Showing titles in History & Criticism

A vivid, captivating account of the Beatles's musical transformation throughout the pivotal year of 1963, as the world became caught up in the maelstrom of Beatlemania and its far-reaching cultural impact.

Un bambino come tanti: silenzioso, non bello, con grandi occhi pieni di domande. Dal momento in cui il mondo si accorge di lui, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart non avrà più pace. Per farlo dovrà però rinunciare alla spensieratezza, alle amicizie, agli amori e persino alla salute, mentre per restare nell'orbita della sua vita eccezionale coloro che lo amano, come la sorella Nannerl e la madre Anna, si sacrificheranno fino ad annullarsi.

We all know the Boxer. The fighter who remembers every glove but still remains. That grisly, bruised American allegory who somehow gets up more times than he’s knocked down. This is the fight that nearly broke The National. The one that allowed them to become champions.

Perhaps more than any other Greatest Hits compilation, Abba Gold has come to define a band’s career on one disk. More than that, its release in 1992 heralded the critical rehabilitation of a group which had, since its demise a decade earlier, become little more than a memory of trashy costumes and cheesy tunes to many people. Here, Elisabeth Vincentelli charts the circumstances surrounding the birth of Abba Gold, looks at the impact it had on the music world, and tells the stories behind some of the greatest pop songs ever recorded.

In this wickedly entertaining and thoroughly informed homage to one of rock music's towering pinnacles, Erik Davis investigates the magic—black or otherwise—that surrounds this album. Carefully peeling the layers from each song, Davis reveals their dark and often mystical roots—and leaves the listener to decide whether [FOUR SYMBOLS] is some form of occult induction or just an inspired, brilliantly played rock album.

It's 2013. You're a teenager squinting at your laptop in the dead of night, flicking between iTunes and YouTube and PirateBay. Endless reams of artists unspool at the click of a button. New forms of musical discovery open up before your very eyes. This evolving digital landscape exists beyond...

Algunos de los mayores mitos de la música abordados por uno de los mayores expertos en Colombia. ¿Ha oído que hay canciones que, si se escuchan al revés, contienen un mensaje oculto? O tal vez conozca el eterno rumor de que Elvis Presley está vivo, de que Paul McCartney tiene un doble o de que el violinista italiano Paganini le vendió su alma al diablo. Dichas teorías conspirativas, mitos y leyendas han existido siempre en el terreno de la música, siendo una fuente inagotable de especulación y asombro.

La música está en todas partes: en las conversaciones cotidianas, en el ruido de la ciudad, en el bullicio de las calles y en los momentos de descanso. Es el lenguaje que nos conecta sin necesidad de palabras, nos emociona, nos moviliza y nos transforma. Desde los cantos de los esclavos africanos hasta la revolución del K-pop, pasando por la transgresión de Rosalía y la pureza matemática de Bach, la música ha sido el motor de historias, celebraciones y tragedias.

Highly original and fascinating cultural and political history told through Belfast’s popular music scene in the 1960s in the context of Northern Ireland’s sociopolitical milieu. With particular emphasis on Van Morrison, Them, and Ottilie Patterson; also features the Peter Whitehead film of The Rolling Stones.

From one of the world's most beloved and respected public intellectuals comes a sweeping work of musical criticism, examining the distance between the performer and their audience "Not since Virgil Thomson have we had a music critic with as wide ranging a view as Edward Said."—Studs Terkel...

Craze is a journey into sound, a book which along the way will bring to you a new colour; new dimension; a new understanding of the cultural, technological, and chemical strands that led to the Electronic Music Revolution. Take a trip down rave memory lane into Sydney’s early warehouse scene and explore the forging of a global cultural phenomenon. Re-live the Second Summer of Love from the unique Australian perspective of its farthest flung outpost.

Derived from a popular series of lecture-recitals presented by Carol Montparker over the past several years, The Composer's Landscape features eight insightful essays on the piano repertoire. Each chapter focuses on a single composer: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Chopin, and Mendelssohn. Montparker uses landscape as a metaphor for the score, whether it be a well-tended garden of Mozart or the thorny thickets on a Schumann page: the topographical peaks and valleys, the circuitous melodic lines, the thoroughfares where all the voices convene, and so on.

