Lou Harrison

Lou Harrison
Author: Leta E. Miller
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 424
Release: 1998
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN:

Lou Harrison, who celebrated his 80th birthday in 1997, has often been cited as one of the America's most original and influential composers. In addition to his prolific musical output, Harrison is also a skilled painter, calligrapher, essayist, critic, poet, and instrument-builder. During his long and varied career, he has explored dance, Asian music, tuning systems, and universal languages, and has actively championed political causes ranging from pacifism to gay rights. As an articulate and outspoken observer of the contemporary musical scene, he is frequently quoted in the media; yet until now no comprehensive study of his life and works has been published. The present book, supported by extensive archival research and nearly 70 interviews, examines the ideas that have shaped Harrison's creative output, as seen through the eyes of the composer and his associates. A detailed biographical section is followed by individual chapters focusing on Music and Dance, Intonation and Tuning, Instruments, Asian influences, Gamelan, Music and Politics, Music Criticism, and Compositional Processes. In a separate chapter, the authors describe the historical background of the San Francisco gay community, Harrison's literary and musical statements on gay rights, and possible "gay markers" on his musical style. An annotated works-list details over 300 compositions, and a full-length CD illustrates the text in sound, including several unique and previously unrecorded works. This engaging study of Harrison's life and works will be indispensable to students and scholars of American music and to performing artists and programmers.

Compose Our World

Compose Our World
Author: Alison G. Boardman
Publisher: Teachers College Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2021
Genre: Education
ISBN: 0807779172

Learn how to develop and sustain multimodal, project-based learning (PBL) instruction in secondary English Language Arts classrooms. National standards encourage authentic forms of reading, writing, and communication that can support college and career readiness, and this book highlights PBL as a powerful way to harness students’ interests and engage them in academically rigorous learning. The authors provide specific, research-informed curricular approaches and instructional guidance for classroom teachers, as well as an overview of the dimensions of PBL that are often overlooked in the broad expectations of inquiry-based teaching. Instead of “quick fix” lessons, Compose Our World explores how core dimensions of equitable teaching—such as social and emotional support, universal design for learning, and cultivating classroom community—function as the bedrock for student success in PBL contexts and beyond. Book Features: Based on the authors’ extensive experience developing and studying a PBL curriculum.Brings PBL to life through classroom vignettes and teacher and student voices.Provides classroom resources that facilitate customization to unique contexts. Shares ideas for developing teacher communities around PBL practices.Offers additional curriculum materials online.Appropriate for ELA teachers new to PBL, as well as veterans.

Composing the World

Composing the World
Author: Andrew James Hicks
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 345
Release: 2017
Genre: Music
ISBN: 0190658207

Taking in hand the current "discovery" that we can listen to the cosmos, Andrew Hicks argues that sound-and the harmonious coordination of sounds, sources, and listeners-has always been an integral part of the history of studying the cosmos. In Composing the World, Hicks presents a narrative tour through medieval Platonic cosmology with reflections on important philosophical movements along the way. The book will resonate with a variety of readers, and it encourages us to rethink the role of music and sound within our greater understanding of the universe.

A Composer's World

A Composer's World
Author: Paul Hindemith
Publisher: Schott Music
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2022-10-17
Genre: Music
ISBN: 3795730287

The Book aims to be a guide through the little universe which is the working place of the man who writes music. As such it talks predominantly to the layman, although the expert composer may also find some stimulation in it... From the center of basic theory our discussion will spread out into all the realms of experience which border the technical aspect on composing, such as aesthetics, sociology, philosphy and so on... We must be grateful that with our art we have been placed halfway between science and religion, enjoying equally the advantages of exactitude in thinking... and of the unlimeted world of faith. Paul Hindemith, from the preface

Composing a Life

Composing a Life
Author: Mary Catherine Bateson
Publisher: Grove Press
Total Pages: 264
Release: 2001
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780802138040

This reissue of Bateson's treatise on the improvisational lives of five extraordinary women uses their personal stories to delve into the creative potential of the complex lives of today, where ambitions are constantly refocused on new goals and possibilities.

