The story of how unexpected connections between music, technology, and race across three tumultuous decades changed American culture.How did a European social dance craze become part of an American presidential election? Why did the recording industry become racially divided? Where did rock ’n’ roll really come from? And how do all these things continue to reverberate in today’s world?In Revolutions in American Music, award-winning author Michael B...

How did a European social dance craze become part of an American presidential election? Why did the recording industry become racially divided? Where did rock 'n' roll really come from? And how do all these things continue to reverberate in today's world?In Revolutions in American Music, award-winning author Michael Broyles shows the surprising ways in which three key decades—the 1840s, the 1920s, and the 1950s—shaped America's musical future. Drawing connections between n...

Leo Ornstein: Modernist Dilemmas, Personal Choices traces the meteoric rise and heretofore inexplicable disappearance of the Russian-American, futurist-anarchist, pianist-composer from his arrival in the United States in 1906 through a career that lasted nearly a century. Outliving his admirers and critics by decades Leo Ornstein passed away in 2002 at the age of 108. Frequently compared to Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg, for a time Ornstein enjoyed a kind a celebrity granted few li...

From colonial times to the present, American composers have lived on the fringes of society and defined themselves in large part as outsiders. In this stimulating book Michael Broyles considers the tradition of maverick composers and explores what these mavericks reveal about American attitudes toward the arts and about American society itself.Broyles starts by examining the careers of three notably unconventional composers: William Billings in the eighteenth century, Anthony Phili...

While all music genres incorporate religious imagery, the blues has its origin in the soil of the church. In its infancy, the blues was often dismissed as undermining the church’s gospel songbook. The initial resistance, however, could not suppress the organic development of a genre of music born from suffering. The great Mississippi Delta bluesman, Muddy Waters, once said, "The blues was born behind a mule." Behind a beast of burden, the working man found in the blues a way to console the...

More than a century passed after Johann Sebastian Bach's death in 1750 before his music found an audience in the United States. Volume Five in the Bach Perspectives series tracks the composer's reputation in America from obscure artist to a cultural mainstay whose music has spread to all parts of the country.Barbara Owen surveys Bach's early reception in America. Matthew Dirst focuses on John Sullivan Dwight's role in advocating Bach's work. Michael Broyles considers Bach'...

These ten sharp yet deeply human stories show how people from all walks of life can end up on the wrong side of the law, regardless of their intentions. A compelling portrait of modern Sweden that speaks to universal questions about crime and morality, from the internationally bestselling author of Quicksand.A police officer fresh out of the academy becomes acutely aware of the deadly consequences of prejudice and how biases color our actions, leading us t...

One of The Telegraph's Best Music Books 2011Alex Ross's award-winning international bestseller, The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, has become a contemporary classic, establishing Ross as one of our most popular and acclaimed cultural historians. Listen to This, which takes its title from a beloved 2004 essay in which Ross describes his late-blooming discovery of pop music, showcases the best of his writing from more than a decade at

If you enjoy great music but want to know more about how it came to be the way it is - without investing time in a graduate degree - here are the background stories of over 200 great compositions. If you're only just coming to experiment with great music, here are guideposts to help you understand and enjoy what you encounter. The stories and sounds behind the scenes: welcome to Classical Music Insights.

A beautifully illustrated, totally engrossing celebration of the piano, and the composers and performers who have made it their own.With honed sensitivity and unquestioned expertise, Stuart Isacoff—pianist, critic, teacher, and author of Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization—unfolds the ongoing history and evolution of the piano and all its myriad wonders: how its very sound provides the basis for emotional expression and ...

The story of a revolution in music and technology, told through a century of recordings of the music of Johann Sebastian BachIn Reinventing Bach, his remarkable second book, Paul Elie tells the electrifying story of how musicians of genius have made Bach's music new in our time, at once restoring Bach as a universally revered composer and revolutionizing the ways that music figures into our lives.As a musician in eighteenth-century Germany, Bach was ...

The award-winning author of Wondrous Strange, the critically acclaimed biography of Glenn Gould, explores the bizarre, untold life of another brilliant and eccentric musician.The composer Arnold Schoenberg called him an “utterly extraordinary” pianist of “incredible originality and conviction,” yet today he is all but forgotten. Born in Budapest in 1903, Ervin Nyiregyházi (nyeer-edge-hah-zee) was a remarkable prodigy: at eight he performed at Buckingham Palace, and when he...