The Rest Is Noise

The Rest Is Noise
Author: Alex Ross
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 706
Release: 2007-10-16
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1429932880

Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the Year Time magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2007 Newsweek Favorite Books of 2007 A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2007 In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties; from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest Is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.

Listen to This

Listen to This
Author: Alex Ross
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2010-09-28
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1429977612

One of The Telegraph's Best Music Books 2011 Alex Ross's award-winning international bestseller, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, has become a contemporary classic, establishing Ross as one of our most popular and acclaimed cultural historians. Listen to This, which takes its title from a beloved 2004 essay in which Ross describes his late-blooming discovery of pop music, showcases the best of his writing from more than a decade at The New Yorker. These pieces, dedicated to classical and popular artists alike, are at once erudite and lively. In a previously unpublished essay, Ross brilliantly retells hundreds of years of music history—from Renaissance dances to Led Zeppelin—through a few iconic bass lines of celebration and lament. He vibrantly sketches canonical composers such as Schubert, Verdi, and Brahms; gives us in-depth interviews with modern pop masters such as Björk and Radiohead; and introduces us to music students at a Newark high school and indie-rock hipsters in Beijing. Whether his subject is Mozart or Bob Dylan, Ross shows how music expresses the full complexity of the human condition. Witty, passionate, and brimming with insight, Listen to This teaches us how to listen more closely.

Traditions, Institutions, and American Popular Tradition

Traditions, Institutions, and American Popular Tradition
Author: John Covach
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 165
Release: 2013-12-19
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1134430388

This issue explores the often uneasy relationship betwen rock and classical music by presenting a range of essays on the composers, performers, theorists, historians, critics and listeners who welcome the difficult but fruitful intercourse between classical and popular culture. Fascinating philosophical and analytical issues arise as a picture of the rich historical relationship between the two media emerges. John Covach is associate professor of music at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has published numerous articles on rock music, twelve-tone music and theory, and the philosophy of music. He is co-editor, with Graeme Boone, of Understanding Rock: Essays in Musical Analysis (Oxford UP, 1997). Also includes 32 musical examples. Walter Everett is associate professor of music of Music at the University of Michigan. He has published numerous articles on rock music, art song, opera, Schenkerian theory, and other topics. He is author of The Beatles as Musicans: Revolver through theAnthology (O

Dvorak's Prophecy: And the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music

Dvorak's Prophecy: And the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music
Author: Joseph Horowitz
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Total Pages: 256
Release: 2021-11-23
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0393881253

A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 A provocative interpretation of why classical music in America "stayed white"—how it got to be that way and what can be done about it. In 1893 the composer Antonín Dvorák prophesied a “great and noble school” of American classical music based on the “negro melodies” he had excitedly discovered since arriving in the United States a year before. But while Black music would foster popular genres known the world over, it never gained a foothold in the concert hall. Black composers found few opportunities to have their works performed, and white composers mainly rejected Dvorák’s lead. Joseph Horowitz ranges throughout American cultural history, from Frederick Douglass and Huckleberry Finn to George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and the work of Ralph Ellison, searching for explanations. Challenging the standard narrative for American classical music fashioned by Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, he looks back to literary figures—Emerson, Melville, and Twain—to ponder how American music can connect with a “usable past.” The result is a new paradigm that makes room for Black composers, including Harry Burleigh, Nathaniel Dett, William Levi Dawson, and Florence Price, while giving increased prominence to Charles Ives and George Gershwin. Dvorák’s Prophecy arrives in the midst of an important conversation about race in America—a conversation that is taking place in music schools and concert halls as well as capitols and boardrooms. As George Shirley writes in his foreword to the book, “We have been left unprepared for the current cultural moment. [Joseph Horowitz] explains how we got there [and] proposes a bigger world of American classical music than what we have known before. It is more diverse and more equitable. And it is more truthful.”

The Worship Pastor

The Worship Pastor
Author: Zac M. Hicks
Publisher: Zondervan
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2016-10-11
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0310525241

Modern worship leaders are restless. They have inherited a model of leadership that equates leading worship with being a rock star. But leading worship is more than a performance, it's about shaping souls and making disciples. Every worship leader is really a pastor. The Worship Pastor is a practical and biblical introduction to this essential pastoral role. Filled with engaging, illustrative stories it is organized to address questions of theory and practice, striving to balance conversational accessibility with informed instruction. Part One presents a series of evocative "vignettes"--intriguing and descriptive titles and metaphors of who a Worship Pastor is and what he or she does. It shows the Worship Pastor as Church-Lover, Disciple Maker, Corporate Mystic, and Doxological Philosopher. Part Two covers specific roles related to ministry within the worship service itself--the Worship Pastor as Theological Dietician, Caregiver, Mortician, Emotional Shepherd, War General, Prophetic Guardian, Missional Historian, and Liturgical Architect. Part Three looks at ministry beyond the worship service--the Worship Pastor as Visionary Teacher, Evangelist, Artist Chaplain, and Team Leader. While some worship leaders are eager to embrace their pastoral role, many are lost and confused or lack the resources of time or money to figure out what this role looks like. Pastor Zac Hicks gives us a clear guide to leading worship, one that takes the pastoral call seriously.

