Between Couch and Piano

Between Couch and Piano
Author: Gilbert J. Rose
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2014-04-08
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 113544403X

Why and how do music and abstract art pack such universal appeal? Why do they often have 'therapeutic' efficacy? Between Couch and Piano links well-established psychoanalytic ideas with historical and neurological theory to help us begin to understand some of the reasons behind music's ubiquity and power. Drawing on new psychoanalytic understanding as well as advances in neuroscience, this book sheds light on the role of the arts as stimulus, and as a key to creative awareness. Subjects covered include: * music in relation to the trauma of loss * music in connection with wholeness and the sense of identity * the ability of music to jump-start normal feelings, motion and identity where these have been seemingly destroyed by neurological disease * the theory of therapeutic efficacy of music and art. Between Couch and Piano is a comprehensive overview that will be of interest to all those intrigued by the interrelation of psychoanalysis and the creative arts. www.psychoanalysisarena.com

The Weight of a Piano

The Weight of a Piano
Author: Chris Cander
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 337
Release: 2019-01-22
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0525654682

USA TODAY BESTSELLER In 1962, in the Soviet Union, eight-year-old Katya is bequeathed what will become the love of her life: a Blüthner piano, on which she discovers an enrichening passion for music. Yet after she marries, her husband insists the family emigrate to America—and loses her piano in the process. In 2012, in Bakersfield, California, twenty-six-year-old Clara Lundy is burdened by the last gift her father gave her before he and her mother died in a terrible house fire: a Blüthner upright she has never learned to play. Now a talented and independent auto mechanic, Clara’s career is put on hold when she breaks her hand trying to move the piano, and in sudden frustration she decides to sell it. Only in discovering the identity of the buyer—and the secret history of her piano—will Clara be set free to live the life of her choosing.

The Music of Life

The Music of Life
Author: Elizabeth Rusch
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 52
Release: 2017-04-18
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1481444859

Award-winning biographer Elizabeth Rusch and two-time Caldecott Honor–recipient Marjorie Priceman team up to tell the inspiring story of the invention of the world’s most popular instrument: the piano. Bartolomeo Cristofori coaxes just the right sounds from the musical instruments he makes. Some of his keyboards can play piano, light and soft; others make forte notes ring out, strong and loud, but Cristofori longs to create an instrument that can be played both soft and loud. His talent has caught the attention of Prince Ferdinando de Medici, who wants his court to become the musical center of Italy. The prince brings Cristofori to the noisy city of Florence, where the goldsmiths’ tiny hammers whisper tink, tink and the blacksmiths’ big sledgehammers shout BANG, BANG! Could hammers be the key to the new instrument? At last Cristofori gets his creation just right. It is called the pianoforte, for what it can do. All around the world, people young and old can play the most intricate music of their lives, thanks to Bartolomeo Cristofori’s marvelous creation: the piano.

Rough Ideas

Rough Ideas
Author: Stephen Hough
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2020-02-04
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0374721408

A collection of essays on music and life by the famed classical pianist and composer Stephen Hough is one of the world’s leading pianists, winning global acclaim and numerous awards, both for his concerts and his recordings. He is also a writer, composer, and painter, and has been described by The Economist as one of “Twenty Living Polymaths.” Hough writes informally and engagingly about music and the life of a musician, from the broader aspects of what it is to walk out onto a stage or to make a recording, to specialist tips from deep inside the practice room: how to trill, how to pedal, how to practice. He also writes vividly about people he’s known, places he’s traveled to, books he’s read, paintings he’s seen; and he touches on more controversial subjects, such as assisted suicide and abortion. Even religion is there—the possibility of the existence of God, problems with some biblical texts, and the challenges involved in being a gay Catholic. Rough Ideas is an illuminating, constantly surprising introduction to the life and mind of one of our great cultural figures.

Haven

Haven
Author: Celia Breslin
Publisher: Champagne Books
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2013-07-02
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 1927454476

San Francisco nightclub owner Carina Tranquilli works hard, plays hard, and never allows the death of her parents and her twelve-year memory gap to get her down. But her life takes a left turn when a witch attacks her on her twenty-fifth birthday. Three hauntingly familiar vampires emerge to reveal she possesses a latent power. To protect her from their enemies, they admit to wiping her memories clean and abandoning her as a child, but now they need her help. As she struggles to evade her new protectors and even newer enemies, she meets Alexander, an enigmatic, undead musician. Insta-lust flares, leaving her wanting more. With evil’s minions hounding her every move, and everything she thought she knew turned on its axis, Carina must harness her burgeoning power, unravel her vampire family’s web of deceit, and fight to have a love life... without getting killed in the process.

