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Author: Lewis M. Holmes
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780692197875
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 346
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Book Description
Why do we like music? What does it do for us? How has it become part of our being? Questions about the origin and relevance of human musicality have fascinated many of the greatest thinkers in history, including Confucius, Plato, Rousseau, and Darwin. This book is a novel approach to the subject. The text is built around brief biographies, or 'profiles, ' of thirty musicians from the distant past. These musicians lived between approximately 2500 BCE and 1500 CE at locations that span half the globe. They came from a variety of social classes, and the group includes both men and women. The biographies provide a unique glimpse into the geographical spread and variety of ancient musical life. They form the basis for an exploration of the 'why, ' 'what, ' and 'how' of our attraction to music. As described in this book, ancient musical activities resembled those of the present: The Mesopotamian princess Enheduanna composed hymns to her gods. The Greek composer Pindar sold songs about athletes. The Roman emperor Nero got an ego boost by singing on stage. The Arabian songstress Jamila performed erotic music for her ecstatic fans. The European troubadour Marcabru used music to criticize upper-class immorality. The blind Japanese lutenist Akashi no Kakuichi composed a massive and influential musical war epic. Present-day musicians carry out a number of social, political, religious, entertainment, and other functions in society. Information from the profiles demonstrates that ancient musical practice involved carrying out the same musical functions as at present. To the author's knowledge, this is the first time that such a conclusion has been based on firm historical evidence. This evidence of constancy through different historical stages adds support to the view that human musicality is a genetically determined trait, rather than a characteristic that is acquired from the individual's cultural context. The text reviews and comments on evolutionary theories concerning the acquisition of musicality. 'Musical entrainment, ' which has recently received a great deal of attention from evolutionary scientists, is singled out for special attention. Examples taken from the profiles and elsewhere help to clarify this rather obscure concept. The book is introduced by an historical overview of the ideas expressed by philosophers, scientists, and others about music. Appendices to the text establish the relation of this study to traditional ethnomusicology and describe the anthropological framework that has been employed. More than 400 bibliographic references and a detailed index complete the presentation.
Author: Lewis M. Holmes
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780692197875
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 346
Get Book Here
Book Description
Why do we like music? What does it do for us? How has it become part of our being? Questions about the origin and relevance of human musicality have fascinated many of the greatest thinkers in history, including Confucius, Plato, Rousseau, and Darwin. This book is a novel approach to the subject. The text is built around brief biographies, or 'profiles, ' of thirty musicians from the distant past. These musicians lived between approximately 2500 BCE and 1500 CE at locations that span half the globe. They came from a variety of social classes, and the group includes both men and women. The biographies provide a unique glimpse into the geographical spread and variety of ancient musical life. They form the basis for an exploration of the 'why, ' 'what, ' and 'how' of our attraction to music. As described in this book, ancient musical activities resembled those of the present: The Mesopotamian princess Enheduanna composed hymns to her gods. The Greek composer Pindar sold songs about athletes. The Roman emperor Nero got an ego boost by singing on stage. The Arabian songstress Jamila performed erotic music for her ecstatic fans. The European troubadour Marcabru used music to criticize upper-class immorality. The blind Japanese lutenist Akashi no Kakuichi composed a massive and influential musical war epic. Present-day musicians carry out a number of social, political, religious, entertainment, and other functions in society. Information from the profiles demonstrates that ancient musical practice involved carrying out the same musical functions as at present. To the author's knowledge, this is the first time that such a conclusion has been based on firm historical evidence. This evidence of constancy through different historical stages adds support to the view that human musicality is a genetically determined trait, rather than a characteristic that is acquired from the individual's cultural context. The text reviews and comments on evolutionary theories concerning the acquisition of musicality. 'Musical entrainment, ' which has recently received a great deal of attention from evolutionary scientists, is singled out for special attention. Examples taken from the profiles and elsewhere help to clarify this rather obscure concept. The book is introduced by an historical overview of the ideas expressed by philosophers, scientists, and others about music. Appendices to the text establish the relation of this study to traditional ethnomusicology and describe the anthropological framework that has been employed. More than 400 bibliographic references and a detailed index complete the presentation.
Author: Andy Mabbett
Publisher: Omnibus Press
ISBN: 0857124188
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
A chronology and analysis of albums, shows, and recordings by Pink Floyd and individual band members as solo artists.
Author: Kate Ross
Publisher: Felony & Mayhem Press
ISBN: 1937384721
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 632
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Book Description
Julian Kestrel, gentleman sleuth and dandy, becomes fascinated with the unsolved case of the murder of a Milanese aristocrat and the disappearance of his protégé, a brilliant young English opera singer. What has become of the singer’s fiancée and the aristocrat’s notoriously surly manservant? Could the murder be tied to Italy’s tumultuous politics? Furthermore, the murdered marquis left a widow whose beauty makes Kestrel’s heart skip faster.
Author: Elisabeth-Paule Labat
Publisher: Liturgical Press
ISBN: 0879076801
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 160
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Book Description
The Song That I Am: On the Mystery of Music is a short but full-to-the-brim essay on the decisive role that great music (whether Bach, Tavener, or Gregorian chant) ought to play in the spiritual life. With admirable restraint Élisabeth-Paule Labat shares her interior experience of music and thus continually opens up fresh vistas through worlds of sound and spirit. With her uncanny gift of language, Labat precisely describes soundings and yearnings of the soul that many of us glimpse fleetingly. Because "only the lover sings" (St. Augustine), her final illumination is that the experience of profound music ought to transform us into the beauty that we hear.
