Author: Kirke Mechem
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442250771
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 225
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Book Description
Believe Your Ears is the memoir of composer Kirke Mechem, whose unorthodox path to music provides a fascinating narrative. He wrote songs and played music by ear as a newspaper reporter, a touring tennis player, and a Stanford creative-writing major before studying composition and conducting at Harvard. He describes his residencies in San Francisco, Vienna, London, and Russia, and gives detailed attention to his choral music, operas, and symphonies. He writes that “the twentieth century gave us much brilliant music” but shows how atonality came to dominate the post-war period. His lyric style belongs to no particular “school,” avoiding the trends, –isms, experiments, fads, and lunacies of the period. He encourages younger composers who are trying to bring back beauty, passion, and humor—even entertainment—to classical music. He asks music lovers to believe their own ears, not the lectures of “experts.” Believe Your Ears is addressed to all who love classical music. Along the way, readers will meet Dimitri Shostakovich, Wallace Stegner, Billie Jean King, the Grateful Dead, Richard Rodgers, Benjamin Britten, Bill Tilden, and Aaron Copland—a who’s who in Mechem’s storied career.
Author: Mama's and the Papa's
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Author: Diana Deutsch
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190206845
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
In this ground-breaking synthesis of art and science, Diana Deutsch, one of the world's leading experts on the psychology of music, shows how illusions of music and speech--many of which she herself discovered--have fundamentally altered thinking about the brain. These astonishing illusions show that people can differ strikingly in how they hear musical patterns--differences that reflect variations in brain organization as well as influences of language on music perception. Drawing on a wide variety of fields, including psychology, music theory, linguistics, and neuroscience, Deutsch examines questions such as: When an orchestra performs a symphony, what is the "real" music? Is it in the mind of the composer, or the conductor, or different members of the audience? Deutsch also explores extremes of musical ability, and other surprising responses to music and speech. Why is perfect pitch so rare? Why do some people hallucinate music or speech? Why do we hear phantom words and phrases? Why are we subject to stuck tunes, or "earworms"? Why do we hear a spoken phrase as sung just because it is presented repeatedly? In evaluating these questions, she also shows how music and speech are intertwined, and argues that they stem from an early form of communication that had elements of both. Many of the illusions described in the book are so striking and paradoxical that you need to hear them to believe them. The book enables you to listen to the sounds that are described while reading about them.
Author: Howard Burton
Publisher: Open Agenda Publishing
ISBN: 1771700386
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 53
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Book Description
This book is based on an extensive filmed conversation between Howard Burton and Diana Deutsch, Professor of Psychology at UC San Diego and one of the world’s leading experts on the psychology of music. This conversation provides behind the scenes insights into her discovery of a large number of auditory illusions, including the so-called Octave Illusion, which concretely illustrate how what we think we’re hearing is often quite different from the actual sounds that are hitting our eardrums. This carefully-edited book includes an introduction, Revealing Mistakes, and questions for discussion at the end of each chapter: I. Eclectic Beginnings - Music, art, philosophy, and philosophical psychology II. Tones, Pitches and Critical Values - Intriguing results in music and memory III. The Octave Illusion - How to confuse the brain with tones IV. Medical Applications - A highly suggestive result for epilepsy patients V. Eyes vs. Ears - The neurophysiological differences between vision and hearing VI. Gut Issues - The impact of discomfort VII. The Scale Illusion - Auditory scene analysis and evolutionary factors VIII. Surrounded by Illusions - From the Glissando Illusion to Tchaikovsky’s 6th IX. Perfect Pitch & Tone Languages - Why Mandarin might help your musicianship X. Towards Monotony? - The tonal implications of globalization XI. Embracing Discomfort - The benefits of being confused About Ideas Roadshow Conversations Series This book is part of an expanding series of 100+ Ideas Roadshow conversations, each one presenting a wealth of candid insights from a leading expert in a relaxed and informal setting to give non-specialists a uniquely accessible window into frontline research and scholarship that wouldn't otherwise be encountered through standard lectures and textbooks. For other books in this series visit our website (https://ideas-on-film.com/ideasroadshow/).
