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Despite her chronic illness, the French composer Lili Boulanger (1893-1918) was able to overcome great obstacles and to achieve an unusual degree of both artistic success and public acclaim during her very short lifetime. This phenomenon is the more remarkable in that her chosen field is one in which, even today, women find it difficult to be evaluated solely on artistic merits. At the age of nineteen she was the first woman to win the prestigious Premier Grand Prix de Rome in composition, an award carrying with it extended residence at the famous Villa Medici in Rome. Even before this recognition was accorded her, some of her compositions had been performed by outstanding artists of the day...
Is business, for music, a regrettable necessity or a spur to creativity? In the 11 essays in this text the authors wrestle with this question from the perspective of their chosen area of research.
While many teachers of music composition have influenced both the aesthetic and eventual success of their students, few have equaled the contributions of Arnold Schoenberg and Nadia Boulanger in the twentieth-century. A larger volume of a more comprehensive collection including all music composition teachers of the era would serve a certain purpose. However, the unique aspect of the current text examines, in detail, and herein presented for the first time in print, many of the teaching materials and approaches of these two famed musicians. Selection of these two teachers for comparison was made owing to the musical position so famously attributed to each: Schoenberg’s predilection to the G...
Léonie, whose mother suffers from Alzheimer's disease, struggles with an implacable, court-appointed guardian against the backdrop of centuries-old family myths and miscommunication. Mama wants their story told, but the courts demand that secrecy enshroud all guardianship records-forever. After years of struggle and Kafkaesque frustration, and with the help of a brilliant, unconventional attorney, Léonie goes to war with the establishment in an attempt to help others find their way through the swamp of legal guardianship.
The Quest for God is a study of the explosion of interest in newer approaches to spirituality that took place in the west among Christians, Jew, and Muslims in the twelfth century. The book explores the historic internal and external forces that influenced members of the three major faith groups who were looking for new ways to approach their personal relationship with God. It contains a detailed explanation of the new attitudes and religious practices that emerged among the three groups during that century. This includes special emphasis placed on the mysticism of Christian monks and nuns, the Kabbalah of the Jews, and the tenets of Sufism in Islam. It also paints a clear picture of the rol...
The last words of the dying often provide insight into their feelings about life. Some are peaceful ("It is very beautiful over there"--Thomas Alva Edison); many are spiritual ("Don't ask the Lord to keep me here. Ask him to have mercy"--Walker Percy); others are angry ("God-damn the whole frigging world and everybody in it--except you Carlotta"--W.C. Fields); still others reflect the weary fight against death ("I'm bored of it all"--Sir Winston Churchill). Nearly 2,000 deathbed quotations from saints, popes, statesmen, scientists, soldiers, musicians, athletes, artists, entertainers, writers, criminals and others are included in this reference work. Each entry includes a brief biographical sketch of the person and sets the quotation in context. The sources for the quotes include biographies, newspaper and magazine accounts, and, in a few instances, firsthand accounts.
Biblical, evangelical, and orthodox, The Concise Guide to Today's Religions and Spirituality supplies readers with a comprehensive, A-to-Z information source. Supported by the trustworthy research of Watchman Fellowship and its president, James Walker, its thousands of entries give the basics needed to evaluate spiritual belief systems, movements, and phenomena—Christian, quasi-Christian, and non-Christian—and the people connected with them. Definitions, descriptions, and cross references pack the maximum useful information into concise form, as in these examples: Adler, Margo: A witch affiliated with the Covenant of the Goddess, the second-largest coven in the United States. Adler wrote the highly influential book Drawing Down the Moon. See GODDESS, WICCA. Bioenergy: NEW AGE practice of healing, in which life-energy is balanced by opening blocked meridians. See HOLISTIC HEALING. A great resource for individuals—parents, church leaders, counselors, friends who want to give sound advice—as well as for study groups and church libraries.
Frontier Figures is a tour-de-force exploration of how the American West, both as physical space and inspiration, animated American music. Examining the work of such composers as Aaron Copland, Roy Harris, Virgil Thomson, Charles Wakefield Cadman, and Arthur Farwell, Beth E. Levy addresses questions of regionalism, race, and representation as well as changing relationships to the natural world to highlight the intersections between classical music and the diverse worlds of Indians, pioneers, and cowboys. Levy draws from an array of genres to show how different brands of western Americana were absorbed into American culture by way of sheet music, radio, lecture recitals, the concert hall, and film. Frontier Figures is a comprehensive illumination of what the West meant and still means to composers living and writing long after the close of the frontier.
This comprehensive biography of George Gershwin (1898-1937) unravels the myths surrounding one of America's most celebrated composers and establishes the enduring value of his music. Gershwin created some of the most beloved music of the twentieth century and, along with Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter, helped make the golden age of Broadway golden. Howard Pollack draws from a wealth of sketches, manuscripts, letters, interviews, books, articles, recordings, films, and other materials—including a large cache of Gershwin scores discovered in a Warner Brothers warehouse in 1982—to create an expansive chronicle of Gershwin’s meteoric rise to fame. He also traces Gershwin’s p...
Works by women composers, including Francesca Caccini, Fanny Mendelssohn, Ethel Smyth, [et al]