Promotions - Choice's Outstanding Academic Titles 2019 -

One hesitates before designating a work a capstone in a career, but the present volume calls for no such reluctance. In two previous books--Musical Meaning in Beethoven: Markedness, Correlation, and Interpretation (CH, Dec'94, 32-2050) and Interpreting Musical Gestures, Topics, and Tropes: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert (CH, Sep'05, 43-0216)--Hatten (Univ. of Texas, Austin) revealed his special perspective, which is informed by immersion in semiotics but propelled, and transformed, by the search for meaning that is as old as human consciousness. The present volume extends the prior work in surprising ways as it introduces a theory of music--subtle, thorough, and consistent--predicated on notions of virtuality, subjectivity, and agency, among other things. One can test whether a theory of music brings anything worthwhile by determining whether it affects the way one listens to music; this book passes the test within the first few chapters. This is real 21st-century stuff, consilient with work in other scholarly disciplines and even in technology. The book represents a major effort and achievement from one the era's most influential music theorists. Whether it occupies the same place in Hatten's output as Der freie Satz does in Heinrich Schenker's remains to be seen, but it is required reading for every musician.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

One hundred years after Claude Debussy's death, Walsh (emer., Cardiff Univ., UK) presents a fresh look at the life and music of the early French modernist composer, whose music challenged the compositional norms of his time. Debussy: A Painter in Sound offers much more than what one might expect of a typical biography of this timeless composer. Walsh juxtaposes the complicated, often tortuous private life of Debussy with his grand importance in French culture and society, interspersing throughout analyses of musical works. The author offers valuable new perspectives on the composer's life, and at the same time provides historical context for Debussy's works and their harmonic language, artistic ethos, and creative interplay of music and poetry. Photographs of Debussy and his contemporaries provide a fascinating visual glimpse into his life. Students, performers, scholars, and music aficionados will welcome this new resource on Debussy.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.

In Future Sounds, Kennedy (communication and media, Univ. of Greenwich, UK) seeks to find what can be learned from the relationship of sound and time. He explores that interconnection both within a single moment and in multidimensional movement into the future. In the introduction, Kennedy quotes an essay on Gaston Bachelard by Hashizumi Keiko, who wrote that "melody teaches us what duration is like." Kennedy posits that if that is the case, "then noise teaches us what the continuous discontinuity of digital time is like." As his book unfolds, Kennedy shows readers the intricate political, societal, and cultural connections between the constructs of time, space, and sound. Over the course of four chapters--"Critical Temporalities," "Noise and Political Economy," "Remembering the Future: 1977-2017," and "Continuous Discontinuity: A Non-Linear History of Noise"--the author provides strongly supported evidence for his theories, extracting content from the works of Paul Virilio, Wilfrid Sellars, Jaques Attali, Paul Klee, et al., and dares to ask questions never before posed. This thought-provoking, brilliantly written book will resonate for generations to come.Summing Up: Essential. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Drawing on rare materials from Russian archives and libraries, Razumovskaya (Guildhall School of Music and Drama, UK) has assembled a brilliantly detailed and meticulously researched picture of piano pedagogue and performer Heinrich Neuhaus (1888-1964). Neuhaus has long been known in the West as a teacher of great pianists, especially because of his book The Art of Piano Playing (first Eng. tr., CH, Oct'73) and pupils such as Emil Gilels and Sviatoslav Richter. Now Razumovskaya completes Neuhaus's portrait, describing his early training and travels in Europe, his familial ties to the Szymanowski and Blumenthal families, his great success as a concert artist, his arrest and imprisonment for criticizing the Soviet government, his specific teaching methods, and the poets, writers, students, and family who surrounded him. Dense with detail, this book draws one into the mid-20th-century Soviet piano studio and the Russian school of piano playing, along with the mystique and mystery that surrounded the rigors of Russian piano training. No less interesting to read are the notes for each chapter and the Who's Who glossary of Russian musicians, poets, writers, and so on. A discography of recordings held in the Russian State Archive is included.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals.

In the 1950s, critics hailed Mahalia Jackson (1911-72) as "the world's greatest gospel singer"--an apt designation that stuck. In Mahalia Jackson and the Black Gospel Field, Burford (Reed College) draws from troves of previously unavailable interviews, archival collections, and other historical resources to provide readers with an insightful and in-depth analysis of Jackson's life and career. In so doing, the author also tracks the rise of black gospel music and the social and political culture of the US in the post-WW II era. Burford's critical analysis transcends the typical biographical treatment and offers a dynamic and engrossing glimpse into the America in which black gospel music sprouted and blossomed. The first biography of Jackson in more than a quarter century, this book joins such volumes as Jules Schwerin's Got to Tell It: Mahalia Jackson, Queen of Gospel (CH, Jan'93, 30-2590) and Laurraine Goreau's Just Mahalia, Baby (CH, Dec'75). It is an indispensable resource for any serious scholar of 20th-century black music and culture.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