The Planet of Junior Brown

The Planet of Junior Brown
Author: Virginia Hamilton
Publisher: Open Road Media
Total Pages: 141
Release: 2011-02-15
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1453213791

DIVJunior Brown is a musical prodigy losing touch with reality and everyone around him—except for one important friend/divDIV /div DIVJunior Brown is different than the other kids in his eighth-grade class. For one, he weighs three hundred pounds. He’s also a talented musician with a serious future as a professional pianist—if he survives middle school. With an overbearing mom, disappointed teachers, and fellow students who tease him mercilessly, Junior starts to slip away into his own mind. His last hope may be his only friend, Buddy Clark, a boy in his class without a home or family who has already learned some of life’s toughest lessons./div

The Lost Pianos of Siberia

The Lost Pianos of Siberia
Author: Sophy Roberts
Publisher: Grove Press
Total Pages: 443
Release: 2020-08-04
Genre: Travel
ISBN: 0802149308

This “melodious” mix of music, history, and travelogue “reveals a story inextricably linked to the drama of Russia itself . . . These pages sing like a symphony.” —The Wall Street Journal Siberia’s story is traditionally one of exiles, penal colonies, and unmarked graves. Yet there is another tale to tell. Dotted throughout this remote land are pianos—grand instruments created during the boom years of the nineteenth century, as well as humble Soviet-made uprights that found their way into equally modest homes. They tell the story of how, ever since entering Russian culture under the westernizing influence of Catherine the Great, piano music has run through the country like blood. How these pianos traveled into this snowbound wilderness in the first place is testament to noble acts of fortitude by governors, adventurers, and exiles. Siberian pianos have accomplished extraordinary feats, from the instrument that Maria Volkonsky, wife of an exiled Decembrist revolutionary, used to spread music east of the Urals, to those that brought reprieve to the Soviet Gulag. That these instruments might still exist in such a hostile landscape is remarkable. That they are still capable of making music in far-flung villages is nothing less than a miracle. The Lost Pianos of Siberia follows Roberts on a three-year adventure as she tracks a number of instruments to find one whose history is definitively Siberian. Her journey reveals a desolate land inhabited by wild tigers and deeply shaped by its dark history, yet one that is also profoundly beautiful—and peppered with pianos. “An elegant and nuanced journey through literature, through history, through music, murder and incarceration and revolution, through snow and ice and remoteness, to discover the human face of Siberia. I loved this book.” —Paul Theroux

Jessica

Jessica
Author: Jeffrey Von Glahn
Publisher: Booktango
Total Pages: 261
Release: 2014-03-05
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1468944762

Jessica had always been haunted by the fear that the unthinkable had happened when she had been “made-up.” For as far back as she could remember, she had no sense of a Self. Her mother thought of her as the “perfect infant” because “she never wanted anything and she never needed anything.” As a child, just thinking of saying “I need” or “I want” left her feeling like an empty shell and that her mind was about to spin out of control. Terrified of who––or what––she was, she lived in constant dread over being found guilty of impersonating a human being. Jeffrey Von Glahn, Ph.D., an experienced therapist with an unshakable belief in the healing powers of the human spirit, and Jessica blaze a trail into this unexplored territory. As if she has, in fact, become an infant again, Jessica remembers in extraordinary detail events from the earliest days of her life––events that threatened to twist her embryonic humanness from its natural course of development. Her recollections are like listening to an infant who could talk describe every psychologically dramatic moment of its life as it was happening. When Dr. Von Glahn met Jessica, she was 23. Everyone regarded her as a responsible, caring person – except that she never drove and she stayed at her mother’s when her husband worked nights. For many months, Jessica’s therapy was stuck in an impasse. Dr. Von Glahn had absolutely no idea that she was so terrified over simply talking about herself. In hopes of breakthrough, she boldly asked for four hours of therapy a day, for three days a week, for six weeks. The mystery that was Jessica cracked open in dramatic fashion, and in a way that Dr. Von Glahn could never have imagined. Then she asked for four days a week – and for however long it took. In the following months, her electrifying journey into her mystifying past brought her ever closer to a final confrontation with the events that had threatened to forever strip her of her basic humanness.

The Outlaw and His Family

The Outlaw and His Family
Author: Judy Ingram
Publisher: Xlibris Corporation
Total Pages: 106
Release: 2017-08-18
Genre: Young Adult Fiction
ISBN: 1543444547

After the Civil War and seeing his plantation ravished, William shook his fist in the air and said, I will get it all back. Heading out west, William ran across two other men that was outraged as he was. With revenge in mind, the three men started their own gang to get back the money from the government that was taken from them during the Civil War. Will rode into Mexico to hide from the law after robbing stagecoaches and banks. There he met Angelina and fell in love. Could he ever settle down after all of his excursions? Could he have a family and live a normal life like other people? Find out about William and his family with their hardships and comebacks, which could only be accomplished through faith in God.