Composing Media Composing Embodiment

Composing Media Composing Embodiment
Author: Kristin L Arola
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Total Pages: 320
Release: 2012-03-31
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1457184524

“What any body is—and is able to do—cannot be disentangled from the media we use to consume and produce texts.” ---from the Introduction. Kristin Arola and Anne Wysocki argue that composing in new media is composing the body—is embodiment. In Composing (Media) = Composing (Embodiment), they have brought together a powerful set of essays that agree on the need for compositionists—and their students—to engage with a wide range of new media texts. These chapters explore how texts of all varieties mediate and thereby contribute to the human experiences of communication, of self, the body, and composing. Sample assignments and activities exemplify how this exploration might proceed in the writing classroom. Contributors here articulate ways to understand how writing enables the experience of our bodies as selves, and at the same time to see the work of (our) writing in mediating selves to make them accessible to institutional perceptions and constraints. These writers argue that what a body does, and can do, cannot be disentangled from the media we use, nor from the times and cultures and technologies with which we engage. To the discipline of composition, this is an important discussion because it clarifies the impact/s of literacy on citizens, freedoms, and societies. To the classroom, it is important because it helps compositionists to support their students as they enact, learn, and reflect upon their own embodied and embodying writing.

Make Music!

Make Music!
Author: Norma Jean Haynes
Publisher: Storey Publishing, LLC
Total Pages: 147
Release: 2019-04-30
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 1635860350

Music is for everyone — no prior experience required! Make Music! invites kids and families to celebrate the joy of sound with a variety of inventive activities, including playing dandelion trumpets, conducting percussion conversations, and composing their own pieces. Musician and educator Norma Jean Haynes brings the pioneering work of Ann Sayre Wiseman and John Langstaff to a new generation of kids aged 5 and up, focusing on the playfulness, spontaneity, and creativity of music. Kids explore rhythm with clapping, body drumming, and intonations. They learn to create found sound with kitchen pots and pans, the Sunday paper, or even the Velcro on their sneakers. And step-by-step instructions show how to make 35 different instruments, from chimes and bucket drums to a comb kazoo and a milk carton guitar.

Composing Capital

Composing Capital
Author: Marianna Ritchey
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 221
Release: 2019-08-05
Genre: Music
ISBN: 022664023X

The familiar old world of classical music, with its wealthy donors and ornate concert halls, is changing. The patronage of a wealthy few is being replaced by that of corporations, leading to new unions of classical music and contemporary capitalism. In Composing Capital, Marianna Ritchey lays bare the appropriation of classical music by the current neoliberal regime, arguing that artists, critics, and institutions have aligned themselves—and, by extension, classical music itself—with free-market ideology. More specifically, she demonstrates how classical music has lent its cachet to marketing schemes, tech firm-sponsored performances, and global corporate partnerships. As Ritchey shows, the neoliberalization of classical music has put music at the service of contemporary capitalism, blurring the line between creativity and entrepreneurship, and challenging us to imagine how a noncommodified musical practice might be possible in today’s world.

Composing Japanese Musical Modernity

Composing Japanese Musical Modernity
Author: Bonnie C. Wade
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2014-01-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 022608549X

When we think of composers, we usually envision an isolated artist separate from the orchestra—someone alone in a study, surround by staff paper—and in Europe and America this image generally has been accurate. For most of Japan’s musical history, however, no such role existed—composition and performance were deeply intertwined. Only when Japan began to embrace Western culture in the late nineteenth century did the role of the composer emerge. In Composing Japanese Musical Modernity, Bonnie Wade uses an investigation of this new musical role to offer new insights not just into Japanese music but Japanese modernity at large and global cosmopolitan culture. Wade examines the short history of the composer in Japanese society, looking at the creative and economic opportunities that have sprung up around them—or that they forged—during Japan’s astonishingly fast modernization. She shows that modernist Japanese composers have not bought into the high modernist concept of the autonomous artist, instead remaining connected to the people. Articulating Japanese modernism in this way, Wade tells a larger story of international musical life, of the spaces in which tradition and modernity are able to meet and, ultimately, where modernity itself has been made.

Composing Interactive Music

Composing Interactive Music
Author: Todd Winkler
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2001-01-26
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780262731393

Interactive music refers to a composition or improvisation in which software interprets live performances to produce music generated or modified by computers. In Composing Interactive Music, Todd Winkler presents both the technical and aesthetic possibilities of this increasingly popular area of computer music. His own numerous compositions have been the laboratory for the research and development that resulted in this book. The author's examples use a graphical programming language called Max. Each example in the text is accompanied by a picture of how it appears on the computer screen. The same examples are included as software on the accompanying CD-ROM, playable on a Macintosh computer with a MIDI keyboard. Although the book is aimed at those interested in writing music and software using Max, the casual reader can learn the basic concepts of interactive composition by just reading the text, without running any software. The book concludes with a discussion of recent multimedia work incorporating projected images and video playback with sound for concert performances and art installations.