Mozart in Context is the maiden entry in Cambridge's "Composers in Context" series, and one may presume that this collection reveals the general plan for future entries. It is a terrific idea for a book or series of books, and Mozart is an obvious opening choice. Having lots of disparate information in one place turns out to be quite handy and practical if it is organized as well as it is here. Noted Mozartean Simon Keefe (Univ. of Sheffield, UK) has gathered other, equally diligent Mozarteans to describe the world in which Mozart lived and worked; how he interacted with that world; and how the world has responded to Mozart's music. The volume comprises 35 essays, and the quality of scholarship throughout seems high and, one must assume, absolutely current. Those interested in a Mozart biography in English should seek out Stewart Spencer's translation of Hermann Abert's magisterial W. A. Mozart, ed. by Cliff Eisen (CH, May'08, 45-4885). However, to flesh out almost any topic Abert touches on, one might start with Keefe's collection. The book is generally accessible and will be particularly appealing and helpful to students.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers.

Scruton (Univ. of Buckingham, UK) is on a mission in this book: to save Western classical music from neglect. He pursues this aim by championing the value of the history and culture that give form to and are preserved by Western classical music. Many of the views Scruton articulated in his earlier works, Understanding Music (CH, Oct'10, 48-0794) and The Aesthetics of Music (CH, Nov'98, 36-1502), are redeployed here, to steadfastly caution against the resistance of young listeners to musical works that require sustained attention to meaning extracted from an original musical impulse over an extended time. What is valuable about Western classical music, Scruton thinks, is discovered and sustained by that attention. It may be that those most in need of this caution will not have the "chops" to follow the argument, which depends on informed references to the Western classical canon. The erudition, clarity of exposition, and rhetorical panache of this book, however, may make converts of those not already disposed to follow Scruton's lead. Disagree as one might with the conservative assumptions underwriting Scruton's view, this is as clear an argument for the value of Western classical music as one will find.Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers.

The premise (and indeed the title) of this book would seem presumptuous were Juslin (psychology, Uppsala Univ., Sweden) not known as a significant and productive researcher. So rather than presumptuous, the book is ambitious and perhaps even audacious. Certainly it describes the current state of knowledge concerning emotion in music, but that is only the starting line. Juslin connects music and emotion to all manner of other human processes (e.g., learning, memory, perception) and, most strikingly, to aesthetics. The author's direct engagement with aesthetic judgment helps lift the book from something like an impressive compendium (a list of references runs 45 pages) to something much grander and more important. That the writing is consistently friendly and personal, never clinical, is somewhat surprising. Through some magic discussion remains accessible to almost any mature reader, even as the author marches through his argument with remarkable precision. The book could prove especially useful to musicians and might prompt them to think differently about what they do.Summing Up: Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.

What makes American music American? Ansari (music history, Western Univ., London, Ontario) probes this question as she examines the careers of six 20th-century composers--Howard Hanson, William Schuman, Virgil Thomson, Roy Harris, Aaron Copland, and Leonard Bernstein. She focuses on the years of WW II and the ensuing Cold War. During this period, European-based serialism and experimentalism competed against American-based tonality, resulting in a polarization of musical choices. Ansari looks at how the composers responded to the social and political changes in this period. Some joined US government-based programs to publicize American music abroad (at times with clandestine CIA support). Some participated in political movements questioning US actions at home and abroad. Here they got caught up in the hysteria of the Red Scare and investigations by US congressional committees. The government restricted the movement of some by withholding passports. Ansari presents a combination of musical theory and political and social action. She supports the text with excellent documentation, a variety of musical examples, and photographs and illustrations.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.

This slim but important volume offers a unique perspective on Wagner's mature music, a perspective that arises from the author's dual career as historian and dramaturg. In his introduction, Steinberg (Brown) identifies the "trouble" in his title as "Wagner's anti-Semitism and chauvinistic German nationalism"--which leads to the question of whether one can "reconcile Wagner's genius with his perversity." Steinberg's introduction explores "key aesthetic, historical, and theoretical components of the Ring and of the claims and ideologies of Wagnerian music drama." The book's core is the component music dramas of the Ring--Rheingold, Walkure, Siegfried, and Gotterdammerung--on the page and on the stage. An afterword extends similar consideration to Tristan, Meistersinger, and Parsifal. The concluding chapter deals with Wagner reception in the "post-secular" world and with more recent trends suggesting a return to the religious and the sacred in modern society. Ultimately, the "trouble" with Wagner may best be addressed not by scholarship or criticism but through the choices that must be made to present these masterworks to a contemporary audience. A significant achievement, this book is sure to have a role in any serious Wagner discussion.Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers.