Introduction to Western Culture
Introduction to Western Culture

Author: Guobin Xu

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Published: 2018-12-16

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9789811340796

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Promoting cultural understanding in a globalized world, this collection provides a concise and unique introduction to Western culture, through the voices of Chinese scholars. Written by a team of experts in their fields, the book provides insights into Western history and culture, covering an interdisciplinary range of topics across literature, language, music, art and religion. It addresses such issues as tourism and etiquette, as well as the key differences of distinct cultures, providing readers with a succinct yet effective way to master a basic understanding of Western culture.

An Introduction to the History and Literature of Music in Western Culture
An Introduction to the History and Literature of Music in Western Culture

Author: Michael R. Brown

Publisher:

Published: 2008-08-07

Total Pages: 126

ISBN-13: 9780555003572

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Designed for students with little or no musical background, An Introduction to the History and Literature of Music in Western Culture is an interdisciplinary text that can stand alone in a music appreciation class or serve as an excellent supplement to a survey of Western history or literature. The driving philosophy behind this text is music education, not musicology. Author Michael Brown has taught this material for 25 years in both high school and college, giving him a feel for the impractical and overburdened quality of many music appreciation textbooks. Because most students come to school with only a very limited knowledge of music, the overriding goal of An Introduction to the History and Literature of Music in Western Culture is simply to introduce students to the aesthetic appreciation of music and to give music a place in their view of the world. The text covers major composers and forms in chronological order, though without attempting to present a comprehensive history of music. Instead, the emphasis is on a broad view of the aesthetics of music as it has developed over the course of Western civilization. Similarly, it has no sample music manuscripts, but a pair of compact discs complements the text by offering selections to go with the “Music Analysis” sections of each chapter. Furthermore, the culture and style of each period is communicated more fully through dozens of works of art, from antiquity to the modern era, reproduced throughout the book.

The Oxford Handbook of the New Cultural History of Music
The Oxford Handbook of the New Cultural History of Music

Author: Jane F. Fulcher

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2013-11-01

Total Pages: 605

ISBN-13: 0199711984

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

As the field of Cultural History grows in prominence in the academic world, an understanding of the history of culture has become vital to scholars across disciplines. The Oxford Handbook of the New Cultural History of Music cultivates a return to the fundamental premises of cultural history in the cutting-edge work of musicologists concerned with cultural history and historians who deal with music. In this volume, noted academics from both of these disciplines illustrate the continuing endeavor of cultural history to grasp the realms of human experience, understanding, and communication as they are manifest or expressed symbolically through various layers of culture and in many forms of art. The Oxford Handbook of the New Cultural History of Music fosters and reflects a sustained dialogue about their shared goals and techniques, rejuvenating their work with new insights into the field itself.

From Plato to Postmodernism
From Plato to Postmodernism

Author: Christopher Watkin

Publisher: Bristol Classical Press

Published: 2011-10-27

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780715638286

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

From Plato to Postmodernism presents the cultural history of the West in one concise volume. Nearly four thousand years of Western history are woven together into an unfolding story in which we see how movements and individuals contributed to the philosophy, literature and art that have shaped today's world. The story begins with the West's Greco-Roman and Judeo-Christian origins, moving through the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Enlightenment and Romanticism to twenty-first century postmodernity. The author covers key figures such as Moses, Michelangelo, Mozart and Marx, setting them in context and highlighting their main contributions. Illustrations and a comprehensive glossary help explain important terms such as ‘gothic', ‘baroque', ‘stream of consciousness' and ‘the death of God', and clarify movements such as Neoplatonism, Renaissance humanism and existentialism. For students, this book bridges the gap between what is taught in schools and the cultural knowledge required at university, providing an indispensible grounding in the story of Western culture. For all readers, it offers an invitation to take an enjoyable tour through the fascinating history of Western thought, literature and art.

