Aaron Copland and His World

Aaron Copland and His World

Author: Carol J. Oja

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2005-08-21

Total Pages: 527

ISBN-13: 0691124701

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This text reassesses the legacy of one of America's best-loved composers at a pivotal moment - as his life and work shift from the realm of personal memory to that of history. The collection of 17 essays explores the stages of cultural change on which Aaron Copeland's long life unfolded.


Echo and Reverb

Echo and Reverb

Author: Peter Doyle

Publisher: Wesleyan University Press

Published: 2024-08-06

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0819501646

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Echo and Reverb is the first history of acoustically imagined space in popular music recording. The book documents how acoustic effects--reverberation, room ambience, and echo--have been used in recordings since the 1920s to create virtual sonic architectures and landscapes. Author Peter Doyle traces the development of these acoustically-created worlds from the ancient Greek myth of Echo and Narcissus to the dramatic acoustic architectures of the medieval cathedral, the grand concert halls of the 19th century, and those created by the humble parlor phonograph of the early 20th century, and finally, the revolutionary age of rock 'n' roll. Citing recordings ranging from Gene Austin's 'My Blue Heaven' to Elvis Presley's 'Mystery Train,' Doyle illustrates how non-musical sound constructs, with all their rich and contradictory baggage, became a central feature of recorded music. The book traces various imagined worlds created with synthetic echo and reverb--the heroic landscapes of the cowboy west, the twilight shores of south sea islands, the uncanny alleys of dark cityscapes, the weird mindspaces of horror movies, the private and collective spaces of teen experience, and the funky juke-joints of the mind.


Stepping Out in Cincinnati

Stepping Out in Cincinnati

Author: Allen J. Singer

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 9780738534329

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Long before folks had a television set and radio in every room, they sought entertainment by stepping out for a night on the town. The choices around Cincinnati were nearly limitless: live theater at the Cox; spectacular musicals at the Shubert; hotels featuring fine dining and dance orchestras; talking pictures at everyoneA[a¬a[s favorite movie palaceA[a¬athe Albee; burlesque and vaudeville shows at the Empress Theater on Vine Street; and gambling casinos were just a short drive across the river in Newport. All of the major entertainment venues in the Queen City during the first half of the 20th century are explored in Stepping out in Cincinnati. From saloons to ornate movie palaces and from the Cotton Club to the Capitol, you join those pleasure seekers, getting a real sense of what they saw: wonderful events and their countless imagesA[a¬athe things of which fond memories were made. Today, those memories have faded and virtually all of the once-glittering showplaces have been bulldozed into history. But within these pages, we get to experience first hand what it was like to be there. Unique among the many photographs featuring unforgettable movie houses and nightclub orchestras are never-before-published images of actual live vaudeville performances onstage at the Shubert, plus rare, clandestine pictures snapped inside the casinos in Newport. Also revealed are the locations of the better-known speakeasies during Prohibition; where the best halls to dance to live orchestras were; what the earliest movie houses were like; and what black Cincinnatians did for entertainment.


What to Listen For in Music

What to Listen For in Music

Author: Aaron Copland

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2011-02-01

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1101513144

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Now in trade paperback: “The definitive guide to musical enjoyment” (Forum). In this fascinating analysis of how to listen to both contemporary and classical music analytically, eminent American composer Aaron Copland offers provocative suggestions that will bring readers a deeper appreciation of the most viscerally rewarding of all art forms.


Air-conditioning America

Air-conditioning America

Author: Gail Cooper

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 244

ISBN-13: 9780801871139

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Cooper demonstrates how the lure of the open air, from rooftop schoolrooms to open-air theaters to the front porch, challenged air conditioning. Americans were slow to give up the social rituals of hot-weather living - the cold drink, the cool clothes, the summer vacation - for the comforts of either the window air conditioner or the central system.


Making Music Modern

Making Music Modern

Author: Carol J. Oja

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 510

ISBN-13: 0195162579

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This book recreates an exciting and productive period in which creative artists felt they were witnessing the birth of a new age. Aaron Copland, Henry Cowell, George Gershwin, Roy Harris, and Virgil Thomson all began their careers then, as did many of their less widely recognized compatriots. While the literature and painting of the 1920's have been amply chronicled, music has not received such treatment. Carol Oja's book sets the growth of American musical composition against parallel developments in American culture, provides a guide for the understanding of the music, and explores how the notion of the concert tradition, as inherited from Western Europe, was challenged and revitalized through contact with American popular song, jazz, and non-Western musics.


African American Actresses

African American Actresses

Author: Charlene B. Regester

Publisher: Indiana University Press

Published: 2010-06-14

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 0253004314

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Nine actresses, from Madame Sul-Te-Wan in Birth of a Nation (1915) to Ethel Waters in Member of the Wedding (1952), are profiled in African American Actresses. Charlene Regester poses questions about prevailing racial politics, on-screen and off-screen identities, and black stardom and white stardom. She reveals how these women fought for their roles as well as what they compromised (or didn't compromise). Regester repositions these actresses to highlight their contributions to cinema in the first half of the 20th century, taking an informed theoretical, historical, and critical approach.


Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland

Author: Marta Robertson

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2003-08-27

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 1135581509

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Aaron Copland (1900-1990) is generally considered the most popular and well-known composer of American art music, and yet little scholarly attention has been paid to Copland since the 1950s. This volume begins with a portrait of the composer and an evaluation of significant research trends which is intended to fill a void and to suggest directions for further research. The guide also provides a section discussing Copland's interdisciplinary interests, such as ballet and film work, as well as a comprehensive bibliography of writings about Copland and his music.


Music and the Silent Film

Music and the Silent Film

Author: Martin Miller Marks

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1997-02-13

Total Pages: 320

ISBN-13: 0195361636

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In this book, a leading authority on film music examines scores of the silent film era. The first of three projected volumes investigating music written for films, this thoughtful and pathbreaking study demonstrates the richness of silent film music as it details the way in which scores were often planned from the start as an integral part of the whole cinematic experience. Following an introductory chapter that outlines several key theoretical questions and surveys eight decades of writing on film music, Martin Miller Marks focuses on those scores created between 1895 and 1924. He begins by considering two early examples, one German (written by persons unknown for Skladanowsky's Bioskop exhibitions in 1895 and 1896) and one French (scored by Camille Saint-Saëns for the 1908 film L'Assassinat du Duc de Guise). Subsequent chapters fully discuss Walter Cleveland Simon's music for the American film An Arabian Tragedy (1912) as well as the Joseph Breil accompaniment to D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915). As described in this book, Breil's memorable score--though a compilation derived from many sources--was played by an orchestra as Griffith's sweeping images filled the screen, thus contributing significantly to the great film's success while also achieving remarkable power in its own right. Marks then concludes with a look at Erik Satie's witty and innovative music for the French film Entr'acte (1924), which was the first film score of consequence by an avant-garde composer. Giving unprecedented attention to a vibrant, important, and oft-neglected facet of twentieth-century music, Music and the Silent Film will interest scholars of film theory, film history, modern music, and modern aesthetics.