Dulcimer Muse is a beautiful collection of fingerpicked and strummed tunes and songs arranged for the mountain dulcimer for players seeking to expand their repertoire. Thirty-one arrangements are gathered from Medieval and Renaissance eras, traditional folk music of Ireland, Scotland, England, Brittany and Spain, plus original compositions. Intended primarily for intermediate to advanced players and for some ambitious beginners, the pieces include melody lines in standard notation, mountain dulcimer tablature, with chords above most of the dulcimer tablature that can be shared with other musicians for accompaniment. Suggestions on how to play with greater musicality and ease are included. Set one-step lower than customary to bring out the dulcimer’s deeper tones; the majority of pieces are arranged in Mixolydian and Aeolian tunings.
In folk tradition, stories of love lost, betrayal, jealousy, conflict, emigration, and the supernatural are often immortalized in songs of many traditions, demonstrating that singing has been a universal vehicle for the human condition. the criteria for this wonderful collection of prose and melodies is from Celtic traditions that have been with us for hundreds of years. These compositions have been arranged so that each will work both as an air and as a song. All of the selections in the book appear on the companion CD.
The Appalachian dulcimer is one of America's major contributions to world music and folk art. Homemade and handmade, played by people with no formal knowledge of music, this beautiful instrument arrived in the light of the 20th century with virtually no written record. Appalachian Dulcimer Traditions is a first-hand report to enlarge our knowledge of the dulcimer's history by searching the hills and "hollers" of Appalachia, looking at old instruments, and listening to the tales of old folks. After reviewing the instrument's special musical features, the book describes some related instruments, and reveals little-known facts about the dulcimer's origins on the early Appalachian frontier. The book then describes three major design traditions of the dulcimer, each centered in its own geographical area, and focuses on important makers in each of the three traditions--the Melton family of Galax, Virginia, Charles M. Prichard of Huntington, West Virginia, and "Uncle Ed" Thomas of Kentucky. A final chapter describes four Appalachian makers of the folk revival transition, who began making instruments the old-time way and modernized them to meet the needs of Post-World-War-II urban players. The book concludes with listings of dulcimer recordings in the Archive of Folk Culture of the Library of Congress.
Intended as a supplement to The Mechanical Muse: The Piano, Pianism and Piano Music, c.1760-1850, this Companion provides additional information which, largely for reasons of space but also of continuity, it was not possible or desirable to include in that volume. The book is laid out alphabetically and full biographical entries are provided for all musical figures mentioned, including composers, performers, theoreticians and teachers, as well as piano makers and publishers of music, within the period covered by The Mechanical Muse. There are also entries on figures of importance from outside the period but whose influence is palpably important within it, such as J.S. Bach. As well as biographical information, all these entries contain lists of principal works and a section on further reading so that readers can follow up people and matters of particular interest. Also included in The Companion are entries devoted to particular works and other information of relevance, such as descriptions of musical forms, characteristics of dances and so on, as well as some technical information on music and explanations of technical terms pertaining to keyboard instruments themselves and to ways of playing them. This Companion is not intended to replace existing reference books such as Grove or Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, but will be useful for those who desire to know more about a particular topic and do not necessarily have access to more specialist reference works, or time to visit large or specialist libraries. As such it is indispensable to users of The Mechanical Muse.
There are no direct records of the original Indo-European speech. By comparing the vocabularies of its various descendants, however, it is possible to reconstruct the basic Indo-European roots with considerable confidence. In The Origins of English Words, Shipley catalogues these proposed roots and follows the often devious, always fascinating, process by which some of their offshoots have grown. Anecdotal, eclectic, and always enthusiastic, The Origins of English Words is a diverting expedition beyond linguistics into literature, history, folklore, anthropology, philosophy, and science.
