This delightfully written book examines every aspect of the history of the piano over the past 300 years. This new edition includes 47 color photos and 14 illustrations.
The place of the piano in classical and popular musical cultures and its changing roles over the past three centuries are examined by eminent authorities. Everything about the piano is here: its invention, innovations in design, importance of piano lessons in girls' lives, images formed around the piano, and more. 153 b&w, 65 color illustrations.
The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Popular Music Volume 1 provides an overview of media, industry, and technology and its relationship to popular music. In 500 entries by 130 contributors from around the world, the volume explores the topic in two parts: Part I: Social and Cultural Dimensions, covers the social phenomena of relevance to the practice of popular music and Part II: The Industry, covers all aspects of the popular music industry, such as copyright, instrumental manufacture, management and marketing, record corporations, studios, companies, and labels. Entries include bibliographies, discographies and filmographies, and an extensive index is provided.
A Pianist's Dictionary is an exploration of the world of the classical pianist and piano professor. The author deconstructs the many familiar words that help describe these worlds as well as their practitioners. Based upon a lifetime of experience as an active concert artist and college professor, this book will resonate with both past and current students of the piano and with music lovers with even a passing interest in these worlds. Written in an accessible style, A Pianist's Dictionary covers the piano world from accompanist to tone and voicing, and helps the reader understand the mysteries of practicing and the challenges of how to find a suitable piano teacher. Filled with amusing anecdotes and observations, this book is a welcome addition to the literature about pianos and pianists.
By the early 20th century the machine aesthetic was a well-established and dominant interest that fundamentally transformed musical performance and listening practices. While numerous scholars have examined this aesthetic in art and literature, musical compositions representing industrialized labor practices and the role of the machine in music remain largely unexplored. Moreover, in recounting the history of machines in musical recording and reproduction, scholars often tend to emphasize the phonograph, rather than player piano, despite the latter’s prominence within the newly established musical marketplace. Machines and their music influenced multiple areas of early 20th-century musical culture, from film scores to popular music and even the concert hall. But the opposite was also true: industrialized labor practices changed the musical marketplace and musical culture as a whole. As consumers accepted mechanical replacements for what previously required an active human laborer, ghostly, mechanical performers labored tirelessly in parlors, businesses, and even concert halls. Although the player piano failed to maintain a stronghold in the recorded music marketplace after 1930, the widespread acceptance of recording technologies as media for storing and enjoying music indicates a much more fundamental societal shift. This book explores that shift, examining the rise and fall of the player piano in early 20th-century society and connecting it to the digital technologies of today.
A Dictionary for the Modern Pianist combines nearly four hundred entries covering classical and popular pianists, noted teachers, terminology germane to the piano’s construction, and major manufacturers—both familiar firms and outstanding, independent builders who have risen to the forefront in recent years. Speaking to the needs of the modern performer, it also includes entries on jazz and pop artists, digital pianos, and period instruments. As a resource for professionals and students, A Dictionary for the Modern Pianist is also accessible to more general readers, as all of its topics are presented in clear, readable expositions. Drawing on the most recent research of numerous specialists, author Stephen Siek emphasizes the piano's uniquely rich heritage, giving pianists a renewed appreciation for the famous artists and teachers who have shaped their art. Transcending simple alphabetical definitions, the dictionary’s careful attention both to legacy and detail make it an invaluable addition to any pianist’s library. Titles in the Dictionaries for the Modern Musician series offer novice and advanced musicians key information on the field of study and performance of a major instrument or instrument class. Unlike other encyclopedic works, contributions to this series focus primarily on the knowledge required by the contemporary musical student or performer. From quick definitions of confusing terms to in-depth overviews of history and tradition, the dictionaries are ideal references for students, professionals, and music lovers of all kinds.
In her study of music-making in the Edwardian novel, Cecilia Björkén-Nyberg argues that the invention and development of the player piano had a significant effect on the perception, performance and appreciation of music during the period. In contrast to existing devices for producing music mechanically such as the phonograph and gramophone, the player piano granted its operator freedom of individual expression by permitting the performer to modify the tempo. Because the traditional piano was the undisputed altar of domestic and highly gendered music-making, Björkén-Nyberg suggests, the potential for intervention by the mechanical piano's operator had a subversive effect on traditional notions about the status of the musical work itself and about the people who were variously defined by their relationship to it. She examines works by Dorothy Richardson, E.M. Forster, Henry Handel Richardson, Max Beerbohm and Compton Mackenzie, among others, contending that Edwardian fiction with music as a subject undermined the prevalent antithesis, expressed in contemporary music literature, between a nineteenth-century conception of music as a means of transcendence and the increasing mechanisation of music as represented by the player piano. Her timely survey of the player piano in the context of Edwardian commercial and technical discourse draws on a rich array of archival materials to shed new light on the historically conditioned activity of music-making in early twentieth-century fiction.
Adaptive Strategies for Small-Handed Pianists brings together information from biomechanics, ergonomics, physics, anatomy, medicine, and piano pedagogy to focus on the subject of small-handedness. The first comprehensive study of its kind, the book opens with an overview of historical, anatomical, and pedagogical perspectives and redresses long-held biases concerning those who struggle at the piano because of issues with hand size. A discussion of work efficiency, the human anatomy, and the constraints of physics serves as the theoretical basis for a focused analysis of healthy movement and piano technique as they relate to small-handedness. Separate chapters deal with specific alternative approaches: redistribution, refingering, strategies to maximize reach and power, and musical solutions for technical problems. Richly illustrated with hundreds of examples from a wide range of piano repertoire, the book is an incomparable resource for piano teachers and students, written in language that is accessible to a broad audience. It balances scholastic rigor with practical experience in the field to demonstrate that the unique physical and musical needs of the small-handed can be addressed in sensitive and appropriate ways.