[PDF] The Composer Herself eBook

Author : Linda Kouvaras
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 432 pages
File Size : 47,72 MB
Release : 2023-11-30
Category : Music
ISBN : 3031239229

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This edited volume presents 27 original essays by living composers from all around the globe, reflecting on the creation of their music. Coterminous to the recent worldwide resurgence in feminist focus, the distinctive feature of this collection is the “snapshots” of creative processes and conceptualizing on the part of women who write music, writing in the present day, from prominent early-career composers to major figures, from a range of ethnic backgrounds in the contemporary music field. The chapters step into the juncture point at which feminism finds itself: as binary conceptions of gender are being dissolved, with critiques of the attendant gender-based historical generalizations of composers, and with the growing awareness of the rightful place of First Nations' cultural voices, the contributors explore what, actually, is being composed by women, and what they think about their world. The needs that this book serves are acutely felt: despite recent social gains, and sector initiatives and programs encouraging and presenting the work of women who compose music, their works are yet to receive commensurate exposure with that of their male counterparts. In its multi-pronged, direct response to this dire situation, this vibrant volume highlights established as well as emerging women composers on the international stage; reveals myriad issues around feminism, as broadly conceived; and gives insights, from the composers' own voices, on the inner workings of their composition process. The volume thus presents a contemporary moment in time across the generations and within developments in musical composition. With its unique insights, this book is essential for academics and practitioners interested in the illuminations of the current working landscape for creative women.

Author : Edward T. Cone
Publisher : University of California Press
Page : 196 pages
File Size : 44,91 MB
Release : 2021-01-08
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 0520358031

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Music, we are often told, is a language. But if music is a language, then who is speaking? The Composer's Voice tries to answer this obvious but infrequently raised question. In so doing, it puts forward a dramatistic theory of musical expression, based on the view that every composition is a symbolic utterance involving a fundamental act of impersonation. The voice we hear is not that of the composer himself, but of a persona--a musical projection of his consciousness that experiences and communicates the events of the composition. Developing his argument by reference to numerous examples ina wide variety of styles, Mr. Cone moves from song and opera through program music to absolute instrumental music. In particular, he discusses the implications of his theory for performance. According to the dramatistic view, not only every singer but every instrumentalist as well becomes a kind of actor, assuming a role that functions both autonomously and as a component of the total musical persona. In his analysis of the problems inherent in this dual nature of the performer's job, Mr. Cone offers guidance that will prove of practical value to every performing musician. He has much to say to the listener as well. He recommends an imaginative participation in the component roles of musical work, leading to a sense of identification with the persona itself, as the path to complete musical understanding. And this approach is shown to be relevant to a number of specialized kids of listening as well--those applicable to analysis, historical scholarship, and criticism. The dance, too, is shown to depend on similar concepts. Although The Composer's Voice involves an investigation of how music functions as a form of communication, it is not primarily concerned with determine, or interpreting, the "content" of the message. A final chapter, however, puts forward a tentative explanation of musical "meaning" based on an interpretation of the art as a coalescence of symbolic utterance and symbolic gesture. While not essential to the main lines of the argument, it suggests interesting possibilities for further development of the dramatistic theory. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1974.

Author : Linda Kouvaras
Publisher : Springer Nature
Page : 450 pages
File Size : 11,88 MB
Release : 2022-08-01
Category : Music
ISBN : 3030955575

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This book presents accounts of creative processes and contextual issues of current-day and early-twentieth century women composers. This collection of essays balances narratives of struggle, artistic prowess, and of "breaking through" the obstacles in the profession. Part I: Creative Work – Then and Now illuminates historical and present-day women’s composition and various iterations and conceptions of the “feminine voice”; Part II: The State of the Industry in the Present Day provides solutions from the frontline to sector inequities; and Part III: Creating; Collaborating: Composer and Performer Reflections offers personal stories of current creation in music. A Century of Composition by Women: Music Against the Odds draws together topical issues in feminist musicology over the past century. This volume provides insight into the professional and compositional procedures of creative women in music and stands to be relevant for composers, performers, industry professionals, students, and feminist and musicological scholars for many years to come.

