Music and Inspiration

Music and Inspiration
Author: Jonathan Harvey
Publisher:
Total Pages: 192
Release: 1999
Genre: Music
ISBN: 9780571200252

Inspiration is the factor common to all composers throughout musical history - yet this is the first book to examine its source. Jonathan Harvey, one of Britain's foremost composers, here brings a specialist's insight to the relationship between the source of inspiration and the act of composition.

Jonathan Harvey: Song Offerings and White as Jasmine

Jonathan Harvey: Song Offerings and White as Jasmine
Author: Michael Downes
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 188
Release: 2017-02-24
Genre: Music
ISBN: 1351630806

Jonathan Harvey (1939-2012) was one of Britain's leading composers: his music is frequently performed throughout Europe, the United States (where he lived and worked) and Japan. He is particularly renowned for his electro-acoustic music, an aspect on which most previous writing on his work has focused. The present volume is the first detailed study of music from Harvey's considerable body of work for conventional forces. It focuses on two pieces that span one of the most fertile periods in Harvey's output: Song Offerings (1985; awarded the prestigious Britten Award), and White as Jasmine (1999). The book explores the links between the two works - both set texts by Hindu writers, employ a solo soprano, and adumbrate a spiritual journey - as well as showing how Harvey's musical language has evolved in the period between them. It examines Harvey's techniques of writing for the voice, for small ensemble (Song Offerings), and for large orchestra, subtly and characteristically enhanced with electronic sound (White as Jasmine). It shows how Harvey's music is informed by his profound understanding of Eastern religion, as well as offering a clear and accessible account of his distinctive musical language. Both works use musical processes to dramatic and clearly audible effect, as the book demonstrates with close reference to the accompanying downloadable resources. The book draws on interviews with the composer, and benefits from the author's exclusive access to sketches of the two works. It contextualises the works, showing how they are the product of a diverse series of musical influences and an engagement with ideas from both Eastern and Western religions. It also explores how Harvey continued to develop the musical and spiritual preoccupations revealed in these pieces in his later work, up to and including his third opera, Wagner Dream (2007).

Beautiful Thing

Beautiful Thing
Author: Jonathan Harvey
Publisher: Dramatists Play Service Inc
Total Pages: 76
Release: 1999
Genre: Drama
ISBN: 9780822217176

THE STORY: Jamie and Ste (short for Steve) are teenage neighbors in a working-class housing project in London. Jamie is bookish and shy while Ste is more athletic. Neither one has an ideal home life: Jamie's mother Sandra is bitter over her financi

All She Wants

All She Wants
Author: Jonathan Harvey
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2012-08-16
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 0230765432

All She Wants is a laugh out loud story about a Liverpool girl who becomes a famous soap star, by Coronation Street scriptwriter Jonathan Harvey. 'A mad-cap, laugh-out-loud roller coaster of a ride . . . with an unexpectedly tender sting in the tail.' - Marian Keyes, author of The Break There are some things in life you can always rely on. Living in the shadow of your ‘perfect’ brother Joey, getting the flu over Christmas, and your Mother showing you up in the supermarket. Then there are some things you really don’t count on happening: a good dose of fame, getting completely trashed at an awards ceremony, and catching your fella doing something unmentionable on your wedding day. This is my story, it’s dead tragic. You have been warned . . . 'Utterly original, sharply written and very funny. I laughed, and then I laughed. And then I had to go back and re-read the bits that I'd missed and laugh some more.' - Jojo Moyes, author of Me Before You ‘Hugely Enjoyable’ – comedian Kathy Burke.

His Life Was a Lie

His Life Was a Lie
Author: Jonathan S. Harvey
Publisher:
Total Pages: 412
Release: 2014-10-23
Genre: Suspense fiction
ISBN: 9781909984332

Sir Roger Knight seems to be a classic British success story - he has a rock-solid business, a comfortable suburban home, an adoring wife and daughter, and a knighthood, to boot. But beneath the outward trappings of respectability and conformity lies a very different tale - whose roots lie in the murky wheelings and dealings in the dying days of the Third Reich.

The History of Us

The History of Us
Author: Jonathan Harvey
Publisher:
Total Pages: 442
Release: 2017
Genre: Friendship
ISBN: 9781510073869

Liverpool, 1985: Kathleen, Adam and Jocelyn are three teenage friends who bond over an unconventional nativity play. They all have ambitions, they all have dreams. Adam wants to be a writer, Jocelyn wants to sing and Kathleen, well, she wants to be an embalmer. London 2015: Kathleen is a borderline alcoholic, Adam is holding on to a shocking secret and Jocelyn is dead. Where did it all go wrong? How did having the world at their feet turn into having the weight of it on their shoulders?

Jonathan Harvey

Jonathan Harvey
Author: Arnold Whittall
Publisher: Penguin Mass Market
Total Pages: 90
Release: 1999
Genre: Composers
ISBN: 9780571195817

The second in a series of handbooks on composers of today, aiming to introduce their work to a wide audience and to describe their creative development. Each volume includes a substantial interview with the composer and a comprehensive work list. Jonathan Harvey has been a leading and distinctive presence in British music since the 1960s. After studies with Erwin Stein and Hans Keller, Harvey, in his earliest works, explored the living English tradition extending from Britten to Maxwell Davies. At the same time, however, he was no less open to developments on the wider international scene, and his music has achieved as much success in continental Europe and America as it has in Britain. It is in his studio work, especially at IRCAM but at other institutions as well, that he has explored with particular persuasiveness the conjunction between technology and spirituality that gives his work its most individual quality.

The Girl Who Just Appeared

The Girl Who Just Appeared
Author: Jonathan Harvey
Publisher: Pan
Total Pages: 316
Release: 2014-08-01
Genre: Fiction
ISBN: 174353356X

London 2014. Holly Smith has never fitted in. Adopted when just a few months old, she's always felt she was someone with no history, the girl who just appeared. All she has is the address of where she was born - 32B Gambier Terrace, Liverpool. By a bizarre twist of fate Holly discovers that the flat is available to rent. She travels north and moves in. When she finds a biscuit tin full of yellowing papers under the floorboards, she wonders if this might hold the secret to her past. Liverpool 1981. Fifteen-year-old Darren negotiates life with his errant mother and the younger brother he is bringing up. When the Toxteth Riots explode around him Darren finds himself with a moral dilemma that will have consequences for the rest of his life. Flitting between the present and the past, we discover how Darren and Holly's lives become intertwined. Will Holly uncover the secrets of her past? Or will she always feel like the girl who just appeared?