Reflections of an American Composer

Reflections of an American Composer PDF Author: Arthur Berger
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520928213
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 296

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Book Description
In this engrossing collection of essays, distinguished composer, theorist, journalist, and educator Arthur Berger invites us into the vibrant and ever-changing American music scene that has been his home for most of the twentieth century. Witty, urbane, and always entertaining, Berger describes the music scene in New York and Boston since the 1930s, discussing the heady days when he was a member of a tight-knit circle of avant-garde young composers mentored by Aaron Copland as well as his participation in a group at Harvard University dedicated to Stravinsky. As Virgil Thomson's associate on the New York Herald Tribune and founding editor of the prestigious Perspectives of New Music, Berger became one of the preeminent observers and critics of American music. His reflections on the role of music in contemporary life, his journalism career, and how changes in academia influence the composition and teaching of music offer a unique perspective informed by Berger's abundant intelligence and experience.

Reflections of an American Composer

Reflections of an American Composer PDF Author: Arthur Berger
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520928213
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 296

Get Book Here

Book Description
In this engrossing collection of essays, distinguished composer, theorist, journalist, and educator Arthur Berger invites us into the vibrant and ever-changing American music scene that has been his home for most of the twentieth century. Witty, urbane, and always entertaining, Berger describes the music scene in New York and Boston since the 1930s, discussing the heady days when he was a member of a tight-knit circle of avant-garde young composers mentored by Aaron Copland as well as his participation in a group at Harvard University dedicated to Stravinsky. As Virgil Thomson's associate on the New York Herald Tribune and founding editor of the prestigious Perspectives of New Music, Berger became one of the preeminent observers and critics of American music. His reflections on the role of music in contemporary life, his journalism career, and how changes in academia influence the composition and teaching of music offer a unique perspective informed by Berger's abundant intelligence and experience.

Reflections of an American Composer

Reflections of an American Composer PDF Author: Arthur Berger
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520232518
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 288

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Book Description
A book of memoirs and essays by notable composer, critic and teacher Arthur Berger. The author writes vividly about the music scenes in New York, Paris, and Boston, and of his work with notable colleagues such as Stravinsky, Copeland, and Virgil Thompson.

Charles Ives in the Mirror

Charles Ives in the Mirror PDF Author: David C Paul
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252094697
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 315

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Book Description
American composer Charles Ives (1874–1954) has gone from being a virtual unknown to become one of the most respected and lauded composers in American music. In this sweeping survey of intellectual and musical history, David C. Paul tells the new story of how Ives's music was shaped by shifting conceptions of American identity within and outside of musical culture, charting the changes in the reception of Ives across the twentieth century and into the twenty-first century. Paul focuses on the critics, composers, performers, and scholars whose contributions were most influential in shaping the critical discourse on Ives, many of them marquee names of American musical culture themselves, including Henry Cowell, Aaron Copland, Elliott Carter, and Leonard Bernstein. Paul explores both how Ives positioned his music amid changing philosophical and aesthetic currents and how others interpreted his contributions to American music. Although Ives's initial efforts to find a public in the early twenties attracted a few devotees, the resurgence of interest in the American literary past during the thirties made a concert staple of his "Concord" Sonata, a work dedicated to nineteenth-century transcendentalist writers. Paul shows how Ives was subsequently deployed as an icon of American freedom during the early Cold War period and how he came to be instigated at the head of a line of "American maverick" composers. Paul also examines why a recent cadre of scholars has beset the composer with Gilded Age social anxieties. By embedding Ives' reception within the changing developments of a wide range of fields including intellectual history, American studies, literature, musicology, and American politics and society in general, Charles Ives in the Mirror: American Histories of an Iconic Composer greatly advances our understanding of Ives and his influence on nearly a century of American culture.

You Don't Know Me

You Don't Know Me PDF Author: Pariya Rostami
Publisher: Dorrance Publishing
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 142

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Book Description
As humans, our names should remain in everyone’s minds as the real heroes in present in future generations. During a time when surrounding nations were looking into travelling to the moon and space, Pariya Rostami was looking for shelter to hide or a piece of bread for survival. Can people in countries where freedom reigns ever be aware of the hardships, suffering, and dreams buried below the earth that other people have to face? What do they think about the millions of poor and malnourished people that live in other countries? In a country like Iran, you can have the best and look forward to tomorrow, but still have no rights as a woman to live freely. But Rostami has become an angel of salvation to many through the knowledge she’s acquired through pain and suffering. She has a powerful touch that can heal many wounds and words to light a path to living free. She will continue to fight to defend humanity and her rights as a woman, even though writing these truths about her past could dig her own grave. About the Author Pariya Rostami has much love to give. She believes the world would be much more beautiful if we learned how to be kind and give happiness as a free gift to others without judgments or expectations. She learned to respect people’s beliefs and love them as a human first rather than rely on what they own, where they live, how much money they have, or what their race is. Her greatest desire is to put a smile on people’s faces who deserve it.

