Kategoria BISAC: Biography & Autobiography >> Music

This biography tells the story of Alice May, a touring prima donna in the nineteenth century who travelled from England to Australia, New Zealand, India and the US, taking part in pioneering performances of the popular light operas of the day. Along the way she took part in many premieres, including the first production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Sorcerer and the first authorised American production of The Mikado . This colourful life story will appeal to theatre historians, fans of the melodrama, burlesque, and the musical stage.

Based on lengthy interviews with Ellington's bandmates, family, and friends, Duke Ellington and His World offers a fresh look at this legendary composer. Written by a fellow musician and African-American, the book traces Ellington's life and career in terms of the social, cultural, political, and economic realities of this times. Beginning with his birth in Washinton, DC, through his first bands and work at the legendary Cotton Club, to his final great extended compositions, this book gives a thorough introduction to Ellington's music and how it was made. It also illuminates his personal life...

The long-awaited, untold, inside story of the rise of the legendary actor, singer, scholar, and activist. The first volume of this major biography breaks new ground.

The greatest scholar-athlete-performing artist in U.S. history, Paul Robeson was one of the most compelling figures of the twentieth century.

Now his son, Paul Robeson Jr., traces the dramatic arc of his rise to fame, painting a definitive picture of Paul Robeson's formative years. His father was an escaped slave; his mother, a descendent of freedmen; and his wife, the brilliant and ambitious Eslanda Cardozo Goode. With a...

Electrifying, highly acclaimed, and intensely personal, this new and updated version of Myra Friedman's classic biography of Janis Joplin teems with dramatic insights into Joplin's genius and into the chaotic times that catapulted her to fame as the legendary queen of rock. It is a stunning panorama of the turbulent decade when Joplin's was the rallying voice of a generation that lost itself in her music and found itself in her words.

From her small hometown of Port Arthur, Texas, to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury, from the intimate coffeehouses to the supercharged concert halls, from the...

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 study of the social context of music must consider the day-to-day experiences of its practitioners. This book traces the daily working life and aspirations of British musicians during the sweeping social and economic transformation of Britain from 1750 to 1850. It features working musicians of all types and at all levels--organists, singers, instrumentalists, teachers, composers, and entrepreneurs--and explores their educational background, their conditions of employment, their wages, the systems of patronage that supported them, and their individual perceptions.

This study includes selected songs for voice and piano composed by Schubert between 1822 and his death on November 19, 1828. Schubert was diagnosed with syphilis circa late 1822, and many of the songs discussed were written with his knowledge of impending death. It is possible to discover within them a late song style, full of elegiac references to Schubert's other death-haunted works and marked by distinctive variation techniques. Youens also introduces six of the poets whose texts were set to music by Schubert.

Alban Berg's Wozzeck is one of the most significant operas of the twentieth century. Douglas Jarman's study provides a clear and accessible introduction to this work, placing it in the context of the radical developments in musical language during the early decades of the century and of the development of Berg's own musical style.

The book covers all aspects of the work. Early chapters are devoted to the history and discovery of the Buchner play Woyzeck on which Berg based the libretto and to the background and composition of the opera. A detailed synopsis takes the reader through the...

Abitare la battaglia, Gabriele Baldini's study of the operas of Verdi from Oberto to Un ballo in maschera, has, since its posthumous publication in 1970, received much critical acclaim both in Italy and elsewhere. Its lack of technical language makes it easily accessible to the general music lover, but its original and sometimes controversial ideas have stimulated a great deal of discussion among Verdi specialists. The book's central concern is to present an analysis of Verdi the musical dramatist, and its conclusions constitute a radical reassessment of the vexed relationship between opera...

This handbook provides the reader with the first comprehensive guide to Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro. Tim Carter discusses the composition of the opera and the social, cultural and musical context in which it was produced, its critical reception and performance history. He provides a full analytical synopsis, a chapter on the verse structure of the libretto and a discussion of Mozart's matching of music to drama. Other chapters also consider relevant topics, including the 'comic' possibilities of the Classical style, and Michael Robinson writes on opera buffa in the 1770s and 1780s.

This guide presents a unique collection of critical, analytical, and documentary essays on Puccini's most popular opera. There are new studies on the background to Parisian bohemianism (by Jerrold Seigel), on Puccini's musical language (by William Drabkin), and on the opera's stage history (by William Ashbrook). Following research in Italian archives, and a thorough study of the published sources (many of them previously unknown to modern scholarship), the editors have added further essays on the genesis of the opera, the structure of the libretto, and aspects of the work's reception. The...