A Sound Mind

A Sound Mind
Author: Paul Morley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 625
Release: 2020-11-10
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1635570255

For readers of Mozart in the Jungle and Year of Wonder, a new history of and guide to classical music. Paul Morley made his name as a journalist covering the rock and pop of the 1970s and 1980s. But as his career progressed, he found himself drawn toward developing technologies, streaming platforms, and, increasingly, the music from the past that streaming services now made available. Suddenly able to access every piece Mozart or Bach had ever written and to curate playlists that worked with these musicians' themes across different performers, composers, and eras, he began to understand classical music in a whole new way and to believe that it was music at its most dramatic and revealing. In A Sound Mind, Morley takes readers along on his journey into the history and future of classical music. His descriptions, explanations, and guidance make this seemingly arcane genre more friendly to listeners and show the music's power, depth, and timeless beauty. In Morley's capable hands, the history of the classical genre is shown to be the history of all music, with these long-ago pieces influencing everyone from jazz greats to punk rockers and the pop musicians of today.

American Music in the Twentieth Century

American Music in the Twentieth Century
Author: Kyle Gann
Publisher: Schirmer
Total Pages: 424
Release: 1997
Genre: Education
ISBN:

American Music in the Twentieth Century surveys the art music written in the United States during the last 100 years from the groundbreaking experiments of Charles Ives to the present day. Writing for the general reader, Kyle Gann describes the characteristic sounds of the diverse movements that have sprung up in this eventful period, while at the same time he sketches the changing social and cultural contexts for American concert music, and provides concise biographies of key figures.

Rockin' the Classics and Classicizin' the Rock:

Rockin' the Classics and Classicizin' the Rock:
Author: Janell R. Duxbury
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 590
Release: 2001-02-05
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1462807364

Rock music of all varieties has been influenced by classical music and vice versa, both in the form of direct quotes and in the form of borrowings of style, composition, and instrumentation. The average listener may be unaware of the many links between rock music and the classics. One might remember a few examples, such as Walter Murphy's chart-topping "A Fifth of Beethoven" or Eric Carmen's "All by Myself," but pass them off as interesting anomalies. However, the influence of the classics on rock music is pervasive and grows from a long line of precedents. This second supplement to Janell R. Duxbury's original 1985 discography, Rockin' the Classics and Classicizin' the Rock, brings the earlier work and first supplement up-to-date with hundreds of new entries documenting recently released or newly discovered examples of the interconnection between these musical genres. Duxbury details nearly 700 new examples of recorded rock instrumentals and songs that borrow musical themes from the classics. Variations range from contemporary renditions of complete classical works to brief classical quotes or phrases subtly incorporated into rock compositions. Duxbury also gives additional examples of recorded orchestral versions of songs originally composed and/or written by rock artists. In these examples, the musical style varies from strict classical interpretations to pop-style orchestral renditions. The second supplement then expands Duxbury's original compilation of sound recordings and live performances of rock groups performing with established orchestras and choruses, selected samples of recorded rock music that simulate baroque or classical sound/structure, examples of the manifest influence of rock on classical music, and instances of rock artists and classical artists switching roles. Lastly, this discography updates the 1985 version and the first supplement with new information, expanded details, and minor corrections to the earlier works. An extended list of selected non-rock background examples is included in several new appendixes. The Preface is updated. A general index includes the names of classical composers, rock artists and groups, orchestras, choruses, orchestra conductors, sound recording producers, and song or instrumental titles. With its incomparable scope and content, this supplement, together with Duxbury's previous discography, and its first supplement will be appreciated by students, researchers, record collectors, trivia buffs, music industry employees, and fans of rock music and the classics.

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Rock Music Research

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Rock Music Research
Author: Allan Moore
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 682
Release: 2020-07-09
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1501330470

The Bloomsbury Handbook of Rock Music Research is the first comprehensive academic survey of the field of rock music as it stands today. More than 50 years into its life and we still ask - what is rock music, why is it studied, and how does it work, both as music and as cultural activity? This volume draws together 37 of the leading academics working on rock to provide answers to these questions and many more. The text is divided into four major sections: practice of rock (analysis, performance, and recording); theories; business of rock; and social and culture issues. Each chapter combines two approaches, providing a summary of current knowledge of the area concerned as well as the consequences of that research and suggesting profitable subsequent directions to take. This text investigates and presents the field at a level of depth worthy of something which has had such a pervasive influence on the lives of millions.