Why couldn't Schubert get his 'great' C-Major Symphony performed? Why was he the first composer to consistently write four movements for his piano sonatas? Since neither Schubert's nor Beethoven's piano sonatas were ever performed in public, who did hear them? Addressing these questions and many others, John M. Gingerich provides a new understanding of Schubert's career and his relationship to Beethoven. Placing the genres of string quartet, symphony, and piano sonata within the cultural c...

“All I have to say about these songs is that I love them, and want to sing along to them, and force other people to listen to them, and get cross when these other people don’t like them as much as I do.” —Nick Hornby, from SongbookA wise and hilarious collection from the bestselling author of Dickens and Prince, Just Like You, Funny Girl and About a Boy.Songs, songwriters, and why and how they get under o...

Sex Pistols and Punk recounts the turbulent months at the beginning of the British punk revolution in 1976. Starting as four disparate teenagers thrown together by Svengali Malcom McLaren to sell trousers, the Sex Pistols quickly became both prism and mirror for a disaffected youth eager to smash the old guard and make the world in their own, Warholian image. From dodgy backroom gigs to major-label overtures, Sex Pistols and Punk charts the dramatic rise of one of Britain's most i...

The Inner Game of Music, the breakout hit that became a standard primer in the music world, has taught thousands of musicians—professionals and amateurs alike—how to overcome self-consciousness and stage fright and to recapture a youthful, almost effortless capacity to learn. Now, in his follow-up book, The Mastery of Music, Barry Green turns his expert hand to the artistic qualities that make an extraordinary musician. Culling advice from dozens of interviews with legend...

More than just a history of Danko Jones, this book is an exploration of the rigid politics that govern both underground and mainstream music and how a band can succeed without pandering to either. Danko Jones may be a straightforward rock band, but their story is anything but. TheyӲe a band that has roots in many different music communitiesشhe North American indie rock scene, the Scandinavian garage rock scene, andthe European metal sceneآut belong to none of them. TheyӶe toured with b...

THE INSPIRATION FOR THE MAJOR MOTION PICTURE A COMPLETE UNKNOWN. One of the music world’s pre-eminent critics takes a fresh and much-needed look at the day Dylan “went electric” at the Newport Folk Festival.On the evening of July 25, 1965, Bob Dylan took the stage at Newport Folk Festival, backed by an electric band, and roared into his new rock hit, Like a Rolling Stone. The audience of committed folk purists and political activists who had haile...

Over three decades Paul Griffiths's survey has remained the definitive study of music since the Second World War; this fully revised and updated edition re-establishes Modern Music and After as the preeminent introduction to the music of our time. The disruptions of the war and the struggles of the ensuing peace were reflected in the music of the time: in Pierre Boulez's radical reformation of compositional technique and in John Cage's development of zen music; in Milton Babbitt's settling...

Based on police wiretaps and exclusive interviews with drug kingpins and hip-hop insiders, this is the untold story of how the streets and housing projects of southeast Queens took over the rap industry.For years, rappers from Nas to Ja Rule have hero-worshipped the legendary drug dealers who dominated Queens in the 1980s with their violent crimes and flashy lifestyles. Now, for the first time ever, this gripping narrative digs beneath the hip-hop fables to re-create the rise and fall of h...

From a Los Angeles hospital bed, equipped with little more than a laptop and a stack of records, James “J Dilla” Yancey crafted a set of tracks that would forever change the way beatmakers viewed their artform. The songs on Donuts are not hip hop music as “hip hop music” is typically defined; they careen and crash into each other, in one moment noisy and abrasive, gorgeous and heartbreaking the next. The samples and melodies tell the story of a man coming to terms with his declini...

"It was all so honest, before the end of our collective innocence. Top Forty jocks screamed and yelled and sounded mightier than God on millions of transistor radios. But on FM radio it was all spun out for only you. On a golden web by a master weaver driven by fifty thousand magical watts of crystal clear power . . . before the days of trashy, hedonistic dumbspeak and disposable three-minute ditties . . . in the days where rock lived at many addresses in many cities."–from...

While unappreciated and controversial during most of his life, Anton Bruckner is today regarded as the greatest symphonist between Beethoven and Gustav Mahler – in terms of originality, boldness and monumentality of his music. The image of Bruckner the man, however, is still extreme instance of the tenacious power of prejudice. No less a figure than Gustav Mahler coined the aperçu about Bruckner being «a simpleton – half genius, half imbecile». The author is out to correct that mispercepti...

The defining sounds of popular music - blues, rock 'n' roll, punk, hip-hop - were shaped and driven by rebel voices: whether that was Robert Johnson and Billie Holiday in the 1920-40s, or the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Joe Strummer in the 1960s and 70s. Truly ground- and rule-breaking voices have been drowned out by pop-by-numbers acts in more recent years, and in Rebel Heroes, Huey Morgan investigates where music started to lose its soul, and why the lessons of those...