Music

Although he died in a tragic car accident at the age of twenty-five, Clifford Brown is widely considered one of the most important figures in the history of jazz, a trumpet player who ranks with Louis Armstrong, Dizzy Gillespie, and Miles Davis, and a leading influence on contemporary jazz musicians. This book gives us a major biography of this musical giant. Based on extensive interviews with Clifford Brown's family, friends, and fellow jazz musicians, here is a fascinating portrait of a remarkable musician. The book depicts Brown's early life, showing how he developed a facility and dazzling technique that few jazz players have ever equalled. We read of his meteoric rise in Philadelphia, where he played with many of the leading jazz players of the 1950s, including Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker; his tour of Europe with Lionel Hampton, which made him famous; and his formation of the Brown-Roach Quintet with prominent drummer Max Roach—one of the most popular hard bop combos of the day. In an era when most jazz players were either alcoholics or addicts, Brown was clean living and drug free. Indeed, he became a role model for musicians who were struggling with drugs and had great influence in this area with one prominent colleague, tenor sax player Sonny Rollins. This book not only provides a colorful account of Brown's life, but also features an informed analysis of his major recorded solos, highlighting Brown's originality and revealing why he remains a great influence on trumpet players today.

This book reconnects the Philippines to current musicological discourse on the early modern Hispanic world. For two and a half centuries, the Philippine Islands were linked to Latin America and Spain through transoceanic relationships of politics, religion, trade, and culture. Manila, founded in 1571, represented a vital locus of intercultural exchange and a significant conduit for the regional diffusion of Western music. Within Manila's ethnically diverse society, imported and local musics played a crucial role in the establishment of ecclesiastical hierarchies in the Philippines, and the advancement of Roman Catholic evangelization in surrounding territories. The metaphors of European counterpoint and enharmony are used to critique musical practices within the colonial milieu, where multiple styles and genres coexisted according to strict regulations enforced by state and ecclesiastical authorities. This study argues that the introduction and institutionalization of counterpoint acted as a powerful agent of colonialism throughout the Philippine Archipelago, and that contrapuntal structures were reflected in the social and cultural reorganization of Filipino communities under Spanish rule. Active indigenous appropriation of Spanish music and dance constituted a significant contribution to the process of hispanization. Sustained “enharmonic engagement” between Filipinos and Spaniards led to the synthesis of hybrid, syncretic genres and the emergence of performance styles that could contest and subvert hegemony. Manila's religious institutions resounded with sumptuous vocal and instrumental performances, while an annual calendar of festivities brought together many musical traditions of the native and immigrant populations in complex forms of artistic interaction and opposition.

The 1950s saw an explosion in the American musical theater. The Broadway show, catapulted into the limelight in the 1920s and solidified during the 1940s thanks to Rodgers and Hammerstein, now entered its most revolutionary phase, brashly redefining itself and forging a new kind of storytelling. This book gives us a guided tour of this rich decade. With detail, the book highlights the shift in Broadway from shows that were mere star vehicles, showcasing a big-name talent, to the bolder stories, stuffed with character and atmosphere. During this period, subject matter became more intricate, even controversial, and plots more human and complex. The book demonstrates how, in response, musical conventions were polished, writing became more finely crafted, and dance became truly indispensable. Along the way we meet the key players: such greats as Ethel Merman, George Abbott, Jerome Robbins, Gwen Verdon, Bob Fosse, Stephen Sondheim, Frank Loesser, Cole Porter, Leonard Bernstein, and many others. We get the backstage scoop on why Guys and Dolls is so well-made, why West Side Story is so timeless, why The King and I and Gypsy pushed the envelope, and why no one ever talks about Ankles Aweigh. All this is peppered with a dash of industry gossip—the directorial struggles, last-minute script rewrites and cast replacements, and the power of the poster listings—that made Broadway so nerve-wrackingly vibrant.

This book draws upon his extensive experience to investigate an interventional approach to music making outside of formal teaching and learning situations. Working with historical, ethnographic, and theoretical research, the book provides a rich resource for those whom practice, advocate, teach, or study community music, music education, music therapy, ethnomusicology, and community cultural development.