Author: Hermano Vianna
Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Press
ISBN: 0807898864
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 168
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Book Description
Samba is Brazil's "national rhythm," the foremost symbol of its culture and nationhood. To the outsider, samba and the famous pre-Lenten carnival of which it is the centerpiece seem to showcase the country's African heritage. Within Brazil, however, samba symbolizes the racial and cultural mixture that, since the 1930s, most Brazilians have come to believe defines their unique national identity. But how did Brazil become "the Kingdom of Samba" only a few decades after abolishing slavery in 1888? Typically, samba is represented as having changed spontaneously, mysteriously, from a "repressed" music of the marginal and impoverished to a national symbol cherished by all Brazilians. Here, however, Hermano Vianna shows that the nationalization of samba actually rested on a long history of relations between different social groups--poor and rich, weak and powerful--often working at cross-purposes to one another. A fascinating exploration of the "invention of tradition," The Mystery of Samba is an excellent introduction to Brazil's ongoing conversation on race, popular culture, and national identity.
Author: Rupert Holmes
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 0307431894
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 386
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Book Description
Two-time Edgar Award winner Rupert Holmes–author of the critically acclaimed Where the Truth Lies and creator of the Tony Award—winning musical whodunit The Mystery of Edwin Drood–now fuses gripping suspense and evocative music in an innovative novel of intrigue set in 1940, during the very heart of the Big Band era. Jazz saxophonist and arranger Ray Sherwood, touring with the Jack Donovan Orchestra, is haunted by personal tragedy. But when a beautiful and talented Berkeley student named Gail Prentice seeks his help in orchestrating a highly original composition called Swing Around the Sun, which is slated to premiere at the Golden Gate Exposition on the newly created Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay, Ray finds himself powerfully drawn to the beguiling coed. Within moments of first setting eyes on her, Ray also witnesses a horrifying sight: a young woman plunging to her death from the island’s emblematic Tower of the Sun. As the captivated Ray learns more about Gail and her unusual family, he finds himself trapped in a tightening coil of spiraling secrets– some personally devastating, all dangerous and deadly– in which from moment to moment nothing is certain, including Gail’s intentions toward him and her connection to the dead woman who made such a grisly impact upon the stunning island. As events speed toward a shocking climax, Ray must use all his physical daring and improvisational skills to unlock an ominous puzzle whose sinister implications stretch far beyond anything he could imagine.
Author: Emma Donoghue
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 0316324663
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 402
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Book Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of Room, a young French burlesque dancer living in San Francisco is ready to risk anything in order to solve her friend’s murder—but only if the killer doesn’t get her first. Summer of 1876: San Francisco is in the fierce grip of a record-breaking heat wave and a smallpox epidemic. Through the window of a railroad saloon, a young woman named Jenny Bonnet is shot dead. The survivor, her friend Blanche Beunon, is a French burlesque dancer. Over the next three days, she will risk everything to bring Jenny's murderer to justice—if he doesn't track her down first. The story Blanche struggles to piece together is one of free-love bohemians, desperate paupers, and arrogant millionaires; of jealous men, icy women, and damaged children. It's the secret life of Jenny herself, a notorious character who breaks the law every morning by getting dressed: a charmer as slippery as the frogs she hunts. In thrilling, cinematic style, Frog Music digs up a long-forgotten, never-solved crime. Full of songs that migrated across the world, Emma Donoghue's lyrical tale of love and bloodshed among lowlifes captures the pulse of a boomtown like no other. "Her greatest achievement yet . . . Emma Donoghue shows more than range with Frog Music—she shows genius." —Darin Strauss, author of Half a Life.
Author: Philip Dorrell
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781411621176
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 318
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Book Description
This books outlines the author's new and original scientific theory about music - that music is a super-stimulus for the perception of musicality, where musicality is a perceived aspect of speech that provides information about the speaker's internal mental state.
Author: Greil Marcus
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 110166164X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 1525
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Book Description
Now Available as an eBook Catch a train to the heart of rock ‘n’ roll with this essential study of the quintessential American art form. First published in 1975, Greil Marcus’ Mystery Train remains a benchmark study of rock ‘n’ roll and a classic in the field of music criticism. Focusing on six key artists--Robert Johnson, Harmonica Frank, Randy Newman, the Band, Sly Stone, and Elvis Presley--Marcus explores the evolution and impact of rock ‘n’ roll and its unique place in American culture. This sixth edition of Mystery Train includes an updated and rewritten Notes and Discographies section, exploring the evolution and continuing impact of the recordings featured in the book.
Author: Daniel Levitin
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241987369
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 229
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Book Description
From the author of The Changing Mind and The Organized Mind comes a New York Times bestseller that unravels the mystery of our perennial love affair with music ***** 'What do the music of Bach, Depeche Mode and John Cage fundamentally have in common?' Music is an obsession at the heart of human nature, even more fundamental to our species than language. From Mozart to the Beatles, neuroscientist, psychologist and internationally-bestselling author Daniel Levitin reveals the role of music in human evolution, shows how our musical preferences begin to form even before we are born and explains why music can offer such an emotional experience. In This Is Your Brain On Music Levitin offers nothing less than a new way to understand music, and what it can teach us about ourselves. ***** 'Music seems to have an almost wilful, evasive quality, defying simple explanation, so that the more we find out, the more there is to know . . . Daniel Levitin's book is an eloquent and poetic exploration of this paradox' Sting 'You'll never hear music in the same way again' Classic FM magazine 'Music, Levitin argues, is not a decadent modern diversion but something of fundamental importance to the history of human development' Literary Review
