Interviews with American Composers

Interviews with American Composers PDF

Author: Barney Childs

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2022-01-25

Total Pages: 737

ISBN-13: 0252052927

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In 1972-73, Barney Childs embarked on an ambitious attempt to survey the landscape of new American concert music. He recorded freewheeling conversations with fellow composers, most of them under forty, all of them important but most not yet famous. Though unable to publish the interviews in his lifetime, Childs had gathered invaluable dialogues with the likes of Robert Ashley, Olly Wilson, Harold Budd, Christian Wolff, and others. Virginia Anderson edits the first published collection of these conversations. She pairs each interview with a contextual essay by a contemporary expert that shows how the composer's discussion with Childs fits into his life and work. Together, the interviewees cover a broad range of ideas and concerns around topics like education, notation, developments in electronic music, changing demands on performers, and tonal music. Innovative and revealing, Interviews with American Composers is an artistic and historical snapshot of American music at an important crossroads.

Dictionary of American Classical Composers

Dictionary of American Classical Composers PDF

Author: Neil Butterworth

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-10-02

Total Pages: 1359

ISBN-13: 1136790233

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

The Dictionary of American Classical Composers covers over 650 composers active from the 18th century to today. Covering all classical styles, it offers the most comprehensive overview of key composers in the United States available. Entries include basic biographical information and critical analysis of each composer's key works and ideas. Entries also include worklists and bibliographic information. Whenever possible, the entries will have been checked by the composers themselves to assure greatest possible accuracy. This new edition, completely updated and expanded from the 1984 edition, also includes over 200 historic photographs.

Musical Landscapes in Color

Musical Landscapes in Color PDF

Author: Bill Banfield

Publisher: Scarecrow Press

Published: 2004-09-01

Total Pages: 398

ISBN-13: 0585464162

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A sequel to the award-winning The Black Composer Speaks (Scarecrow Press, 1978), this exploration of the creative world of African American composers traces the lives and careers of 40 talented individuals and, in their own words, provides perspectives on a world that has been slow to recognize their remarkable contributions to classical music. The discussion places the music of these composers within the greater context of Western art music, but analyzes it through the lenses of sociology, Western concepts of art and taste, and vernacular musical forms, including spirituals, blues, jazz, and contemporary popular music. Each chapter is devoted to an individual composer, who discusses his or her musical training, compositional techniques and style, and the composer's personal philosophy as reflected in his or her music. A selected list of compositions for each composer is included, as well as a photo and sample of the composer's "hand." Banfield offers unprecedented insight into the history and influence of the African American composer with this documentary, which will appeal to everyone from the music scholar to the general reader.

Ten Great American Composers

Ten Great American Composers PDF

Author: Carmen Bredeson

Publisher: Enslow Publishing

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780766018327

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Unveils the unique influences of Sousa, Ellington and eight other composers whose musical creations have become some of the most memorable music in history.

American Composers

American Composers PDF

Author: Elsa Z. Posell

Publisher:

Published: 1963

Total Pages: 200

ISBN-13:

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Includes material on Samuel Barber, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Henry Dixon Cowell, Paul Creston, Norman Dello Joio, Lukas Foss, Stephen Collins Foster, George Gershwin, Morton Gould, Charles Griffes, Ferde Grofe, Howard Hanson, Roy Harris, Alan Hovhaness, Charles Ives, Ulysses Kay, Normand Lockwood, Edward MacDowell, Peter Mennin, Gian-Carlo Menotti, Douglas Stuart Moore, Walter Piston, Quincy Porter, Wallingford Riegger, William Schuman, Roger Sessions, John Philip Sousa, and William Grant Still.

