The Pleasures of Music
Author: Aaron Copland
Publisher: Durham : University of New Hampshire
Published: 1959
Total Pages: 30
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Author: Aaron Copland
Publisher: Durham : University of New Hampshire
Published: 1959
Total Pages: 30
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Author: Chilly Gonzales
Publisher: Rough Trade Books
Published: 2020-11-18
Total Pages: 55
ISBN-13: 1912722879
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Chilly Gonzales is one of the most exciting, original, hard-to-pin-down musicians of our time. Filling halls worldwide at the piano in his slippers and a bathrobe—in any one night he can be dissecting the musicology of an Oasis hit, giving a sublime solo recital, and displaying his lyrical dexterity as a rapper. In his book about Enya, he asks: Does music have to be smart or does it just have to go to the heart? In dazzling, erudite prose Gonzales delves beyond her innumerable gold discs and millions of fans to excavate his own enthusiasm for Enya's singular music as well as the mysterious musician herself, and along the way uncovers new truths about the nature of music, fame, success and the artistic endeavour.
Author: Aaron Copland
Publisher: Forgotten Books
Published: 2017-12-11
Total Pages: 30
ISBN-13: 9780266559924
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Excerpt from The Pleasures of Music That music gives pleasure is axiomatic. Because that is So, the pleasures of music as a subject for discussion may seem to some of you a rather elementary dish to place be fore so knowing an audience. But I think you will agree that the source of that pleasure, our musical instinct, is not at all elementary; it is, in fact, one of the prime puzzles of consciousness. Why is it that sound waves, when they strike the ear, cause volleys of nerve impulses to flow up into the brain, resulting in a pleasurable sensation? More than that, why is it that we are able to make sense out of these volleys of nerve signals so that we emerge from engulfment in the orderly presentation of sound stimuli as if we had lived through a simulacrum of life, the in stinctive life of the emotions? And why, when safely seated and merely listening, should our hearts beat faster, our temperature rise, our toes start tapping, our minds start racing after the music, hoping it will go one way and watch ing it go another, deceived and disgruntled when we are unconvinced, elated and grateful when we acquiesce? We have a part answer, I suppose, in that the physical nature of sound has been thoroughly explored; but the phe nomenon of music as an expressive, communicative agency remains as inexplicable as ever it was. - We musicians don't ask for much. All we want is to have one investigator tell us why this young fellow seated in row A is firmly held by the musical sounds he hears while his girl friend gets little or nothing out of them, or vice versa. Think how many millions of useless practice hours {might have been saved if some alert professor of genetics had developed a test for musical sensibility, The fascination of music for some human beings was curiously illustrated for me once during a visit I made to the showrooms of a manufacturer of elec tronic organs. As part of my tour I was taken to see the practice room. There, to my surprise, [i found not one but eight aspiring organists, all busily practicing simultanely on eight organs. More surprising still was the fact that not a sound was audible, for all eight performers were listen ing through earphones to their individual instrument. It was an uncanny sight, even for a fellow musician, to watch these grown men mesmerized, as it were, by a silent and in visible genie. On that day I fully realized how mesmerized we ear-minded creatures must seem to our less musically inclined friends. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Author: Lawrence Kramer
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Published: 2016-01-12
Total Pages: 224
ISBN-13: 0520288793
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →What, exactly, is knowledge of music? And what does it tell us about humanistic knowledge in general? The Thought of Music grapples directly with these fundamental questions—questions especially compelling at a time when humanistic knowledge is enmeshed in debates about its character and future. In this third volume in a trilogy on musical understanding that includes Interpreting Music and Expression and Truth, Lawrence Kramer seeks answers in both thought about music and thought in music—thinking in tones. He skillfully assesses musical scholarship in the aftermath of critical musicology and musical hermeneutics and in view of more recent concerns with embodiment, affect, and performance. This authoritative and timely work challenges the prevailing conceptions of every topic it addresses: language, context, and culture; pleasure and performance; and, through music, the foundations of understanding in the humanities. The publisher gratefully acknowledges the Joseph Kerman Endowment of the American Musicological Society, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Author: Nomi Dave
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 2019-10-02
Total Pages: 208
ISBN-13: 022665463X
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →Music has long been an avenue for protest, seen as a way to promote freedom and equality, instill hope, and fight for change. Popular music, in particular, is considered to be an effective form of subversion and resistance under oppressive circumstances. But, as Nomi Dave shows us in The Revolution’s Echoes, the opposite is also true: music can often support, rather than challenge, the powers that be. Dave introduces readers to the music supporting the authoritarian regime of former Guinean president Sékou Touré, and the musicians who, even long after his death, have continued to praise dictators and avoid dissent. Dave shows that this isn’t just the result of state manipulation; even in the absence of coercion, musicians and their audiences take real pleasure in musical praise of leaders. Time and again, whether in traditional music or in newer genres such as rap, Guinean musicians have celebrated state power and authority. With The Revolution’s Echoes, Dave insists that we must grapple with the uncomfortable truth that some forms of music choose to support authoritarianism, generating new pleasures and new politics in the process.
Author: John Mauceri
Publisher: Knopf
Published: 2019
Total Pages: 225
ISBN-13: 0525520651
DOWNLOAD EBOOK →With a lifetime of experience, profound knowledge and understanding, and heartwarming appreciation, an internationally celebrated conductor and teacher answers the questions: Why should I listen to classical music? How can I get the most from the listening experience? A protégé of Leonard Bernstein--his colleague for eighteen years--and an eminent conductor who has toured and recorded all over the world, John Mauceri helps us to reap the joys and pleasures classical music has to offer. Briefly, we learn the way a musical tradition born in ancient Greece, embraced by the Roman Empire, and subsequently nurtured by influences from across the globe, gave shape to the classical music that came to be embraced by cultures from Japan to Bolivia. Then Mauceri examines the music itself, helping us understand what it is we hear when we listen to classical music: how, by a kind of sonic metaphor, it expresses the deepest recesses of human feeling and emotion; how each piece bears the traces of its history; how the concert experience--a unique one each and every time--allows us to discover music anew. Unpretentious, graceful, instructive, this is a book for the aficionado, the novice, and anyone looking to have the love of music fired within them.