Rough Ideas
Rough Ideas

Author: Stephen Hough

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2020-02-04

Total Pages: 464

ISBN-13: 0374721408

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A collection of essays on music and life by the famed classical pianist and composer Stephen Hough is one of the world’s leading pianists, winning global acclaim and numerous awards, both for his concerts and his recordings. He is also a writer, composer, and painter, and has been described by The Economist as one of “Twenty Living Polymaths.” Hough writes informally and engagingly about music and the life of a musician, from the broader aspects of what it is to walk out onto a stage or to make a recording, to specialist tips from deep inside the practice room: how to trill, how to pedal, how to practice. He also writes vividly about people he’s known, places he’s traveled to, books he’s read, paintings he’s seen; and he touches on more controversial subjects, such as assisted suicide and abortion. Even religion is there—the possibility of the existence of God, problems with some biblical texts, and the challenges involved in being a gay Catholic. Rough Ideas is an illuminating, constantly surprising introduction to the life and mind of one of our great cultural figures.

The Classical Tradition
The Classical Tradition

Author: Anthony Grafton

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2010-10-25

Total Pages: 1188

ISBN-13: 9780674035720

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The legacy of ancient Greece and Rome has been imitated, resisted, misunderstood, and reworked by every culture that followed. In this volume, some five hundred articles by a wide range of scholars investigate the afterlife of this rich heritage in the fields of literature, philosophy, art, architecture, history, politics, religion, and science.

Dvorak's Prophecy: And the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music
Dvorak's Prophecy: And the Vexed Fate of Black Classical Music

Author: Joseph Horowitz

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Published: 2021-11-23

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 0393881253

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A Kirkus Reviews Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 A provocative interpretation of why classical music in America "stayed white"—how it got to be that way and what can be done about it. In 1893 the composer Antonín Dvorák prophesied a “great and noble school” of American classical music based on the “negro melodies” he had excitedly discovered since arriving in the United States a year before. But while Black music would foster popular genres known the world over, it never gained a foothold in the concert hall. Black composers found few opportunities to have their works performed, and white composers mainly rejected Dvorák’s lead. Joseph Horowitz ranges throughout American cultural history, from Frederick Douglass and Huckleberry Finn to George Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess and the work of Ralph Ellison, searching for explanations. Challenging the standard narrative for American classical music fashioned by Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, he looks back to literary figures—Emerson, Melville, and Twain—to ponder how American music can connect with a “usable past.” The result is a new paradigm that makes room for Black composers, including Harry Burleigh, Nathaniel Dett, William Levi Dawson, and Florence Price, while giving increased prominence to Charles Ives and George Gershwin. Dvorák’s Prophecy arrives in the midst of an important conversation about race in America—a conversation that is taking place in music schools and concert halls as well as capitols and boardrooms. As George Shirley writes in his foreword to the book, “We have been left unprepared for the current cultural moment. [Joseph Horowitz] explains how we got there [and] proposes a bigger world of American classical music than what we have known before. It is more diverse and more equitable. And it is more truthful.”

The Vintage Guide to Classical Music
The Vintage Guide to Classical Music

Author: Jan Swafford

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 1992-12-15

Total Pages: 626

ISBN-13: 0679728058

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The most readable and comprehensive guide to enjoying over five hundred years of classical music -- from Gregorian chants, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to Johannes Brahms, Igor Stravinsky, John Cage, and beyond. The Vintage Guide to Classical Music is a lively -- and opinionated -- musical history and an insider's key to the personalities, epochs, and genres of the Western classical tradition. Among its features: -- chronologically arranged essays on nearly 100 composers, from Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300-1377) to Aaron Copland (1900-1990), that combine biography with detailed analyses of the major works while assessing their role in the social, cultural, and political climate of their times; -- informative sidebars that clarify broader topics such as melody, polyphony, atonality, and the impact of the early-music movement; -- a glossary of musical terms, from a cappella to woodwinds; -- a step-by-step guide to building a great classical music library. Written with wit and a clarity that both musical experts and beginners can appreciate, The Vintage Guide to Classical Music is an invaluable source-book for music lovers everywhere.

Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist
Night Thoughts of a Classical Physicist

Author: Russell McCormmach

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 9780674624610

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It is the end of an historical epoch, but to an old professor of physics, Victor Jakob, sitting in his unlighted study, eating dubious bread with jam made from turnips, it is the end of a way of thinking in his own subject. Younger men have challenged the classical world picture of physics and are looking forward to observational tests of Einstein's new theory of relativity as well as the creation of a quantum mechanics of the atom. It is a time of both apprehension and hope. In this remarkable book, the reader literally inhabits the mind of a scientist while Professor Jakob meditates on the discoveries of the past fifty years and reviews his own life and career--his scientific ambitions and his record of small successes. He recalls the great men who taught or inspired him: Helmholtz, Hertz, Maxwell, Planck, and above all Paul Drude, whose life and mind exemplified the classical virtues of proportion, harmony, and grace that Jakob reveres. In Drude's shocking and unexpected suicide, we see reflected Jakob's own bewilderment and loss of bearings as his once secure world comes to an end in the horrors of the war and in the cultural fragmentation wrought by twentieth-century modernism. His attempt to come to terms with himself, with his life in science, and with his spiritual legacy will affect deeply everyone who cares about the fragile structures of civilization that must fall before the onrush of progress.

Listen to This
Listen to This

Author: Alex Ross

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2010-09-28

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 1429977612

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One of The Telegraph's Best Music Books 2011 Alex Ross's award-winning international bestseller, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, has become a contemporary classic, establishing Ross as one of our most popular and acclaimed cultural historians. Listen to This, which takes its title from a beloved 2004 essay in which Ross describes his late-blooming discovery of pop music, showcases the best of his writing from more than a decade at The New Yorker. These pieces, dedicated to classical and popular artists alike, are at once erudite and lively. In a previously unpublished essay, Ross brilliantly retells hundreds of years of music history—from Renaissance dances to Led Zeppelin—through a few iconic bass lines of celebration and lament. He vibrantly sketches canonical composers such as Schubert, Verdi, and Brahms; gives us in-depth interviews with modern pop masters such as Björk and Radiohead; and introduces us to music students at a Newark high school and indie-rock hipsters in Beijing. Whether his subject is Mozart or Bob Dylan, Ross shows how music expresses the full complexity of the human condition. Witty, passionate, and brimming with insight, Listen to This teaches us how to listen more closely.

The Classical Guitar Collection
The Classical Guitar Collection

Author: Julian Bream

Publisher: Faber Music Ltd

Published: 2021-11-15

Total Pages: 103

ISBN-13: 0571591760

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The full eBook version of The Classical Guitar Collection in fixed-layout format. The Classical Guitar Collection contains 48 classical guitar solos from classical greats such as Mozart, Grieg, Purcell and J.S. Bach. This collection features many of Julian Bream's classic arrangements of well-known guitar masterpieces for Intermediate to Advanced level guitar students. Contents: - Valtz Op.7 No.6) (Aguado) - Asturias (Leyenda) (Albeniz) - Spanish Romance (Anon) - Scherzo (Op.107) (Arnold) - Arietta (Op.107) (Arnold) - I (Two Preludes) (J.S. Bach) - Courante (from suite in E minor) (J.S. Bach) - Sarabande (from suite in E minor) (J.S. Bach) - Bouree in E minor (BWV 996) (J.S. Bach) - Aria (Brescianello) - Gavotta (Brescianello) - Allemande (suite in E minor)(Buxtehude) - Courante (from suite in E minor) (Buxtehude) - Sarabande (from suite in E minor) (Buxtehude) - Gigue (from suite in E minor) (Buxtehude) - Sicilienne (Op. 34 No.2) (Carulli) - Sonata 2 (Cimarosa) - La Fille aux Chevaux de Lin (Two Preludes) (Debussy) - Minstrels (Two Preludes) (Debussy) - Andante Sostenuto (from Sonata in F major) (Diabelli) - Ejercicio: Allegretto (Ferrer) - Vals (Ferrer) - Sarabande (suite in A minor) (Froberger) - Gigue (suite in A minor) (Froberger) - Valse (Three Lyric Pieces op.12) (Grieg) - Watchman's Song (Three Lyric Pieces) (Grieg) - Fairy Dance (Three Lyric Pieces) (Grieg) - Etude Allegro Spiritoso (Guiliani) - Lecon (Guiliani) - La Catedral (Mangore) - A Winter Landscape (Little Suite For Guitar) (Maw) - Landler (Op.9 No.4) (Mertz) - Landler (Op.9 No.5) (Mertz) - Gaillarde (Morlaye) - Larghetto and Allegro (Mozart) - Air (Four pieces) (Purcell) - Rondo (Four Pieces) (Purcell) - Minuet (Four Pieces) (Purcell) - Hornpipe (Four Pieces) (Purcell) - Maria Luisa: Mazurka (Sagreras) - Nostalgia: Petite Melodie (Sagreras) - Theme with Variations (Schumann) - Into The Dreaming (Sculthorpe) - Etude (Op.31 No.23) (Sor) - Waltz (Op.7 No.1 (Strauss) - Waltz (Op.7 No.3) (Strauss) - Capricho Arabe (Tarrega) - Recurdos de la Alhambra (Tarrega)