The Cambridge History of World Music
The Cambridge History of World Music

Author: Philip V. Bohlman

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2013-12-12

Total Pages: 943

ISBN-13: 1316025667

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Scholars have long known that world music was not merely the globalized product of modern media, but rather that it connected religions, cultures, languages and nations throughout world history. The chapters in this History take readers to foundational historical moments – in Europe, Oceania, China, India, the Muslim world, North and South America – in search of the connections provided by a truly world music. Historically, world music emerged from ritual and religion, labor and life-cycles, which occupy chapters on Native American musicians, religious practices in India and Indonesia, and nationalism in Argentina and Portugal. The contributors critically examine music in cultural encounter and conflict, and as the critical core of scientific theories from the Arabic Middle Ages through the Enlightenment to postmodernism. Overall, the book contains the histories of the music of diverse cultures, which increasingly become the folk, popular and classical music of our own era.

Oxford History of Western Music
Oxford History of Western Music

Author: Richard Taruskin

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009-07-27

Total Pages: 6390

ISBN-13: 0199813698

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The Oxford History of Western Music is a magisterial survey of the traditions of Western music by one of the most prominent and provocative musicologists of our time. This text illuminates, through a representative sampling of masterworks, those themes, styles, and currents that give shape and direction to each musical age. Taking a critical perspective, this text sets the details of music, the chronological sweep of figures, works, and musical ideas, within the larger context of world affairs and cultural history. Written by an authoritative, opinionated, and controversial figure in musicology, The Oxford History of Western Music provides a critical aesthetic position with respect to individual works, a context in which each composition may be evaluated and remembered. Taruskin combines an emphasis on structure and form with a discussion of relevant theoretical concepts in each age, to illustrate how the music itself works, and how contemporaries heard and understood it. It also describes how the c

Understanding Music
Understanding Music

Author: N. Alan Clark

Publisher:

Published: 2015-12-21

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 9781940771335

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Music moves through time; it is not static. In order to appreciate music wemust remember what sounds happened, and anticipate what sounds might comenext. This book takes you on a journey of music from past to present, from the Middle Ages to the Baroque Period to the 20th century and beyond!

Stanzas
Stanzas

Author: Giorgio Agamben

Publisher: U of Minnesota Press

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 9780816620388

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"Stanzas" (which means "rooms" in Italian) is a blend of philology, the psychoanalysis of toys, medieval physics and psychology, and contemporary linguistics and philosophy. In this work, Giorgio Agamben attempts to reconfigure the epistemological foundation of Western culture. He rereads Freud and Saussure to discover the impossibility of metalanguage - there is no "superior language" that can read the obscure scenes of the unconscious, and the "symbol" is always the return of the repressed in an improper signifier. This impossibility leads Agamben to the problem of representation. He argues that since language is the locus of the production and storage of phantasms, all real objects are fractured by phantasmic itineraries that in turn divide poetry and philosophy, joy and knowledge. This division is at the origin of Western culture and renders impossible the possession of any object of knowledge. Giorgio Agamben is the author of "Language and Death" (University of Minnesota Press 1991).

The Western Canon
The Western Canon

Author: Harold Bloom

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 2014-06-17

Total Pages: 751

ISBN-13: 0547546483

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The literary critic defends the importance of Western literature from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Kafka and Beckett in this acclaimed national bestseller. NOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD Harold Bloom's The Western Canon is more than a required reading list—it is a “heroically brave, formidably learned” defense of the great works of literature that comprise the traditional Western Canon. Infused with a love of learning, compelling in its arguments for a unifying written culture, it argues brilliantly against the politicization of literature and presents a guide to the essential writers of the western literary tradition (The New York Times Book Review). Placing William Shakespeare at the “center of the canon,” Bloom examines the literary contributions of Dante Alighieri, John Milton, Jane Austen, Emily Dickenson, Leo Tolstoy, Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Pablo Neruda, and many others. Bloom's book, much-discussed and praised in publications as diverse as The Economist and Entertainment Weekly, offers a dazzling display of erudition and passion. “An impressive work…deeply, rightly passionate about the great books of the past.”—Michel Dirda, The Washington Post Book World