Author : Eric Faye
Publisher : Pushkin Press
Page : 225 pages
File Size : 42,23 MB
Release : 2021-08-10
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1782277234

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An intricately plotted mystery and an engrossing story imbued with the foggy atmosphere of post-Communist Prague, the third book in the Walter Presents Library is a bewitching mystery about a woman who claims to transcribe music from the ghost of Chopin. Prague, 1995: Vera Foltynova, a widow in her late 50s, claims to receive visits from the ghost of great composer Frederic Chopin. What's more, she declares that Chopin has dictated dozens of compositions to her, to allow the world to hear the sublime music he was unable to create in his own short life. Many dismiss her story as a ridiculous hoax, while others swear that the music has the same beauty and refinement as the work of the dead master. Ludvik Slany, a secret police agent-turned-television journalist, is assigned to make a documentary debunking Vera's claims. He arrives in Prague ready to uncover a scam, but the more he subtly tries to trick her into giving herself away, the more he begins to think he may be witnessing a genuine miracle... The Ghost of Frederic Chopin is an engrossing story of music, faith and the ghosts of the past.

Author : Patricia Duncker
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Page : 273 pages
File Size : 19,65 MB
Release : 2010-10-25
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 1608192873

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The bodies are discovered on New Year's Day, sixteen dead in the freshly fallen snow. The adults lie stiff in a semicircle; the children, in pajamas and overcoats, are curled at their feet. When he hears the news, Commissaire André Schweigen knows who to call: Dominique Carpentier, the Judge, also known as the "sect hunter." Carpentier sweeps into the investigation in thick glasses and red gloves, and together the Commissaire and the Judge begin searching for clues in a nearby chalet. Among the decorations and unwrapped presents of a seemingly ordinary holiday, they find a leather-bound book, filled with mysterious code, containing maps of the stars. The book of the Faith leads them to the Composer, Friedrich Grosz, who is connected in some way to every one of the dead. Following his trail, Carpentier, Schweigen, and the Judge's assistant, Gaëlle, are drawn into a world of complex family ties, seductive music, and ancient cosmic beliefs. Hurtling breathlessly through the vineyards of Southern France to the gabled houses of Lübeck, Germany, through cathedrals, opera houses, museums, and the cobbled streets of an Alpine village, this ferocious new novel is a metaphysical mystery of astonishing verve and power.

Author : Malcolm Gillies
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 342 pages
File Size : 33,84 MB
Release : 2006-06-29
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN : 9780199719419

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Shortly before his death, Percy Grainger (1882-1961) lodged over twenty unpublished sketches in his Australian Museum. Self-Portrait of Percy Grainger draws exclusively from these sketches, revealing for the first time an illuminating portrait of the composer's life. With such titles as "The Aldridge-Grainger-Strom Saga," "Thunks," "Ere-I-Forget," "The Love-Life of Helen and Paris," and "Anecdotes," these manuscripts were intended as precursors to Grainger's autobiography, My Wretched Tone-Life, which he only commenced in his final years. Expertly shaping these sketches, the editors have created a "self-portrait" along the lines that Grainger himself had intended. The volume first introduces Grainger's forebears, parents, friends, wife, and himself before moving on to his views on composition, performance, and the musical world. In these sketches, Grainger addresses such topics as racial and national identity, the meaning of work, physical culture, language reform, sexual practice, and artistic patronage. Grainger also probes the nature of musical genius, discussing a broad range of composers including Igor Stravinsky, Thomas Beecham, Frederick Delius, Edvard Grieg, Charles Stanford, Cyril Scott, Fritz Kreisler, Donald Tovey, Ferruccio Busoni, and Balfour Gardiner. Among the works of his own that Grainger most featured are his The Warriors --Music for an Imaginary Ballet, Colonial Song, the Lincolnshire Posy series of band pieces, his greatest "hit" Country Gardens, and his many settings of English folk-music. Written in Grainger's own self-created "Nordic English" as well as translated from Danish, the language of his most intimate confessions, Self-Portrait of Percy Grainger sheds light on some of the most revealing details of the composer's life. The sketches trace Grainger's changing self-perception, from the romantically tinged, even lustful, views of his forties and fifties, through a period of wistfulness in his sixties, to the bitterness and self-loathing of his old age. The volume also includes several of Grainger's own drawings as well as both public and private photographs. A fascinating and revealing collection of vignettes, this extraordinary book will appeal to instructors, students, and enthusiasts in musicology, music history, cultural studies, and Australian, British, and American history.