Author:
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 0595283950
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 150
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Book Description
Author: Laura van den Berg
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374714983
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 224
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Book Description
ONE OF TIME'S 10 BEST FICTION BOOKS OF 2020. Longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize. Named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR, Bustle, Good Housekeeping, the New York Public Library, Library Journal, Lit Hub, Electric Literature, and Tor.com "As enchanting as fairy tales, as mysterious as dreams, these exquisitely composed fictions are as urgent and original as any being written today.” —Sigrid Nunez, author of The Friend, winner of the 2018 National Book Award for Fiction An urgent and unsettling collection of women on the verge from Laura van den Berg, author of The Third Hotel I Hold a Wolf by the Ears, Laura van den Berg’s first story collection since her prizewinning book The Isle of Youth, draws readers into a world of wholly original, sideways ghost stories that linger in the mouth and the mind. Both timeless and urgent, these eleven stories confront misogyny, violence, and the impossible economics of America with van den Berg’s trademark spiky humor and surreal eye. Moving from the peculiarities of Florida to liminal spaces of travel in Mexico City, Sicily, and Iceland, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears is uncannily attuned to our current moment, and to the fears we reveal to no one but ourselves. In “Lizards,” a man mutes his wife’s anxieties by giving her a LaCroix-like seltzer laced with sedatives. In the title story, a woman poses as her more successful sister during a botched Italian holiday, a choice that brings about strange and destructive consequences, while in “Karolina,” a woman discovers her prickly ex-sister-in-law in the aftermath of an earthquake and is forced to face the truth about her violent brother. I Hold a Wolf by the Ears presents a collection of women on the verge, trying to grasp what’s left of life: grieving, divorced, and hyperaware, searching, vulnerable, and unhinged, they exist in a world that deviates from our own only when you look too closely. With remarkable control and transcendent talent, van den Berg dissolves, in the words of the narrator of “Slumberland,” “that border between magic and annihilation,” and further establishes herself as a defining fiction writer of our time.
Author: Edna May Ewert
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 5
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Book Description
Author: Doug Spencer
Publisher: FriesenPress
ISBN: 1525543784
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 284
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Book Description
Do you struggle to maintain good health? Are you tired of the onslaught of new technology invading your life? Do you long for the simplicity of the good old days? Are you troubled by social unrest in the world? And, perhaps most importantly, has the explosion of political and corporate lying made you distrustful and angry? You are not alone; many people feel the same way. The good news is, some of the problems are not that difficult. In fact, it’s quite likely that you and a friend have sat at the kitchen table and solved most of them. The bad news is, many of your solutions are only opinions, and they count for precious little. This book offers scientific facts to replace rumors, lies, and opinions. Each short chapter shines a clear, mind-stretching light on today’s mess of important topics that keep the reader turning the page. Here are a few of the ninety-two chapter headings: • The rise of women and decline of men • Are you old yet? • Big data • Music as medicine • Home-made anxiety relief • Wonderful sleep • Approach to death • Optimal health and PH level • How to make yourself happier • Empty memories • Conspiracy theorists • Lies and face management • The beauty of being alone • Your body: home to trillions of microbes
Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : de
Pages :
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Book Description
Author: Bernadette Murphy
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374716021
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
The best-known and most sensational event in Vincent van Gogh’s life is also the least understood. For more than a century, biographers and historians seeking definitive facts about what happened on a December night in Arles have unearthed more questions than answers. Why would an artist at the height of his powers commit such a brutal act? Who was the mysterious “Rachel” to whom he presented his macabre gift? Did he use a razor or a knife? Was it just a segment—or did Van Gogh really lop off his entire ear? In Van Gogh’s Ear, Bernadette Murphy reveals, for the first time, the true story of this long-misunderstood incident, sweeping away decades of myth and giving us a glimpse of a troubled but brilliant artist at his breaking point. Murphy’s detective work takes her from Europe to the United States and back, from the holdings of major museums to the moldering contents of forgotten archives. She braids together her own thrilling journey of discovery with a narrative of Van Gogh’s life in Arles, the sleepy Provençal town where he created his finest work, and vividly reconstructs the world in which he moved—the madams and prostitutes, café patrons and police inspectors, shepherds and bohemian artists. We encounter Van Gogh’s brother and benefactor Theo, his guest and fellow painter Paul Gauguin, and many local subjects of Van Gogh’s paintings, some of whom Murphy identifies for the first time. Strikingly, Murphy uncovers previously unknown information about “Rachel”—and uses it to propose a bold new hypothesis about what was occurring in Van Gogh’s heart and mind as he made a mysterious delivery to her doorstep. As it reopens one of art history’s most famous cold cases, Van Gogh’s Ear becomes a fascinating work of detection. It is also a study of a painter creating his most iconic and revolutionary work, pushing himself ever closer to greatness even as he edged toward madness—and one fateful sweep of the blade that would resonate through the ages.