Gunther Schuller

Gunther Schuller PDF Author: Gunther Schuller
Publisher: Eastman Studies in Music
ISBN: 9781580463423
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 664

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Book Description
The autobiography of composer and conductor Gunther Schuller and a recounting of the American musical scene through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first.

Dvorak's Prophecy: And the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music

Dvorak's Prophecy: And the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music PDF Author: Joseph Horowitz
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393881253
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 A provocative interpretation of why classical music in America "stayed white"—how it got to be that way and what can be done about it. In 1893 the composer Antonín Dvorák prophesied a “great and noble school” of American classical music based on the “negro melodies” he had excitedly discovered since arriving in the United States a year before. But while Black music would foster popular genres known the world over, it never gained a foothold in the concert hall. Black composers found few opportunities to have their works performed, and white composers mainly rejected Dvorák’s lead. Joseph Horowitz ranges throughout American cultural history, from Frederick Douglass and Huckleberry Finn to George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and the work of Ralph Ellison, searching for explanations. Challenging the standard narrative for American classical music fashioned by Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, he looks back to literary figures—Emerson, Melville, and Twain—to ponder how American music can connect with a “usable past.” The result is a new paradigm that makes room for Black composers, including Harry Burleigh, Nathaniel Dett, William Levi Dawson, and Florence Price, while giving increased prominence to Charles Ives and George Gershwin. Dvorák’s Prophecy arrives in the midst of an important conversation about race in America—a conversation that is taking place in music schools and concert halls as well as capitols and boardrooms. As George Shirley writes in his foreword to the book, “We have been left unprepared for the current cultural moment. [Joseph Horowitz] explains how we got there [and] proposes a bigger world of American classical music than what we have known before. It is more diverse and more equitable. And it is more truthful.”

Reflections on American Music

Reflections on American Music PDF Author: College Music Society
Publisher: Pendragon Press
ISBN: 9781576470701
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 452

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Book Description
Wright -- "A closed fist" from Spirals (for violin, viola, and cello) / Judith Lang Zaimont.

Where the Heart Beats

Where the Heart Beats PDF Author: Kay Larson
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143123475
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 497

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Book Description
A “heroic” biography of John Cage and his “awakening through Zen Buddhism”—“a kind of love story” about a brilliant American pioneer of the creative arts who transformed himself and his culture (The New York Times) Composer John Cage sought the silence of a mind at peace with itself—and found it in Zen Buddhism, a spiritual path that changed both his music and his view of the universe. “Remarkably researched, exquisitely written,” Where the Heart Beats weaves together “a great many threads of cultural history” (Maria Popova, Brain Pickings) to illuminate Cage’s struggle to accept himself and his relationship with choreographer Merce Cunningham. Freed to be his own man, Cage originated exciting experiments that set him at the epicenter of a new avant-garde forming in the 1950s. Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, Yoko Ono, Allan Kaprow, Morton Feldman, and Leo Castelli were among those influenced by his ‘teaching’ and ‘preaching.’ Where the Heart Beats shows the blossoming of Zen in the very heart of American culture.

A Song to Sing, A Life to Live

A Song to Sing, A Life to Live PDF Author: Don Saliers
Publisher: Jossey-Bass
ISBN: 9780787983772
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
In this rich exploration of music, authors Don and Emily Saliers interweave their own stories as well as those of others to reflect on the what, the how, and the why of music as a key aspect of spirituality in our lives. As an Indigo Girl, folk-rock singer-songwriter, Emily performs in primarily secular settings, while her father, Don - composer, cantor, and church musician - writes and arranges for church congregations. Their audiences may differ but both father and daughter understand the profound spirituality of music and have personally witnessed how their music brings healing to people no matter what the setting or circumstance. A Song to Sing, A Life to Live bridges two generations, two approaches to spirituality, and two genres of music - the music of Saturday night and Sunday morning. Don and Emily Saliers reflect on such topics as music and justice, music and grief, music and delight, and music and hope. They open the way for those who seek to embrace new spiritual practices by creating music, sharing music, and developing their musical skills as a spiritual practice.

Unsung

Unsung PDF Author: Christine Ammer
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 9781574670615
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
Examines the contributions of women instrumentalists, composers, teachers, and conductors to American music, and suggests why they have gone unnoticed in the past.