John Rahn's prolific activities as a composer-theorist-teacher, inventor of computer sound-synthesis software, editor of Perspectives of New Music during the 1980s and 90s, and author of an exemplary text on atonal theory are conspicuously in the foreground of the academic music-intellectual world. This collection of essays charts Rahn's progression from the construal of music's data structures to the articulation of its experiential structures, leading to the question of its moral infrast...

Electronic music evokes new sensations, feelings, and thoughts in both composers and listeners. Opening the door to an unlimited universe of sound, it engages spatialization as an integral aspect of composition and focuses on sound transformation as a core structural strategy. In this new domain, pitch occurs as a flowing and ephemeral substance that can be bent, modulated, or dissolved into noise. Similarly, time occurs not merely as a fixed duration subdivided by ratios, but as a plastic...

The first biography of Yo La Tengo, the massively influential band who all but defined indie music.Yo La Tengo has lit up the indie scene for three decades, part of an underground revolution that defied corporate music conglomerates, eschewed pop radio, and found a third way. Going behind the scenes of one of the most remarkable eras in American music history, Big Day Coming traces the patient rise of husband-and-wife team Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley, wh...

What does a conductor actually do? How much effect does he or she have? Can the orchestra manage without one? Why don't the players look at the conductor more? Is it necessary for the conductor to play every instrument? What about interpretation? What happens at rehearsals? Why do some conductors "thrash around" more than others? Who's the boss in a concerto: the soloist or the conductor?These are some of the questions that receive lively andinformative answers in this book...

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...

In 2013, at the age of sixty-nine, with some time on my hands, I decided to learn to play a musical instrument (again); this time, I decided on the harmonica. Thank goodness that I did. I have since learned the beauty and versatility of the harmonica. I started by buying a set of DVDs over the Internet and started my journey into the harmonica. At the end of the lessons on the DVDs, I met my first hurdle. Where do I go from here? I searched music stores and bookstores for books of songs in...

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...

’He plays the piano well,’ wrote the society hostess Mme de Saint-Marceaux in her diary on 18 March 1927. ’His compositions are not devoid of talent but he’s not a genius, and I’m afraid he thinks he is.’ Intelligent though the lady was, she got this one spectacularly wrong. Poulenc has in fact outpaced his colleagues in Les Six by many a mile, as singers and instrumentalists all over the world will attest, and while he would never have accepted the title of ’genius’, preferring ’artisan’,...

This interesting and authoritative book includes essential facts about the various forms of Japanese music and musical instruments and their place in the overall history of Japan.Japanese Music and Musical Instruments has three main orientations:The history of Japanese musicConstruction of the instrumentsAnalysis of the music itself.The book covers in a lucidly written text and a wealth of fascinating photog...

Finding Fogerty: Interdisciplinary Readings of John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater Revival, edited by Thomas M. Kitts, begins to correct the scholarly neglect of John Fogerty, one of America’s great songwriters, one of the rock era’s great vocalists, and one of its underrated guitarists and producers. This essential collection pulls together scholars from a wide range of disciplines and approaches to assess Fogerty’s fifty-year career and to argue for his musical and cultural significanc...

The third volume in Alan Walker's magisterial biography of Franz Liszt."You can't help but keep turning the pages, wondering how it will all turn out: and Walker's accumulated readings of Liszt's music have to be taken seriously indeed."-D. Kern Holoman, New York Review of Books"A conscientious scholar passionate about his subject. Mr. Walker makes the man and his age come to life. These three volumes will be the definitive work to which all subsequent Liszt biogra...