Christian Wolff

Christian Wolff PDF

Author: Michael Hicks

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2012-09-15

Total Pages: 138

ISBN-13: 0252094166

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In this first interpretive narrative of the life and work of Christian Wolff, Michael Hicks and Christian Asplund trace the influences and sensibilities of a contemporary composer's atypical career path and restless imagination. Written in full cooperation with Wolff, including access to his papers, this volume is a much-needed introduction to a leading avant-garde composer still living, writing music, and speaking about his own work. Wolff has pioneered various compositional and notational idioms, including overtly political music, indeterminacy, graphic scores, and extreme virtuosity. Trained as a classicist rather than a musician, Wolff has never quite had both feet in the rarefied world of contemporary composition. Yet he's considered a "composer's composer," with a mind ensconced equally in ancient Greek tragedy and experimental music and an eccentric and impulsive compositional approach that eludes a fixed stylistic fingerprint. Hicks and Asplund cover Wolff's family life and formative years, his role as a founder of the New York School of composers, and the context of his life and work as part of the John Cage circle, as well as his departures from it. Critically assessing Wolff's place within the experimental musical field, this volume captures both his eloquence and reticence and provides insights into his broad interests and activities within music and beyond.

Reminiscences of an American Composer and Pianist

Reminiscences of an American Composer and Pianist PDF

Author: George Walker

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780810869400

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

In 1996, George Walker became the first black American to win the Pulitzer Prize for music. This accolade, awarded for his composition Lilacs, was just one of many. He has been the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, two Rockefeller Fellowships, a John Hay Whitney Fellowship, two Guggenheim Fellowships, and six honorary doctoral degrees. Considered one of the most important American composers of the last century, Walker has produced works that rank among the finest in contemporary classical music.

Carla Bley

Carla Bley PDF

Author: Amy C. Beal

Publisher: University of Illinois Press

Published: 2011-10-25

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 0252036360

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This is the first comprehensive treatment of the remarkable music and influence of Carla Bley, a highly innovative American jazz composer, pianist, organist, band leader, and activist. With fastidious attention to Bley's diverse compositions over the last fifty years spanning critical moments in jazz and experimental music history, Amy C. Beal tenders a long-overdue representation of a major figure in American music. Best known for her jazz opera "Escalator over the Hill," her role in the Free Jazz movement of the 1960s, and her collaborations with artists such as Jack Bruce, Don Cherry, Robert Wyatt, and Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason, Bley has successfully maneuvered the field of jazz from highly accessible, tradition-based contexts to commercially unviable, avant-garde works. Beal details the staggering variety in Bley's work as well as her use of parody, quotations, and contradictions, examining the vocabulary Bley has developed throughout her career and highlighting the compositional and cultural significance of her experimentalism. Beal also points to Bley's professional and managerial work as a pioneer in the development of artist-owned record labels, the cofounder and manager of WATT Records, and the cofounder of New Music Distribution Service. Showing her to be not just an artist but an activist who has maintained musical independence and professional control amid the profit-driven, corporation-dominated world of commercial jazz, Beal's straightforward discussion of Bley's life and career will stimulate deeper examinations of her work.

Duke Ellington

Duke Ellington PDF

Author: Steven Brower

Publisher: Rizzoli Publications

Published: 2016-03-22

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 0847848132

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Beautifully illustrated and unparalleled in scope, this is an elegant visual celebration befitting the life and work of the "prince of the piano." Duke Ellington was the undisputed father of the American songbook. A prolific writer and consummate performer, Ellington was the author of such standards as "Solitude," "Prelude to a Kiss," and "It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got that Swing)." With a career that spanned five decades, he is one of the defining composers of the Jazz Age. With unprecedented access to the Ellington family archives, this long overdue book illuminates the life and work of an icon of twentieth-century music from his humble beginnings to his long-lasting success. Every stage of Ellington’s career is brought to life, from sepia photographs of his early days in Washington, DC, to colorful playbills from the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, his triumphant tours of Europe in the 1930s, and his pioneering explosion of form and genre in the 1940s and beyond. Alongside more than two hundred stunning images, contributions from peers such as Dave Brubeck, Cornel West, Quincy Jones, and Tony Bennett shed light on Ellington’s musical legacy, while the voice of his granddaughter Mercedes reveals the character behind the charisma, and the man behind the piano.

Lanterna Rally - Theme by Grace Themes