Aspects of beauty in the music of MozartIt is a common article of faith that Mozart composed the most beautiful music we can know. But few of us ask why. Why does the beautiful in Mozart stand apart, as though untouched by human hands? At the same time, why does it inspire intimacy rather than distant admiration, love rather than awe? And how does Mozart's music create and sustain its buoyant and ever-renewable effects? In Mozart's Grace, Scott Burnham pro...

“Exceedingly well written and comprehensive.”– Core77Design hacking is the resourcefulness of the individual stepping in when the products and systems we are offered fall short. Design hacking creates new realities, options and possibilities from those we are given, whether commercial, social or civic.It is a democratization of design, enabling the user to be part of the design process and not only on the receiving end of it. There is a triumphant me...

This Could… is a guide for everyone wanting to learn how to build self-reliance, create new opportunity, increase creativity, and reduce waste.The book applies principles ranging from permaculture to the circular economy to everything that makes up your daily life. The objects, materials, skills, and everything that shapes your world all contain the ability to do more. The secret to unlocking their extra potential is just two words: “This could…”Th...

Bringing together reception history, music analysis and criticism, the history of music theory, and the philosophy of music, Beethoven Hero explores the nature and persistence of Beethoven's heroic style. What have we come to value in this music, asks Scott Burnham, and why do generations of critics and analysts hear it in much the same way? Specifically, what is it that fosters the intensity of listener engagement with the heroic style, the often overwhelming sense of identificat...

For several decades, Scott Burnham has sought to bring a ready ear and plenty of humanistic warmth to musicological inquiry. Sounding Values features eighteen of his essays on mainstream Western music, music theory, aesthetics and criticism. In these writings, Burnham listens for the values-aesthetic, ethical, intellectual-of those who have created influential discourse about music, while also listening for the values of the music for which that discourse has been generated. The first half...

Take the mumbo jumbo out of contract law and ace your contracts courseContract law deals with the promises and agreements that law will enforce. Understanding contract law is vital for all aspiring lawyers and paralegals, and contracts courses are foundational courses within all law schools. Contract Law For Dummies tracks to a typical contracts course and assists you in understanding the foundational legal rules controlling voluntary agreements people ent...

Few composers even begin to approach Beethoven's pervasive presence in modern Western culture, from the concert hall to the comic strip. Edited by a cultural historian and a music theorist, Beethoven and His World gathers eminent scholars from several disciplines who collectively speak to the range of Beethoven's importance and of our perennial fascination with him.The contributors address Beethoven's musical works and their cultural contexts. Reinhold Brinkmann explores t...

An outstanding anthology in which notable musicians, artists, scientists, thinkers, poets, and more**—from Gustavo Dudamel and Carrie Mae Weems to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Paul Muldoon—explore the influence of music on their lives and workContributors include: Laurie Anderson ● Jamie Barton ● Daphne A. Brooks ● Edgar Choueiri ● Jeff Dolven ● Gustavo Dudamel ● Edward Dusinberre ● Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim ● Frank Gehry ● James Gins...

Kings In The West Beyond The Sea is an informal history of Clan MacDougall of Argyll, Scotland from the time of the great Norse-Gael warrior, Somerled, the king of a dual Hebrides and Argyll kingdom. His numerous Highland and Island clan descendants dominated western Scotland for over three centuries. These clans include Clan MacDougall, and Clan Donald (the MacDonalds) – a clan with a dozen or more offspring clans the first of which were the swashbuckling MacRuairis, and Clan Alastair (Mc...

A new series from THE WALKING DEAD creator ROBERT KIRKMAN! This is an evil world where evil people do evil stuff all the time. Thankfully, there 's a secret cabal within the United States government that works outside the normal system to influence world matters through targeted assassination. So if you 're hurting people, somehow making the world worse than it already is, or even just standing in the way of something good happening, then someone could right now be giving the order for you...

Combining musical insight with the most recent research, William Kinderman's Beethoven is both a richly drawn portrait of the man and a guide to his music. Kinderman traces the composer's intellectual and musical development from the early works written in Bonn to the Ninth Symphony and the late quartets, looking at compositions from different and original perspectives that show Beethoven's art as a union of sensuous and rational, of expression and structure. In analyses of individual piec...

The universally acclaimed and award-winning Oxford History of Western Music is the eminent musicologist Richard Taruskin's provocative, erudite telling of the story of Western music from its earliest days to the present. Each book in this superlative five