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For ages 12+. In a new home, a new town, and a new school, Nick feels more alone than ever. His father has buried himself in his job, and his mother isn't around to help. It seems like things can't get much worse, but then his class goes on a field trip to the Silverado Ghost Town. With no friends to vouch for him, Nick is framed for stealing a museum artefact -- the journal of the notorious Slim Marano, who was hanged for murder over 100 years ago. Just when he is sure that no one will believe him, Nick comes face-to-face with Slim's spirit and discovers that they have something in common -- they were both set up. Soon Nick is travelling through time to the Old West to help Slim prove his innocence. Working with Slim's band of friends, both spirits and mortals, they unearth a conspiracy of vengeance, greed, and murder fuelled by dark forces. With danger building and time running out, Nick must discover the truth to save innocent lives... and change his own forever.
The first major study of Alan Bush, this book provides new perspectives on twentieth-century music and communism. British communist, composer of politicised works, and friend of Soviet musicians, Bush proved to be 'a lightning rod' in the national musical culture. His radical vision for British music prompted serious reflections on aesthetics and the rights of artists to private political opinions, as well as influencing the development of state-sponsored music making in East Germany. Rejecting previous characterisations of Bush as political and musical Other, Joanna Bullivant traces his aesthetic project from its origins in the 1920s to its collapse in the 1970s, incorporating discussion of modernism, political song, music theory, opera, and Bush's response to the Soviet music crisis of 1948. Drawing on a wealth of archival sources, including recently released documents from MI5, this book constructs new perspectives on the 'cultural Cold War' through the lens of the individual artist.
The wartime period in Britain is now seen as an extremely fertile period of British creativity in music, film and art. Often, these projects were funded and supported by the government, who saw its role as a custodian of British culture, and by extension, of British values, at a time when those values seemed under great threat. In the late thirties the Nazi Party had stressed the superiority of Germanic culture and the promotion of Richard Wagner and Carl Orff was central to Hitler's cultural program. In Britain, the War Office under Winston Churchill chose to promote Edward Elgar and Hubert Parry, but also to appropriate and 'de-Nazify' Ludwig van Beethoven- whose Fifth Symphony was used ex...
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A new study of British cultural propaganda in neutral Europe during the Second World War
Radical domestic politics, musical experimentation, advancing technology and the influence of migration from Europe and Britain's enrichment from it, all had their affects on a remarkable year in musical cultural life in the mid-30s. This book looks at the little-known aspect of music and politics in domestic Britain in 1934, a pivotal year in terms of political and cultural developments. Music and Politics in Thirties Britain focuses on the production, reception and interpretation of classical music in relation to the changes of the 1930s. John Morris treads new ground by examining the relationship between music, musicians and fascism – an area overlooked by existing scholarship. The book expertly traces the complexities and contradictions of British music history in the 1930s as musicians like others in the Arts attempted to engage with the political turmoil of the period. John Morris exemplifies the “cultural turn” in studies of British fascism, and also shows the overlap between ideas of the BUF and more progressive musicians. The result is a stimulating addition to existing scholarship which will be of interest to scholars and students alike.
As both composer and critic, Peggy Glanville-Hicks contributed to the astonishing cultural ferment of the mid-twentieth century. Her forceful voice as a writer and commentator helped shape professional and public opinion on the state of American composing. The seventy musical works she composed ranged from celebrated operas like Nausicaa to intimate, jewel-like compositions created for friends. Her circle included figures like Virgil Thomson, Paul Bowles, John Cage, and Yehudi Menuhin. Drawing on interviews, archival research, and fifty-four years of extraordinary pocket diaries, Suzanne Robinson places Glanville-Hicks within the history of American music and composers. "P.G.H." forged alliances with power brokers and artists that gained her entrance to core American cultural entities such as the League of Composers, New York Herald Tribune, and the Harkness Ballet. Yet her impeccably cultivated public image concealed a private life marked by unhappy love affairs, stubborn poverty, and the painstaking creation of her artistic works. Evocative and intricate, Peggy Glanville-Hicks clears away decades of myth and storytelling to provide a portrait of a remarkable figure and her times.
This revised, updated, and expanded edition of the definitive catalogue of works by Sir William Walton (1902-83) follows the completion of the William Walton Edition. A comprehensive source of musical and documentary information relevant to Walton's life and work, the catalogue features full details of composition dates, instrumentation, first performance, publication, the location of autograph manuscripts, critical comment, and significant recordings, as well as previously undiscovered pieces. Appended are a helpful bibliography for further reading and indexes including for works, authors of texts, first lines, and dedicatees.