There have been many books written about Johnny Cash, but The Man in Song is the first to examine Cash’s incredible life through the lens of the songs he wrote and recorded. Music journalist and historian John Alexander has drawn on decades of studying Cash’s music and life, from his difficult depression-era Arkansas childhood through his death in 2003, to tell a life story through songs familiar and obscure. In discovering why Cash wrote a given song or chose to record it, Alexander introduces readers anew to a man whose primary consideration of any song was the difference music makes in people’s lives, and not whether the song would become a hit.
The hits came, of course. Johnny Cash sold more than fifty million albums in forty years, and he holds the distinction of being the only performer inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Country Music Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame, and the Gospel Music Hall of Fame. The Man in Song connects treasured songs to an incredible life. It explores the intertwined experience and creativity of childhood trauma. It rifles through the discography of a life: Cash’s work with the Tennessee Two at Sam Phillips’s Sun Studios, the unique concept albums Cash recorded for Columbia Records, the spiritual songs, the albums recorded live at prisons, songs about the love of his life, June Carter Cash, songs about murder and death and addiction, songs about ramblers, and even silly songs.
Appropriate for both serious country and folk music enthusiasts and those just learning about this musical legend, The Man in Song will appeal to a fan base spanning generations. Here is a biography for those who first heard “I Walk the Line” in 1956, a younger generation who discovered Cash through songs like his cover of Trent Reznor’s “Hurt,” and everyone in between.
An entertaining merger of memories and music history, Mandolin Man tells the overdue story of a bluegrass icon and his times.
This is the first full-length introduction to the life and works of significant American composer Marga Richter (born 1926), who has written more than one hundred works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, dance, opera, voice, chorus, piano, organ, and harpsichord. Still actively composing in her eighties, Richter is particularly known for her large-scale works performed by ensembles such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and for other pieces performed by prominent artists including pianist Menahem Pressler, conductor Izler Solomon, and violinist Daniel Heifetz.
Interspersing consideration of Richter's musical works with discussion of her life, her musical style, and the origins and performances of her works, Sharon Mirchandani documents a successful composer's professional and private life throughout the twentieth century. Covering Richter's formative years, her influences, and the phases of her career from the 1950s to the present, Mirchandani closely examines Richter's many interesting, attractive musical works that draw inspiration from distinctly American, Irish/English, and Asian sources. Drawing extensively on interviews with the composer, Mirchandani also provides detailed descriptions of Richter's scores and uses reviews and other secondary sources to provide contexts for her work, including their relationship to modern dance, to other musical styles, and to 1970s feminism.
An influential star of British pop for more than three decades, Morrissey is known for his outspoken and often controversial views on class, ethnicity, and sexuality. Among critics and his many fans, he has long been seen as an anti-establishment figure who continues to provoke devotion, argument, and spirited debate.
This is the first collection of academic essays to focus exclusively on Morrissey’s solo career, and this important book offers a nuanced and rich reading of his highly influential creative and cultural output. Covering a broad range of academic disciplines and approaches, including musicology, ethnography, sociology, and cultural studies, these essays will be a must for fans of Morrissey or the Smiths, or those seeking to make sense of the many fascinating complexities of this global icon and controversial figure.
The second part of each chapter presents the discography. Information here includes the session’s place, date, time, and producer; master/matrix numbers, song/tune titles, composer credits, personnel, instruments, and vocals; and catalog/release numbers and reissue data.
The only complete bio-discography of this American musical icon, The Music of Bill Monroe is the starting point for any study of Monroe’s contributions as a composer, interpreter, and performer.
Volume 1, Contexts and Paradigms, chronologically surveys Tenney's creative development and output. Wannamaker begins each section with biographical, aesthetic, and technical context that illuminates a distinct period in Tenney's career. From there, he analyzes a small number of pieces that illuminate the concerns, characteristics, and techniques that emerged in Tenney's music during that time. Wannamaker supplements the text with musical examples, graphs, and diagrams while also drawing on unpublished material and newly available primary sources to flesh out each work and the ideas that shaped it.
A landmark in experimental music scholarship, The Music of James Tenney is a first-of-its-kind consideration of the experimental music titan and his work.
Written as a reference work, Volume 2, A Handbook to the Pieces, presents detailed entries on Tenney's significant post-1959 experimental works (excepting pieces covered in volume 1). Wannamaker includes technical information, an analysis of intentions and goals, graphs and musical examples, historical and biographical context, and thoughts from Tenney and others on specific works. Throughout, he discusses the striking compositional ideas found in Tenney's music and, where appropriate, traces an idea's appearance from one piece to the next to reveal the evolution of the composer's art and thought.
A landmark in experimental music scholarship, The Music of James Tenney is a first-of-its-kind consideration of the experimental music titan and his work.
Composers featured: Michael Abels, H. Leslie Adams, Lettie Beckon Alston, Thomas J. Anderson, Dwight Andrews, Regina Harris Baiocchi, David Baker, William C. Banfield, Ysaye Maria Barnwell, Billy Childs, Noel DaCosta, Anthony Davis, George Duke, Leslie Dunner, Donal Fox, Adolphus Hailstork, Jester Hairston, Herbie Hancock, Jonathan Holland, Anthony Kelley, Wendell Logan, Bobby McFerrin, Dorothy Rudd Moore, Jeffrey Mumford, Gary Powell Nash, Stephen Newby, Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, Michael Powell, Patrice Rushen, George Russell, Kevin Scott, Evelyn Simpson-Curenton, Hale Smith, Billy Taylor, Frederick C. Tillis, George Walker, James Kimo Williams, Julius Williams, Tony Williams, Olly Wilson, and Michael Woods
Both a beguiling portrait of the artist and an idiosyncratic self-portrait of the author, Mysterious Mozart is Philippe Sollers's alternately oblique and searingly direct interpretation of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's oeuvre and lasting mystique, audaciously reformulated for the postmodern age.
With a mix of slang, abstractions, quotations, first- and third-person narratives, and blunt opinion, French writer and critic Philippe Sollers taps into Mozart's playful correspondence and the lesser-known pieces of his enormous repertoire to analyze the popularity and public perceptions of his music. Detailing Mozart's drive to continue producing masterpieces even when saddled with debt and riddled with illness and anxiety, Sollers powerfully and meticulously analyzes Mozart's seven last great operas using a psychoanalytical approach to the characters' relationships.
As Sollers explores themes of constancy, prodigy, freedom, and religion, he offers up bits of his own history, revealing his affinity for the creative geniuses of the eighteenth century and a yearning to bring that era's utopian freedom to life in contemporary times. What emerges is an inimitable portrait of a man and a musician whose greatest gift is a quirky companionability, a warm and mysterious appeal that distinguishes Mozart from other great composers and is brilliantly echoed by Sollers's artful tangle of narrative.
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