The Age of Anxiety is a great rock novel, but that is one of the less important things about it. The narrator is a brilliant creation - cultured, witty and unreliable. The novel captures the craziness of the music business and displays Pete Townshend's sly sense of humour and sharp ear for dialogue. First conceived as an opera, The Age of Anxiety deals with mythic and operatic themes including a maze, divine madness and long-lost children. Hallucinations and soundscapes haunt this novel, which on one level is an extended meditation on manic genius and the dark art of creativity.
In New York and London during World War I, the performance of lieder—German art songs—was roundly prohibited, representing as they did the music and language of the enemy. But as German musicians returned to the transatlantic circuit in the 1920s, so too did the songs of Franz Schubert, Hugo Wolf, and Richard Strauss. Lieder were encountered in a variety of venues and media—at luxury hotels and on ocean liners, in vaudeville productions and at Carnegie Hall, and on gramophone recordings, radio broadcasts, and films. Laura Tunbridge explores the renewed vitality of this refugee musical form between the world wars, offering a fresh perspective on a period that was pervaded by anxieties of displacement. Through richly varied case studies, Singing in the Age of Anxiety traces how lieder were circulated, presented, and consumed in metropolitan contexts, shedding new light on how music facilitated unlikely crossings of nationalist and internationalist ideologies during the interwar period.
Performers of all ages and abilities will gain valuable insight into the mechanics, psychology and physiology of singing. The accompanying CD - in Jennifer's own voice - captures a conversation about her ideas and journey, as well as exercises that will help you discover and release your true and best instrument.
Why are some performers exhilarated and energized about performing in public, while others feel a crushing sense of fear and dread, and experience public performance as an overwhelming challenge that must be endured? These are the questions addressed in this book, the first rigorous exposition of this complex phenomenon.
In Singing Like Germans, Kira Thurman tells the sweeping story of Black musicians in German-speaking Europe over more than a century. Thurman brings to life the incredible musical interactions and transnational collaborations among people of African descent and white Germans and Austrians. Through this compelling history, she explores how people reinforced or challenged racial identities in the concert hall. Throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, audiences assumed the categories of Blackness and Germanness were mutually exclusive. Yet on attending a performance of German music by a Black musician, many listeners were surprised to discover that German identity is not a biological marker but something that could be learned, performed, and mastered. While Germans and Austrians located their national identity in music, championing composers such as Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms as national heroes, the performance of their works by Black musicians complicated the public's understanding of who had the right to play them. Audiences wavered between seeing these musicians as the rightful heirs of Austro-German musical culture and dangerous outsiders to it. Thurman explores the tension between the supposedly transcendental powers of classical music and the global conversations that developed about who could perform it. An interdisciplinary and transatlantic history, Singing Like Germans suggests that listening to music is not a passive experience, but an active process where racial and gendered categories are constantly made and unmade.
Far too often, life’s challenges and questions cause people to fight feelings of doubt and despair, as they search endlessly for hope. In Singing in the Dark, Ginny Owens introduces the reader to powerful ways of drawing closer to God and how the elements of music, prayer, and lament offer rich, vibrant, and joyful communion with Him, especially on the darkest days. Ginny has gained a unique life perspective, as she has lived without sight since age three. She brings rich, biblical teaching that will encourage readers and compel them to dig deep into the beautiful songs, prayers, and poetry of Scripture—the same words through which the people of the Bible flourished in impossible circumstances. Singing in the Dark includes reflection and journaling prompts at the end of each chapter.
Where does learning begin and how is it sustained and stored in the brain? For musicians, these questions are at the very core of their creative lives. Cognitive and neuroscience have flung wide the doors of our understanding, but bridging the gap between research data and music-making requires a unique immersion in both worlds. Lynn Helding presents a symphony of discoveries that illuminate how musicians can optimize their mental wellbeing and cognitive abilities. She addresses common brain myths, motor learning research and the concept of deliberate practice, the values of instructional feedback, technology’s role in attention disorders, the challenges of parenting young musicians, performance anxiety and its solutions, and the emerging importance of music as a social justice issue. More than an exploration of the brain, The Musician’s Mind is an inspiring call for artists to promote the cultivation of emotion and empathy as cornerstones of a civilized society. No matter your instrument or level of musical ability, this book will reveal to you a new dynamic appreciation for the mind’s creative power.
Singing can be a healthy, invigorating activity for people of every age, and participating in this fully athletic exercise remains enjoyable through each season of life if the singer and singing teacher adjust expectations regarding tone quality, range, agility, and stamina. Brenda Smith systematically presents methods by which anyone can enjoy a long, healthy life of singing in So You Want to Sing for a Lifetime. This book contains chapters on the basics of singing (relaxation, posture, breathing, and resonance), practical examples of exercises and lists of repertoire suited to each age group, and suggestions for negotiating individual musical obstacles related to aging. Featuring guest-authored chapters on voice science, vocal health, and how age affects the physiology of the human voice, the book serves as a useful guide to amateur and professional singers, music educators, choral conductors, church musicians, and private voice teachers. The So You Want to Sing series is produced in partnership with the National Association of Teachers of Singing. Like all books in the series, So You Want to Sing for aLifetime features online supplemental material on the NATS website. Please visit www.nats.org to access style-specific exercises, audio and video files, and additional resources.
In the late sixteenth century, the French royal court was mobile. To distinguish itself from the rest of society, it depended more on its cultural practices and attitudes than on the royal and aristocratic palaces it inhabited. Using courtly song-or the air de cour-as a window, Jeanice Brooks offers an unprecedented look into the culture of this itinerant institution. Brooks concentrates on a period in which the court's importance in projecting the symbolic centrality of monarchy was growing rapidly and considers the role of the air in defining patronage hierarchies at court and in enhancing courtly visions of masculine and feminine virtue. Her study illuminates the court's relationship to the world beyond its own confines, represented first by Italy, then by the countryside. In addition to the 40 editions of airs de cour printed between 1559 and 1589, Brooks draws on memoirs, literary works, and iconographic evidence to present a rounded vision of French Renaissance culture. The first book-length examination of the history of air de cour, this work also sheds important new light on a formative moment in French history.
Kathy was an overachiever-an economist, technical writer, and classical singer married 27 years to her college sweetheart. It looked like Kathy was fine. But deep within her hid a pain from infancy so severe that a cascade of adult life crises finally triggered it. And once it exploded, the pain was unbearable. Kathy was suffering attachment disorder, a psychological condition potentially affecting almost half the US population. Caused by traumatic stress in the first three years of life, attachment disorder correlates with the nation's 50 percent divorce rate and widespread mental health issues. Yet no one talks about its prevalence, so many sufferers go untreated, forced to live with their pain in silence-without a hint of its cause. This was certainly true for Kathy. But when her initial forays into psychiatric help failed, Kathy decided to treat herself. It was a mistake that almost cost her life. Told with candor and quirky, ironic humor, Don't Try This Alone will resonate with anyone suffering attachment damage. It knows no boundaries; it strikes those who believe they had wonderful childhoods as well as the obviously abused. Yet there's hope! Kathy's story also shows: help and healing are out there.
