This book is a practical manual for anyone who stands on a podium helping an ensemble make music. The four main chapters address the major obligations of the conductor: (1) bringing the musical tones to life in the most beautiful,most moving way possible; (2) freeing the mind to fully absorb all the tones; (3) freeing the body of unnecessary tension; and (4) effectively using the freed mind and body to influence the sounds. Each chapter begins with a summary of the underlying principles, p...

This book is a philosophical tour through the experience of beauty: what it is, and how the composer, performer, and listener all contribute. It explores -- with insight, patience, and humor -- profound issues at the essence of our experience. A student performance of Beethoven's String Quartet No. 10 in E-Flat Major, known as the "Harp," serves as a point of departure and a recurring theme. For the layperson the core of the book is five dialogues betweenIcarus, an inquiring student intens...

In the mid-1960s, Steve Reich radically renewed the musical landscape with a back-to-basics sound that came to be called Minimalism. These early works, characterized by a relentless pulse and static harmony, focused single-mindedly on the process of gradual rhythmic change. Throughout his career, Reich has continued to reinvigorate the music world, drawing from a wide array of classical, popular, sacred, and non-western idioms. His works reflect the steady evolution of an original musical ...

Revised and expanded, A Performer's Guide to Seventeenth Century Music is a comprehensive reference guide for students and professional musicians. The book contains useful material on vocal and choral music and style; instrumentation; performance practice; ornamentation, tuning, temperament; meter and tempo; basso continuo; dance; theatrical production; and much more. The volume includes new chapters on the violin, the violoncello and violone, and the trombone—as well as updated and expand...

Sébastien Erard and the firm that carried his name are seminal in the history of musical instruments. Erard's inventions - especially the double escapement for the piano and the double-action for the harp - have had an enormous impact on instruments and musical life and are still at the foundation of piano and harp building today. The recently discovered archives of the Erard piano and harp building firm are perhaps the largest and most complete record of musical instrument making anywhere...

French concert music and jazz often enjoyed a special creative exchange across the period 1900–65. French modernist composers were particularly receptive to early African-American jazz during the interwar years, and American jazz musicians, especially those concerned with modal jazz in the 1950s and early 1960s, exhibited a distinct affinity with French musical impressionism. However, despite a general, if contested, interest in the cultural interplay of classical music and jazz, few write...

Charles Rosen is one of the world's most talented pianists -- and one of music's most astute commentators. Known as a performer of Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky, and Elliott Carter, he has also written highly acclaimed criticism for sophisticated students and professionals.In Piano Notes, he writes for a broader audience about an old friend -- the piano itself. Drawing upon a lifetime of wisdom and the accumulated lore of many great performers of the past, Rosen shows why th...

Teach yourself how to play ukulele with our easy ukulele lessons for beginners.***Comes with online access to free ukulele videos and audio demonstrating all examples. See and hear how each one is played by a teacher, then play along with the backing band. Also includes music score animation for easy music learning.***"Some of my favorite tunes are used in this book! And the language is so easy to understand, it makes it easy to learn from." - Nish...

Sight-reading is a skill which offers a student access to all music literature; a skill through which he can acquaint himself with any composition, unaided by a teacher. Nor can the ability to sight-read be lost. Once musical notation has become a living picture for the student, it will remain so, and he will at any time afterward be able to perform any music whether he practices regularly or not. Sight-reading does not conflict with repertoire study. On the contrary, a good sight-reader h...

The story of a revolution in music and technology, told through a century of recordings of the music of Johann Sebastian BachIn Reinventing Bach, his remarkable second book, Paul Elie tells the electrifying story of how musicians of genius have made Bach's music new in our time, at once restoring Bach as a universally revered composer and revolutionizing the ways that music figures into our lives.As a musician in eighteenth-century Germany, Bach was ...

Teach yourself how to play harmonica with our easy harmonica lessons for beginners.***Comes with online access to free harmonica videos and audio demonstrating all examples. See and hear how each one is played, then play along. Also includes an animated harmonica, music score and harmonica tabs for easy music learning.***"A great book for any beginner! Teaches you how to play some great sounding folk and blues music. Also includes theory needed to play ...

Johann Joachim Quantz's On Playing the Flute has long been recognized as one of the primary sources of information about eighteenth-century performance practice. In spite of its title, it is not simply a tutor for the flute, but a fully-fledged programme for training musicians of all types, with detailed information on intonation, ornamentation, dynamics, the 'duties' of the various accompanying performers, including the leader of the orchestra, and the principal forms and styles ...