Titres dans Histoire et critique

Although we have heard the music of J. S. Bach in countless performances and recordings, the composer himself still comes across only as an enigmatic figure in a single familiar portrait. As we mark the 250th anniversary of Bach's death, author Christoph Wolff presents a new picture that brings to life this towering figure of the Baroque era. This engaging new biography portrays Bach as the living, breathing, and sometimes imperfect human being that he was, while bringing to bear all the advances of the last half-century of Bach scholarship.

Forged in the fires of the Bronx and Kingston, Jamaica, hip-hop became the Esperanto of youth rebellion and a generation-defining movement. In a post-civil rights era defined by deindustrialization and globalization, hip-hop crystallized a multiracial, polycultural generation's worldview and transformed American politics and culture. But that epic story has never been told with this kind of breadth, insight, and style.

In this unique collection, Literary Witches co-creator Katy Horan unearths the true and fictional stories behind twenty traditional murder ballads, exploring the beauty and horror of the art form through stories, lyrics, and original interpretations. The audiobook includes covers of various folk songs by Okkervil River’s Will Sheff, Marissa Nadler, and Lizzie No.

The 1990s were a chaotic and utterly magical time for music, a confounding barrage of genres and lifestyles and superstars, from grunge to hip-hop, from sumptuous R&B to rambunctious ska-punk, from Axl to Kurt to Missy to Santana to Tupac to Britney. In 60 SONGS THAT EXPLAIN THE '90s, Ringer music critic Rob Harvilla reimagines all the earwormy, iconic hits Gen Xers pine for with vivid historical storytelling, sharp critical analysis, rampant loopiness, and wryly personal ruminations on the most bizarre, joyous, and inescapable songs from a decade we both regret entirely and miss desperately.

The epic, rollicking, up-and-down life of Muddy Waters—who went from Mississippi farmhand to musical legend, invented electric blues, and created the template for the rock-and-roll band and its wild lifestyle—is chronicled with rare vividness in Robert Gordon’s widely praised biography.

Mix tapes: We all have our favorites. Stick one into a deck, press play, and you’re instantly transported to another time in your life. For Rob Sheffield, that time was one of miraculous love and unbearable grief. A time that spanned seven years, it started when he met the girl of his dreams, and ended when he watched her die in his arms.

Music opinions bring out passionate debate in people, and Steven Hyden knows that firsthand. Each chapter in Your Favorite Band Is Killing Me focuses on a pop music rivalry, from the classic to the very recent, and draws connections to the larger forces surrounding the pairing.

Daniel Levitin follows up his acclaimed New York Times best-selling first book, This Is Your Brain on Music, with The World in Six Songs, an audacious look at how the brain evolved to play and listen to music in six fundamental forms and gave rise to human culture.

Including an insightful foreword by Katie Derham, The Classical Music Book analyses over 90 works by famous composers. From Thomas Tallis in the early period to baroque masters like Bach and Handel, to the classical genius of Beethoven and Wagner and beyond to the modern day, The Classical Music Book explores the key ideas underpinning the world's greatest classical compositions and musical traditions, and defines their importance to the musical canon, placing them into their wider social, cultural, and historical context.

This is the first comprehensive history of goth music and culture. John Robb explores the origins and legacy of this enduring scene, which has its roots in the post-punk era. Featuring sound and original music, and read by the author in his distinctive narrative style, this is a truly atmospheric audiobook that takes you right into the heart of the history of goth.

When the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to Bob Dylan in 2016, a debate raged. Some celebrated while many others questioned the choice. How could the world's most prestigious book prize be awarded to a famously cantankerous singer-songwriter who wouldn't even deign to attend the medal ceremony? In Why Bob Dylan Matters, Harvard Professor Richard F. Thomas answers this question with magisterial erudition.

Joe Bonomo strikes a three-chord essay on the power of adolescence, the durability of rock & roll fandom, and the transformative properties of memory. Why does Highway To Hell matter to anyone beyond non-ironic teenagers? Blending interviews, analysis, and memoir with a fan's perspective, Highway To Hell dramatizes and celebrates a timeless album that one critic said makes "disaster sound like the best fun in the world."

Suzi Ronson was working in a Beckenham hair salon in the early seventies when Mrs Jones came in for her weekly shampoo and set. After being introduced to her son David and his wife Angie, Suzi finds herself at the Bowies' bohemian apartment and is soon embroiled in their raucous world. Having crafted his iconic Ziggy Stardust hairstyle, Suzi becomes the only working woman in David's touring party and joins the Spiders from Mars as they perform around the globe.

Reflecting on the Beach Boys’ long, fascinating history, this book tells the story behind 50 of the band’s greatest songs from the perspective of group members, collaborators, fellow musicians, and notable fans. The band's music is as influential now as it was 50 years ago, and this retelling of how the iconic rock group found itself in the annals of pop culture couldn't come at a better time.

From the author's first glimpse of a magical recording studio in the mid-1960s up through a busy career that continues to the present day, this rollicking story can only be told by those that were there. As the young tape operator on sessions for the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and Joe Cocker at the famed Olympic Sound Studios in London, Phill learned the ropes from experienced engineers and producers such as Glyn Johns and Eddie Kramer.

Millions of people know the name of the iconic country music artist, George Jones, but few people know that behind the man and his golden voice was a strong, feisty woman who not only saved his life from cocaine addiction, alcoholism, and other abusive and self-destructive behaviors, but also was instrumental in saving his soul. For the first time, in Playin' Possum, Nancy Jones reveals the true “insider” perspectives and little known poignant and as well as humorous stories about the country music icon.

It began with a handful of East Berlin teens who heard the Sex Pistols on a British military radio broadcast to troops in West Berlin, and it ended with the collapse of the East German dictatorship. Punk rock was a life-changing discovery. The buzz-saw guitars, the messed-up clothing and hair, the rejection of society and the DIY approach to building a new one: In their gray surroundings, where everyone's future was preordained by some communist apparatchik, punk represented a revolutionary philosophy - quite literally, as it turned out.

Watford Forever is the remarkable account of Elton John’s ownership of Watford FC, and its transformational journey to the top of the First Division under iconic manager Graham Taylor, who was, in the words of award-winning journalist John Preston, “as traditional as Elton was unconventional.” Inspiring, funny, and ultimately heartrending, this is a tribute to soccer’s unlikeliest duo as Elton and Taylor—a straight-talking former fullback with literally no interest in rock music—both beat the odds and their personal demons to save a club and a community.

The Beatles' third tour of North America was nearly a year in the planning. By late 1964, manager Brian Epstein knew that they were not only the biggest act in his stable: they had become the biggest act on earth. America worshipped them. Somewhere different for the start of this tour, in New York - somewhere appropriately massive - had to be found. It was: a baseball stadium in Flushing, Queens. On August 15, 1965, The Beatles played the concert of their lives there.

One of rock music's most fascinating personalities, Neil Young has persistently charted his own career, ignoring pop fashions, creating innovative music ranging from folk classics like "Heart of Gold" to rock-and-roll anthems like "Down By the River". Don't Be Denied charts Neil Young's formative years, from his high school days in Winnipeg, Manitoba, through his adventures in Toronto's Yorkville district to his ultimate successes with Buffalo Springfield, Crazy Horse, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, and as a solo performer.