This book addresses the needs of teacher-educators seeking to include composition pedagogy in music education curricula. Though several decades of scholarship have examined the processes and products of young composers and offered insight to their work, many teachers still report a significant degree of trepidation when asked to lead students in composition activities. This book provides guidance for developing pre-service and in-service teachers ability to confidently and effectively facilitate composition study in PreK-12 settings. Issues that frame the volume include why composition should be part of music education, and by extension, music teacher education; research bases in creativity and children's composition; and the changing nature of compositional practices in contemporary culture. Drawing on both research and practice, chapters provide models for leading composition study in elementary general music, choral and instrumental ensembles, and songwriting classes. Guidance is offered for those working with special needs populations and gifted-and-talented students, as well as those interested in expanding experiences beyond the classroom via technology. Moreover, specific programmatic approaches for addressing the professional development of pre-service and in-service teachers are offered in detail so that music teacher-educators may create environments where composition's potential to enliven and invigorate contemporary practices in music education can be fully embraced.

This book shows how recent work in cognitive science, especially that developed by cognitive linguists and cognitive psychologists, can be used to explain how we understand music. The book focuses on three cognitive processes: categorization, cross-domain mapping, and the use of conceptual models, and explores the part these play in theories of musical organization. The first part of the book provides a detailed overview of the relevant work in cognitive science, framed around specific musical examples. The second part brings this perspective to bear on a number of issues with which music scholarship has often been occupied, including the emergence of musical syntax and its relationship to musical semiosis, the problem of musical ontology, the relationship between words and music in songs, and conceptions of musical form and musical hierarchy.

Cosmic Cowboys and New Hicks: The Countercultural Sounds of Austin's Progressive Country Music Scene explores the roles that music, as a sounding phenomenon with culturally specific meanings, played in mediating the experiences of a community of musicians, entrepreneurs, journalists, and fans who viewed country music as part of their collective heritage. These same people sought to reclaim the sounds of country music to articulate a distinctively Texan musical counterculture that has had an indelible impact on the production and consumption of country music. Arguing that the sounds of a scene function as relatively stable and extremely powerful signifiers for scene participants, this book explores how music performs important cultural work within a music scene by helping participants to construct personal and collective identities, to imbue music scenes with a sense of place, and to relate to people who are not active within the scene.

This book gives an account of the individual works of one of the greatest composers. This first volume, the first of a two-volume study of the music of J. S. Bach, covers the earlier part of his composing career, 1695-1717. By studying the music chronologically a coherent picture of the composer's creative development emerges, drawing together all the strands of the individual repertoires (e.g., the cantatas, the organ music, the keyboard music). The book is divided into two parts, covering the early works and the mature Weimar compositions, respectively. Each part deals with four categories of composition in turn: large-scale keyboard works; preludes, fantasias, and fugues; organ chorales; and cantatas. Within each category, the discussion is prefaced by a list of the works to be considered, together with details of their original titles, catalogue numbers, and earliest sources. As indicated by the subtitle ‘Music to Delight the Spirit’ borrowed from Bach's own title-pages, the book draws attention to another important aspect of the book: not only is it a study of style and technique but also a work of criticism, an analytical evaluation of Bach's music, and an appreciation of its extraordinary qualities. It also takes account of the remarkable advances in Bach scholarship that have been made over the last fifty years, including the many studies that have appeared relating to various aspects of Bach's early music, such as the varied influences to which he was subjected and the problematic issues of dating and authenticity that arise. In doing so, it attempts to build up a coherent picture of his development as a creative artist, helping us to understand what distinguishes Bach's mature music from his early works and from the music of his predecessors and contemporaries. Hence we learn why it is that his later works are instantly recognizable as ‘Bachian’.

This book confronts an enigma of early writings on music: why chant, which was understood to be divinely inspired, needed to be altered in order to work within the then-operative modal system. To unravel this mystery, the book creates a broad framework that moves from Greek harmonic theory to the various stages in the transmission of Roman chant, citing numerous music treatises from the 6th to the 12th century. Out of this examination emerges the central point behind the problem: the tone system advocated by writers coming from the Greek harmonic tradition was not suited to the notation of chant and this basic incompatibility led to the creation of new theoretical constructs. By tracing the path of subsequent adaptation at the nexus of tone system, mode, and notation, the book promises insights into what mode meant to the medieval musician and how the system responded to its inherent limitations. Through an examination of the major musical treatises from the 6th through the 12th centuries, this text establishes a central dichotomy between classical harmonic theory and the practices of the Christian church. The book builds the foundation for a broad and original reinterpretation of the modal system and how it relates to melody, grammar, and notation.

This book is an examination of the uneasy alliance of two confessions, Lutheran and Catholic, at the prominent seventeenth-century Germany court of Dresden. It examines the implications of this alliance for the repertoire of sacred art music cultivated there; an influential repertoire that has received only scant attention from scholars.