In Michael Rabin: America's Virtuoso Violinist, Anthony Feinstein tells the poignant story of the life and career of one of history's greatest violinists. As a child prodigy, Rabin had the classical music world at his feet. Notable successes abounded. Yet no sooner had Rabin taken his place alongside such illustrious colleagues as Heifetz, Milstein, and Stern than he abruptly and inexplicably disappeared from the concert stage. For three years, the public saw and heard little of him.

In 1985, four American musicians—members of a New England-based klezmer band that focused on Yiddish music—landed in Moscow. With little training in espionage, they risked their freedom and their lives to smuggle information to and from the West under the watchful eye of the KGB and to help...

Clad in black with dark shades, Roy Orbison had a mystique, style, and voice that were unmistakable and singularly different from his famous peers of the 1950s and '60s. Born in Vernon, Texas, Roy was the son of a guitar-playing oil worker. Already a music fan by age six, Roy went on to form a high school band. Honky-tonk gigs followed. Then a contract at Elvis Presley's label, Sun Records, where Roy found mentors and friends among the likes of Carl Perkins. Following a shift to Monument Records, he shared a bill with a group called the Beatles, who were huge fans of his.

Tulsa, Oklahoma might not be the first place mentioned when people talk about American music history. But this bustling city has a rich and diverse legacy that spans genres, generations and cultures. Tulsa Sounds: Contributions to American Music takes you into the stories behind the songs, the artists and the venues that made Tulsa not only a musical hot spot but influenced social, cultural and political change in the city as well as the nation. There is Leon Russell and his contributions to rock and roll. There are the toe-tapping pioneers of Western Swing, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.

Ehemals Musik junger Abgehängter und Outlaws, ist Heavy Metal heute mehr und mehr in der Mitte der Gesellschaft angekommen: Wohl mehr als 10 Millionen Deutsche hören Heavy Metal. Aber warum tun sie das? Was suchen und was finden sie in dieser Musik, die von Außenstehenden oft als purer Lärm empfunden wird? Warum wimmelt es im Heavy Metal nur so von Monstern und Teufeln - und wieso schweigen auch die Götter und die Engel nicht? Was erleben Metal-Fans, wenn sie ihre Musik hören - und welche Erfahrung treibt sie immer wieder ins Konzert.

Em Como a música ficou grátis, o jornalista Stephen Witt investiga a fundo a história secreta da pirataria de músicas na internet, partindo dos engenheiros alemães criadores do mp3,, passando por uma fábrica de CDs na Carolina do Norte da qual um funcionário chamado Dell Glover vazou cerca de dois mil álbuns ao longo de uma década e também pelo centro de Manhattan, onde o executivo Doug Morris dominou o mercado mundial do rap, e finalmente mergulhando nos redutos mais obscuros da web até um site ilegal quatro vezes maior do que a loja do iTunes.

La biografía integral de Roger Waters, cerebro de una de las bandas más importantes de los últimos sesenta años, en un recorrido que va de su infancia—marcada por la desaparición de su padre en la guerra—a la ebullición cultural de la Inglaterra de los Beatles y los Stones y después. Syd Barrett, las giras, los discos, El lado oscuro de la luna, The Wall, David Gilmour, la militancia política y las peleas y polémicas de una carrera única que lo encuentra vital como siempre y tocando por todo el mundo a los 80.

Con New Wave si definisce un movimento musicale e artistico incredibilmente eterogeneo, sviluppatosi tra la seconda metà degli anni Settanta e i primi Ottanta: difficile immaginare qualcosa in comune tra i Duran Duran di Rio e i Joy Division di Love Will Tear Us Apart, eppure c’è: sfruttando l’energia, gli stimoli e il dinamismo ancora in circolazione del punk, numerose band hanno scelto di reinventare estetiche e suoni, creando così un’onda musicale nuova e multiforme.