections include several pieces by Handel, among them the popular Air and Variations known as The Harmonious Blacksmith; four sonatas by Scarlatti; and works by Telemann, Rameau, and Purcell.

The results and implications of Alan Tyson's work on Mozart have had a profound impact on virtually every aspect of research on this composer: biography, chronology of compositions, working methods, stylistic analysis. Central, perhaps, are Tyson's discoveries on chronology: time and again he has proved that datings, often of large, well-known works, that have been accepted for generations are not only erroneous but based on little more than speculation. This book assembles his major articles, previously scattered through magazines, journals, and festschrifts, plus two unpublished pieces, into a treasure trove for musicologists and music lovers.

Tyson's investigations, using primarily paper analysis, span Mozart's entire career and the full range of genres--string quartets, operas, choral music, keyboard music, concertos, and symphonies. He goes into the genesis of major works such as Cosi fan tutte, the "Prague" Symphony, the Piano Sonata K.333, the "Haydn" quartets, and La clemenza di Tito. His conclusions about chronology bear directly on biographical questions and current accounts of Mozart's stylistic development as well as his compositional methods. We learn here, for example, that the "first" horn concerto was in fact Mozart's last, and that he did not even complete the second movement, which was finished after his death by his pupil Süssmayr. The writing (and, in some cases, rewriting) of his later operas such as Figaro and Cosi fan tutte also lends itself to investigation by the same techniques; this is resulting in the rediscovery of some lost measures and little-known variant versions of arias.

Tyson's style is clear and elegant, and the originality of his work and the soundness of his inferences make this book a pleasure.