New Publications,
New Music Book Publications - 29th April 2024
Welcome to our latest selection of new music publications, including a guide to the upcoming BBC Proms Festival, a paperback edition of Alice Farnham's examination of what it means to be an orchestral conductor, collections of essays exploring the life and work of Ralph Vaughan Williams and Leonard Bernstein, a revised and expanded edition of Jeremy Dibble's biography of Stanford, a companion to tango, and a history of electronic music in Britain from Doctor Who to Acid House.
The BBC Proms is the world’s longest-running classical music festival. Held every summer at the Royal Albert Hall, it attracts a glittering array of artists and orchestras from around the world. Filled with concert listings and articles by leading writers, this guide offers an insight into the performers and repertoire, as well as thought-provoking opinion pieces about music, musicians and music-making.
Available Format: Book
Now available in paperback, this book sets out to illuminate what it means to be a conductor in modern times. Drawing on a wealth of insights from fellow conductors such as Antonio Pappano and Jane Glover, each with their own perspectives and specialisms, it invites us to think anew about one of the signature roles in classical music, exploring what it takes to lead, unite and inspire people.
Available Format: Book
This volume offers a wide-ranging view of one of the most important musicians of the twentieth century. Scholars from diverse backgrounds and fields have contributed rich insights into Bernstein's life and work in an approachable style, shedding light on his social, professional and ideological contexts including his contemporaries and rivals on Broadway, his artistic collaborations, his celebrity status as a conductor on the international concert circuit, and his involvement in music education via broadcasting.
Available Format: Book
Vaughan Williams in Context
Julian Onderdonk & Ceri Owen (editors); Cambridge University Press; Hardback
Challenging residual doubts about Vaughan Williams's significance within twentieth-century music, this book places his music in cultural, social, and political contexts. Chapters by scholars from a range of disciplines re-evaluate the composer's career within a world marked by both rapid change and refigured traditions. It furthers a revisionist perspective by broadening understandings of the nature of his responses to the twentieth century.
Available Format: Book
Charles Villiers Stanford: Man and Musician (Revised and Expanded Edition)
Jeremy Dibble; Boydell & Brewer; Hardback
This expanded edition offers new musical and biographical discussion, drawing on a wider range of sources to bring added insight to Stanford's life as a performer, conductor and teacher. Another emphasis in this revised edition is Stanford's lifelong aspiration to promote opera in English and the establishment of an English National Opera in London. Stanford's politics, particularly his opposition to Gladstonian Liberalism and to Home Rule for Ireland, also receive discussion within the context of his creative output.
Available Format: Book
The Cambridge Companion to Tango
Kristin Wendland & Kacey Link (editors); Cambridge University Press; Paperback
Tango music rapidly became a global phenomenon as early as the beginning of the twentieth century, with about 30% of gramophone records made between 1903 and 1910 devoted to it. Its popularity declined between the 1950s and the 1980s but has since risen to new heights. This companion offers twenty chapters from varying perspectives around music, dance, poetry, and interdisciplinary studies.
Available Format: Book
Revolutions in American Music: Three Decades That Changed a Country and Its Sounds
Michael Broyles; WW Norton & Co; Hardback
This book shows how three key decades - the 1840s, 1920s and 1950s - shaped America’s musical future. In each, new styles of music combined with emerging technologies to have lasting impact on our cultural landscape. Through the music of each decade we see the social, cultural and political fabric of the time. A variety of characters serve as focal points for each chapter, their stories animating this look at how American music became what it is today.
Available Format: Book
Tales from the Symphony: Perspectives from African American Musicians
Robert Lee Watt; Rowman & Littlefield; Paperback
This book contains conversations with nineteen African American classical musicians in America’s major symphony orchestras. These conversations explore the ingrained prejudices that some hold against African American people in symphony orchestras, conservatories, and other musical institutions. By amplifying these voices, it provides a variety of perspectives on the almost cloistered world of these beloved institutions.
Available Format: Book
Dream Machines: Electronic Music in Britain From Doctor Who to Acid House
Matthew Collin; Omnibus Press; Hardback
This account of electronic music in the UK tracks its evolution from early avant-garde experiments after World War Two through psychedelia, art-rock and synth-pop to electronic dance music, sampling and the techno era. As well as profiling the sonic futurists who pioneered new styles, it documents the scenes and underground movements that built Britain's thrillingly diverse electronic music culture in its formative decades.
Available Format: Book
Interspecies Communication: Sound and Music beyond Humanity
Gavin Steingo; University of Chicago Press; Paperback
This study examines significant cases of attempted communication beyond the human - cases in which the dualistic relationship of human to non-human is dramatically challenged. From singing whales to Sun Ra to searching for alien life, it charts the many ways we have attempted to think about reach beings that are very unlike ourselves, in the depths of the oceans, the far reaches of the universe, or right under our own noses.
Available Format: Book
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