The Case for Classical Christian Education
The Case for Classical Christian Education

Author: Douglas Wilson

Publisher: Crossway

Published: 2002-11-12

Total Pages: 256

ISBN-13: 1433516462

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Newspapers are filled with stories about poorly educated children, ineffective teachers, and cash-strapped school districts. In this greatly expanded treatment of a topic he first dealt with in Rediscovering the Lost Tools of Learning, Douglas Wilson proposes an alternative to government-operated school by advocating a return to classical Christian education with its discipline, hard work, and learning geared to child development stages. As an educator, Wilson is well-equipped to diagnose the cause of America's deteriorating school system and to propose remedies for those committed to their children's best interests in education. He maintains that education is essentially religious because it deals with the basic questions about life that require spiritual answers-reading and writing are simply the tools. Offering a review of classical education and the history of this movement, Wilson also reflects on his own involvement in the process of creating educational institutions that embrace that style of learning. He details elements needed in a useful curriculum, including a list of literary classics. Readers will see that classical education offers the best opportunity for academic achievement, character growth, and spiritual education, and that such quality cannot be duplicated in a religiously-neutral environment.

Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand

Author: Helen Simonson

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2010-03-01

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 140880932X

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Major Ernest Pettigrew is perfectly content to lead a quiet life in the sleepy village of Edgecombe St Mary, away from the meddling of the locals and his overbearing son. But when his brother dies, the Major finds himself seeking companionship with the village shopkeeper, Mrs Ali. Drawn together by a love of books and the loss of their partners, they are soon forced to contend with irate relatives and gossiping villagers. The perfect gentleman, but the most unlikely hero, the Major must ask himself what matters most: family obligation, tradition or love? Funny, comforting and heart-warming, Major Pettigrew's Last Stand proves that sometimes, against all odds, life does give you a second chance.

The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece
The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece

Author: Josiah Ober

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2016-10-04

Total Pages: 448

ISBN-13: 0691173141

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A major new history of classical Greece—how it rose, how it fell, and what we can learn from it Lord Byron described Greece as great, fallen, and immortal, a characterization more apt than he knew. Through most of its long history, Greece was poor. But in the classical era, Greece was densely populated and highly urbanized. Many surprisingly healthy Greeks lived in remarkably big houses and worked for high wages at specialized occupations. Middle-class spending drove sustained economic growth and classical wealth produced a stunning cultural efflorescence lasting hundreds of years. Why did Greece reach such heights in the classical period—and why only then? And how, after "the Greek miracle" had endured for centuries, did the Macedonians defeat the Greeks, seemingly bringing an end to their glory? Drawing on a massive body of newly available data and employing novel approaches to evidence, Josiah Ober offers a major new history of classical Greece and an unprecedented account of its rise and fall. Ober argues that Greece's rise was no miracle but rather the result of political breakthroughs and economic development. The extraordinary emergence of citizen-centered city-states transformed Greece into a society that defeated the mighty Persian Empire. Yet Philip and Alexander of Macedon were able to beat the Greeks in the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BCE, a victory made possible by the Macedonians' appropriation of Greek innovations. After Alexander's death, battle-hardened warlords fought ruthlessly over the remnants of his empire. But Greek cities remained populous and wealthy, their economy and culture surviving to be passed on to the Romans—and to us. A compelling narrative filled with uncanny modern parallels, this is a book for anyone interested in how great civilizations are born and die. This book is based on evidence available on a new interactive website. To learn more, please visit: http://polis.stanford.edu/.