Brass Instruments (Music Makers)

Brass Instruments (Music Makers) Review

Brief introduction to various types of brass instruments, what they are made of, what they sound like, and how they are played.

Brass Music of Black Composers: A Bibliography (Music Reference Collection)

Brass Music of Black Composers: A Bibliography (Music Reference Collection) Review

This is the fourth volume in Aaron Horne's monumental effort to provide the most comprehensive guide to music composed by black composers. In this volume he covers composers from around the world in the 19th and 20th centuries, including William Grant Still, Ulysses Kay, Anthony Davis, John Coltrane, and other major figures from the world of classical, jazz, and popular music. The main body of the book is divided into sections devoted to African, African American, Afro-European, and Afro-Latino composers. Within each section composers are arranged alphabetically; each entry provides biographical information as well as commission, duration, instrumentation, date of publication, premiere, publisher, discography for each composition. Backmatter includes a Brass Music Index which groups the music by numbers, medium, and ensembles; a title index; discography; and bibliography. As with the earlier volumes, this is an essential reference tool for anyone with an interest in researching and/or performing the music of black composers.

Brass (Instruments & Music)

Brass (Instruments & Music) Review

Focuses on musical instruments from around the world, looking for similarities in the way they are played (for example: plucking, banging, blowing, and more).

Saxophone & Clarinet: An Easy Guide To Reading Music, Playing Your First Piece, Enjoying The Instrument

Saxophone & Clarinet: An Easy Guide To Reading Music, Playing Your First Piece, Enjoying The Instrument Review

Whether in a classical piece or a lively jazz improvisation, the lovely tones of the sax and clarinet are delightful to hear--and a pleasure to make. With this easy-to-follow guide, a beginner will soon understand how the instruments work and how to assemble them, get the science behind the sound, master musical language and the techniques for fingering and tonguing, and play such pieces as a theme and variations by Mozart and George Gershwin's "Summertime," Charts throughout provide at-a-glance guidance that novices will appreciate.

The Cambridge Companion to Brass Instruments (Cambridge Companions to Music)

The Cambridge Companion to Brass Instruments (Cambridge Companions to Music) Review

The Cambridge Companion to Brass Instruments provides an overview of the history of brass instruments, and their technical and musical development. Much of the volume is devoted to the way brass instruments have been used in classical music, but there are also important contributions on the ancient world, non-Western music, vernacular and popular traditions and the rise of jazz. The editors are two of the most respected names in the world of brass performance and scholarship, and the list of contributors includes the names of many of the world's most prestigious scholars and performers.

J. S. Bach as Organist: His Instruments, Music, and Performance Practices

J. S. Bach as Organist: His Instruments, Music, and Performance Practices Review

"... a valuable book of scholarly yet highly readable studies... every organist and anyone interested in the music of J. S. Bach should have it." -- Early Keyboard Journal

"... a very perceptive and informative guide... " -- Early Music

"... this book is a must." -- The American Organist

"... invaluable and entertaining... " -- American Music Teacher

"... among the most important and accomplished studies on eighteenth-century performance. Its comprehensiveness, clarity, and scholarship make it indispensable." -- Performance Practice Review

In J. S. Bach as Organist, specialists from six countries explore Bach's relationship to his favorite instrument during all periods of his career. J. S. Bach as Organist is a book for scholars, performers, and students. Authoritative and wide-ranging.

A Sourcebook of Nineteenth-Century American Sacred Music for Brass Instruments (Music Reference Collection)

A Sourcebook of Nineteenth-Century American Sacred Music for Brass Instruments (Music Reference Collection) Review

Exploring the parallel development of the brass band movement and religious fervor in late 19th-century America, this work includes illustrations from original materials as well as scores for 22 works. While the choral tradition has remained strong in churches, in this earlier period both choral and instrumental forms were equally popular. This study begins with solo cornet parts, used by men like George Ives to lead the singing at revival meetings, and ends with an extensive band arrangement of Pleyel's Hymn. Extensive historical notes, old-time illustrations, and sacred music make this a most interesting and useful reference book.

An enormous amount of music was written and arranged for the popular brasswinds at the time, some of which was sacred music for the church. Changing taste and secularism resulted in the loss of the entire body of written and arranged sacred music for brass, once as cherished in church performance as the choral tradition is today. For scholars and performers interested in the variety of music produced in the United States during the 19th century.