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) represents the highpoint of the recording career of the Beatles. This is a detailed study of this album, and it demonstrates how serious discussion of popular music can be undertaken without failing either the approach or the music. Dr. Moore considers each song individually, tying his analysis to the recorded performance on disk, rather than the printed music. He focuses on the musical quality of the songs and the interpretations offered by a range of commentators. He also describes the context in which the album was written--both within the...

Schubert's choice of poets has traditionally come under fire for the preponderance of mediocre talent, and yet many of these writers were highly esteemed in their day. The author has chosen four such poets--Gabriele von Baumberg, Theodor Korner, Johann Mayrhofer, and Ernst Schulze--in order to reexamine their lives, works, and Schubert's music to their verse. All four poets were vivid inhabitants of a vivid era, and their tribulations afford us added insight into the upheavals, the manners and mores, of their day.

Dear Readers,

From 1970-1974 George Harrison and others organized a series of Concerts for Bangladesh. These charity concerts raised millions for UNICEF's relief efforts to aid Bangladesh war victims.

"American Trilogy "contains revealing biographies and original songs titles of the singers who performed at these concerts. This music inspired the foot soldiers of change to challenge the injustices of this world. Artists include JOAN BAEZ, JOHNNY CASH, BOB DYLAN, ELVIS PRESLEY, and BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN.

"American Trilogy" is also about the counterculture. Some want to brand the 1960's...

One of Lawrence Welk's most beloved entertainers, an Emmy Award winner and a Las Vegas headliner, Roberta Linn captured the hearts of fans nationwide. Her inspiring story unfolds in the pages of "Not Now, Lord, I've Got Too Much to Do." Born in a small Iowa town to a farmer's daughter and a minor league baseball player, Roberta discovered her talent for performing at a young age. She played in film productions and worked with big names stars like Shirley Temple, Cary Grant, and Clark Gable. At the age of thirteen, she fabricated her true age and enlisted in the Women's Army Corps,...

One of Lawrence Welk's most beloved entertainers, an Emmy Award winner and a Vegas headliner, Roberta Linn captured the hearts of fans nationwide. Her inspiring story unfolds in the pages of "Champagne Lady."

Born in a small Iowa town to a farmer's daughter and a minor league baseball player, Roberta discovered her talent for performing at a young age. She played in film productions and worked with big name stars like Shirley Temple, Cary Grant, and Clark Gable. At the age of thirteen, she fabricated her true age and enlisted in the Women's Army Corps, entertaining the troops of World War...

One of Lawrence Welk's most beloved entertainers, an Emmy Award winner and a Las Vegas headliner, Roberta Linn captured the hearts of fans nationwide. Her inspiring story unfolds in the pages of "Not Now, Lord, I've Got Too Much to Do." Born in a small Iowa town to a farmer's daughter and a minor league baseball player, Roberta discovered her talent for performing at a young age. She played in film productions and worked with big names stars like Shirley Temple, Cary Grant, and Clark Gable. At the age of thirteen, she fabricated her true age and enlisted in the Women's Army Corps,...

Taking us back to late '70s and early '80s Hollywood--pre-crack, pre-AIDS, pre-Reagan--We Got the Neutron Bomb re-creates word for word the rage, intensity, and anarchic glory of the Los Angeles punk scene, straight from the mouths of the scenesters, zinesters, groupies, filmmakers, and musicians who were there.

"California was wide-open sex--no condoms, no birth control, no morality, no guilt." --Kim Fowley

"The Runaways were rebels, all of us were. And a lot of people looked up to us. It helped a lot of kids who had very mediocre, uneventful, unhappy lives. It gave them...

This ultimate guide to big bands includes hundreds of entries spanning the history of this American musical style. Each entry contains the band name, its leader, essential personnel, the years it existed, tops hits, and a brief description of the band.

Copiously researched and documented, Hit Menis the highly controversial portrait of the pop music industry in all its wild, ruthless glory: the insatiable greed and ambition; the enormous egos; the fierce struggles for profits and power; the vendettas, rivalries, shakedowns, and payoffs. Chronicling the evolution of America's largest music labels from the Tin Pan Alley days to the present day, Fredric Dannen examines in depth the often venal, sometimes illegal dealings among the assorted hustlers and kingpins who rule over this multi-billion-dollar business."