Music, race, politics, and conscience. In these eight essays written over the span of a decade and a half, T. R. Hummer explains how, for him, such abiding concerns revolve around the practice of poetry and the evolution of a culturally responsible personal poetics. Hummer writes about the suicide of poet Vachel Lindsay, the culture wars at the National Endowment for the Arts, the 1991 Persian Gulf War, the divided soul of his native American South, and the salving, transcendent practice of musicianship. Inevitably entwined with a personal or cultural component, Hummer's criticism is thus grounded in experience that is always familiar and often straight to the heart in its rightness. In one of those statements of "poetic purpose" that goes hand in hand with a residency, guest editorship, or lecture tour, Hummer once wrote that "poetry inhabits and enunciates an incommensurable zone between individual and collective, between body and body politic, an area very ill-negotiated by most of us most of the time. Our culture, with its emphasis on the individual mind and body, teaches us very little about how even to think about the nature of this problem. . . . E pluribus unum is a smokescreen: what pluribus; what unum? And yet this phrase is an American mantra, as if it explained something." This is a quintessential Hummer moment: a writer has just given himself a good reason to quit. What Hummer knows must happen next is what The Muse in the Machine is all about.
Popular music has traditionally served as a rallying point for voices of opposition, across a huge variety of genres. This volume examines the various ways popular music has been deployed as anti-establishment and how such opposition both influences and responds to the music produced. Implicit in the notion of resistance is a broad adversarial hegemony against which opposition is measured. But it would be wrong to regard the music of popular protest as a kind of dialogue in league against 'the establishment'. Convenient though they are, such 'us and them' arguments bespeak a rather shop-worn stance redolent of youthful rebellion. It is much more fruitful to perceive the relationship as a complex dialectic where musical protest is as fluid as the audiences to which it appeals and the hegemonic structures it opposes. The book's contemporary focus (largely post-1975) allows for comprehensive coverage of extremely diverse forms of popular music in relation to the creation of communities of protest. Because such communities are fragmented and diverse, the shared experience and identity popular music purports is dependent upon an audience collectivity that is now difficult to presume. In this respect, The Resisting Muse examines how the forms and aims of social protest music are contingent upon the audience's ability to invest the music with the 'appropriate' political meaning. Amongst a plethora of artists, genres, and themes, highlights include discussions of Aboriginal rights and music, Bauhaus, Black Sabbath, Billy Bragg, Bono, Cassette culture, The Capitol Steps, Class, The Cure , DJ Spooky, Drum and Bass, Eminem, Farm Aid, Foxy Brown, Folk, Goldie, Gothicism, Woody Guthrie, Heavy Metal, Hip-hop, Independent/home publishing, Iron Maiden, Joy Division, Jungle, Led Zeppelin, Lil'Kim, Live Aid, Marilyn Manson, Bob Marley, MC Eiht, Minor Threat, Motown, Queen Latifah, Race, Rap, Rastafarianism, Reggae, The Roots, Diana Ross, Rush, Salt-n-Pepa, 7 Seconds, Roxanne Shanté, Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Sisters of Mercy, Michelle Shocked, Bessie Smith, Straight edge Sunrize Band, Bunny Wailer, Wilco, Bart Willoughby, Wirrinyga Band, Zines.
This book charts the piano's accession from musical curiosity to cultural icon, examining the instrument itself in its various guises as well as the music written for it. Both the piano and piano music were very much the product of the intellectual, cultural and social environments of the period and both were subject to many influences, directly and indirectly. These included character (individualism), the vernacular ('folk/popular') and creativity (improvisation), all of which are discussed generally and with respect to the music itself. Derek Carew surveys the most important pianistic genres of the period (variations, rondos, and so on), showing how these changed from their received forms into vehicles of Romantic expressiveness. The piano is also looked at in its role as an accompanying instrument. The Mechanical Muse will be of interest to anyone who loves the piano or the period, from the non-specialist to the music postgraduate.
This book charts the piano's accession from musical curiosity to cultural icon, examining the instrument itself in its various guises as well as the music written for it. Both the piano and piano music were very much the product of the intellectual, cultural and social environments of the period and both were subject to many influences, directly and indirectly. These included character (individualism), the vernacular ('folk/popular') and creativity (improvisation), all of which are discussed generally and with respect to the music itself. Derek Carew surveys the most important pianistic genres of the period (variations, rondos, and so on), showing how these changed from their received forms into vehicles of Romantic expressiveness. The piano is also looked at in its role as an accompanying instrument. The Mechanical Muse will be of interest to anyone who loves the piano or the period, from the non-specialist to the music postgraduate.