Brass Instruments: Their History and Development (Dover Books on Music)

Brass Instruments: Their History and Development (Dover Books on Music) Review

This well-researched, famous history by a noted authority traces evolution of trumpets, trombones, bugles, cornets, French horns, tubas, and other brass wind instruments. Corrected and updated by the author, this book remains an indispensable resource for any brass player or music historian. More than 140 black-and-white illustrations, plus 48 music examples.

Brass (Instruments and Music)

Brass (Instruments and Music) Review

This book looks at a variety of brass instruments and shows the reader the different ways in which they are played around the world.

George Szell: A Life of Music (Music in American Life)

George Szell: A Life of Music (Music in American Life) Review

 

This book is the first full biography of George Szell, one of the greatest orchestra and opera conductors of the twentieth century. From child prodigy pianist and composer to world-renowned conductor, Szell's career spanned seven decades, and he led most of the great orchestras and opera companies of the world, including the New York Philharmonic, the NBC and Chicago Symphonies, the Berlin Philharmonic, the Vienna Philharmonic and Opera, and the Concertgebouw Orchestra. A protégé of composer-conductor Richard Strauss at the Berlin State Opera, his crowning achievement was his twenty-four-year tenure as musical director of the Cleveland Orchestra, transforming it into one of the world's greatest ensembles, touring triumphantly in the United States, Europe, the Soviet Union, South Korea, and Japan.

 

Michael Charry, a conductor who worked with Szell and interviewed him, his family, and his associates over several decades, draws on this first-hand material and correspondence, orchestra records, reviews, and other archival sources to construct a lively and balanced portrait of Szell's life and work from his birth in 1897 in Budapest to his death in 1970 in Cleveland.

 

Readers will follow Szell from his career in Europe, Great Britain, and Australia to his guest conducting at the New York Philharmonic and his distinguished tenure at the Metropolitan Opera and Cleveland Orchestra. Charry details Szell's personal and musical qualities, his recordings and broadcast concerts, his approach to the great works of the orchestral repertoire, and his famous orchestrational changes and interpretation of the symphonies of Robert Schumann. The book also lists Szell's conducting repertoire and includes a comprehensive discography.

 

In highlighting Szell's legacy as a teacher and mentor as well as his contributions to orchestral and opera history, this biography will be of lasting interest to concert-goers, music lovers, conductors, musicians inspired by Szell's many great performances, and new generations who will come to know those performances through Szell's recorded legacy.

Brass (Exploring Music)

Brass (Exploring Music) Review

Text and pictures introduce the brass family of instruments, such as trumpets, trombones, tubas, and their relatives.

Performance Practices in Classic Piano Music: Their Principles and Applications (Music: Scholarship and Performance)

Performance Practices in Classic Piano Music: Their Principles and Applications (Music: Scholarship and Performance) Review

Performance today on either the pianoforte or the fortepiano can be at once joyful, musicianly, expressive, and historically informed. From this point of view, Sandra P. Rosenblum examines the principles of performing the music of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and their contemporaries as revealed in a variety of historical sources: their autographs and letters, early editions of their music, original instruments, and contemporary tutors and journals. She applies these findings to such elements of performance as dynamics, accentuation, pedaling, articulation and touch, technique and fingering, ornaments and embellishments, choice of tempo, and tempo flexibility.

Familiarity with the Classic conventions provides a framework for interpretation and an understanding of the choices available within the style, the amount of freedom a performer has, and which areas are ambiguous. Rosenblum's detailed study, copiously illustrated with musical examples, is invaluable for professional and amateur performers, serious piano students and their teachers and students of performance practices by Scarlatti and Clementi.

"... is and will remain unsurpassed as the study dealing with performance practice as it pertains to keyboard music of the Classical period." -- American Music Teacher

"Rosenblum's monumental achievement is thorough, objective, balanced, and imaginative, a compelling blend of love and respect for the solo, chamber, and concerto literature she addresses." -- Journal of Musicological Research

"The extent and quality of her research, the depth of her perception, and her musicianship together break new ground in the study of historic performance practice." -- Early Keyboard Journal

"Her attention to details is absolutely scrupulous; no stone unturned, no argument unquestioned or unstated." -- The Musical Times

"Its importance to thoughtful musicians cannot be overstated." -- Choice

"... thoroughly musicological." -- Performance Practice Review

"... indispensable... " -- New York Times