Author : Caitlin Horrocks
Publisher : Little, Brown
Page : 464 pages
File Size : 20,53 MB
Release : 2019-07-30
Category : Fiction
ISBN : 0316316938

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This "enthralling" debut novel and Wall Street Journal Top Ten Book of the Year circles the life of eccentric composer Erik Satie in La Belle Époque Paris and examines love, family, genius, and the madness of art (New York Times Book Review). Erik Satie begins life with every possible advantage. But after the dual blows of his mother's early death and his father's breakdown upend his childhood, Erik and his younger siblings -- Louise and Conrad -- are scattered. Later, as an ambitious young composer, Erik flings himself into the Parisian art scene, aiming for greatness but achieving only notoriety. As the years, then decades, pass, he alienates those in his circle as often as he inspires them, lashing out at friends and lovers like Claude Debussy and Suzanne Valadon. Only Louise and Conrad are steadfast allies. Together they strive to maintain their faith in their brother's talent and hold fast the badly frayed threads of family. But in a journey that will take her from Normandy to Paris to Argentina, Louise is rocked by a severe loss that ultimately forces her into a reckoning with how Erik -- obsessed with his art and hungry for fame -- will never be the brother she's wished for. With her buoyant, vivid reimagination of an iconic artist's eventful life, Caitlin Horrocks has written a captivating and ceaselessly entertaining novel about the tenacious bonds of family and the costs of greatness, both to ourselves and to those we love.

Author : Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky
Publisher : Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press
Page : 484 pages
File Size : 39,23 MB
Release : 1990
Category : Biography & Autobiography
ISBN :

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This unique documentary biography is the first to draw on the composer's own private documents--over 5,000 letters, his diaries, and articles--to present the most complete and compelling picture ever of his turbulent life and work. Linking the documents with concise, explanatory comments, Orlova charts chronologically the events of his life and sheds new light on all aspects of his personality, including his methods of working and his views on such subjects as philosophy, religion, literature, and music. Of particular interest is the clear evidence Orlova presents for the theory that Tchaikovsky did not die of cholera in 1893, but committed suicide to preserve his honor and cover up a personal scandal. Suppressed in the Russian edition of the book, the suicide theory has since been corroborated by another source and receives its fullest exposition to date in this English-language edition.

Author : GMAC (Graduate Management Admission Council)
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
Page : 360 pages
File Size : 16,34 MB
Release : 2017-06-19
Category : Business & Economics
ISBN : 1119387442

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"The only source of real GMAT questions from past exams"--Cover.

Author : Paul Fryer
Publisher : McFarland
Page : 234 pages
File Size : 32,2 MB
Release : 2018-05-03
Category : Performing Arts
ISBN : 1476632049

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This collection of new essays explores the many ways in which composers have been depicted in film and what audiences have taken away from such depictions. Beginning with some of the earliest silent film examples--including some of the first feature-length "bio-pics" ever produced--these essays range from the 12th century abbess Hildegard of Bingen to the great classical and romantic eras of Verdi, Wagner, Berlioz and Strauss, up to the 20th century's Elgar, Delius, Gershwin and Blitzstein.