Author: Stephen Costanza
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 0805066276
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 46

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Author: Stephen Costanza
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1534410376
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 60

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A stunning, rhythmic picture book biography of African American composer Scott Joplin, whose ragtime music paved the way for jazz. There was something special about Scott Joplin… This quiet kid could make a piano laugh out loud. Scott, the son of a man who had been enslaved, became a king—the King of Ragtime. This celebration of Scott Joplin, whose ragtime compositions paved the way for jazz, will captivate audiences and put a beat in their step, and the kaleidoscope-like illustrations will draw young readers in again and again.

Author: Peter Sís
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061121819
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 44

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Book Description
A simplified biography of Austrian composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Author: William Kinderman
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252037162
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 259

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Book Description
"In this intriguing study, William Kinderman opens the door to the composer's workshop, investigating not just the final outcome but the process of creative endeavour in music. Focusing on the stages of composition, Kinderman maintains that the most rigorous basis for the study of artistic creativity comes not from anecdotal or autobiographical reports, but from original handwritten sketches, drafts, revised manuscripts, and corrected proof sheets. He explores works of major composers from the eighteenth century to the present, from Mozart's piano music and Beethoven's Piano Trio in F to Kurtag's Kafka Fragments and Hommage a R. Sch. Other chapters examine Robert Schumann's Fantasie in C, Mahler's Fifth Symphony, and Bartok's Dance Suite. Revealing the diversity of sources, rejected passages and movements, fragmentary unfinished works, and aborted projects that were absorbed into finished compositions, The Creative Process in Music from Mozart to Kurtag illustrates the wealth of insight that can be gained through studying the creative process." -- Blackwells.

Author: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Publisher: Carousel Publications, Limited
ISBN:
Category : Aleatory music
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Author: Jan Swafford
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062433598
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 832

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Book Description
From the acclaimed composer and biographer Jan Swafford comes the definitive biography of one of the most lauded musical geniuses in history, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. At the earliest ages it was apparent that Wolfgang Mozart’s singular imagination was at work in every direction. He hated to be bored and hated to be idle, and through his life he responded to these threats with a repertoire of antidotes mental and physical. Whether in his rabidly obscene mode or not, Mozart was always hilarious. He went at every piece of his life, and perhaps most notably his social life, with tremendous gusto. His circle of friends and patrons was wide, encompassing anyone who appealed to his boundless appetites for music and all things pleasurable and fun. Mozart was known to be an inexplicable force of nature who could rise from a luminous improvisation at the keyboard to a leap over the furniture. He was forever drumming on things, tapping his feet, jabbering away, but who could grasp your hand and look at you with a profound, searching, and melancholy look in his blue eyes. Even in company there was often an air about Mozart of being not quite there. It was as if he lived onstage and off simultaneously, a character in life’s tragicomedy but also outside of it watching, studying, gathering material for the fabric of his art. Like Jan Swafford’s biographies Beethoven and Johannes Brahms, Mozart is the complete exhumation of a genius in his life and ours: a man who would enrich the world with his talent for centuries to come and who would immeasurably shape classical music. As Swafford reveals, it’s nearly impossible to understand classical music’s origins and indeed its evolutions, as well as the Baroque period, without studying the man himself.

Author: Stuart Isacoff
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN: 0307701425
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
A beautifully illustrated, totally engrossing celebration of the piano, and the composers and performers who have made it their own. With honed sensitivity and unquestioned expertise, Stuart Isacoff—pianist, critic, teacher, and author of Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization—unfolds the ongoing history and evolution of the piano and all its myriad wonders: how its very sound provides the basis for emotional expression and individual style, and why it has so powerfully entertained generation upon generation of listeners. He illuminates the groundbreaking music of Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, Schumann, and Debussy. He analyzes the breathtaking techniques of Glenn Gould, Oscar Peterson, Vladimir Ashkenazy, Arthur Rubinstein, and Van Cliburn, and he gives musicians including Alfred Brendel, Murray Perahia, Menahem Pressler, and Vladimir Horowitz the opportunity to discuss their approaches. Isacoff delineates how classical music and jazz influenced each other as the uniquely American art form progressed from ragtime, novelty, stride, boogie, bebop, and beyond, through Scott Joplin, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, Thelonious Monk, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Cecil Taylor, and Bill Charlap. A Natural History of the Piano distills a lifetime of research and passion into one brilliant narrative. We witness Mozart unveiling his monumental concertos in Vienna’s coffeehouses, using a special piano with one keyboard for the hands and another for the feet; European virtuoso Henri Herz entertaining rowdy miners during the California gold rush; Beethoven at his piano, conjuring healing angels to console a grieving mother who had lost her child; Liszt fainting in the arms of a page turner to spark an entire hall into hysterics. Here is the instrument in all its complexity and beauty. We learn of the incredible craftsmanship of a modern Steinway, the peculiarity of specialty pianos built for the Victorian household, the continuing innovation in keyboards including electronic ones. And most of all, we hear the music of the masters, from centuries ago and in our own age, brilliantly evoked and as marvelous as its most recent performance. With this wide-ranging volume, Isacoff gives us a must-have for music lovers, pianists, and the armchair musician.

Author: Tom Leonard
Publisher: Roaring Brook Press
ISBN: 125015443X
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Book Description
For Johann Sebastian there was always music. His family had been musicians, or bachs as they were called in Germany, for 200 years. He always wanted to be a bach. As he grew, he saw patterns in everything. Patterns he would turn into melodies and song, eventually growing into one of the most important and celebrated musical composers of all time. This is the story of Johann Sebastian Bach.

Author: Suzanne Slade
Publisher: Astra Publishing House
ISBN: 1635928192
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 43

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Book Description
Junior Library Guild Selection Booklist Editors' Top 10 Arts Books for Youth California Reading Association Eureka! Gold Award CBC Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young Readers Parents' Choice Gold Award Paterson Prize for Books for Young Readers Bank Street College of Education Best Book of the Year Golden Kite Award for Picture Book Illustration Meet the famous composer George Gershwin and learn about his remarkabke composition "Rhapsody In Blue" in this engaging nonficftion picture book biography. George Gershwin heard music all the time—at home, at school, even on New York City's busy streets. Classical, ragtime, blues, and jazz—George's head was filled with a whole lot of razzmatazz! With rhythmic swirls of words and pictures, author Suzanne Slade and illustrator Stacy Innerst beautifully reveal just how brilliantly Gershwin combined various kinds of music to create his masterpiece, Rhapsody in Blue, a surprising and whirlwind composition of notes, sounds, and one long wail of a clarinet. Includes author's note, timeline, and bibliography.

Author: Carmela Mercuri
Publisher: Carousel-Music.com
ISBN: 0935474005
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 27

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Book Description
This is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's original game for composing music, "Musikalisches Wurfelspiel", K516f, called "Melody Dicer" for short. To play the game, one tosses dice or selects a number, then follows the directions which were set down by Mozart two centuries ago. The possibilities of different melodies that may be arrived at are almost limitless. "The Melody Dicer can produce a phenomenal 100 quadrillion tunes, about 30 times as many people as there are in the world." Newsweek International. Playing the minuets from this game would keep the entire population of the world busy for the next 90 years. !