San Antonio College Library

Describes the life of American composer Charles Ives, who wrote music which expressed all the sounds he heard in the world, but which was not well received during his lifetime.

"The Pulitzer-winning American composer Dominick Argento is known for the care with which he selects the subjects for his works and for the personal involvement that shines through his music. Each chapter of this memoir is based on a particular composition, surrounded by Argento's reflections on the period in his life when the piece was written and its opening performance. Songs about Spring stirs memories of his instructor Nicholas Nabokov (friend...

Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (1867-1944), the most widely performed composer of her generation, was the first American woman to succeed as a creator of large-scale art music. Her "Gaelic" Symphony, given its premiere by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first work of its kind by an American woman to be performed by an American orchestra. Almost all of her more than 300 works were published soon after they were composed and performed, and today...

He created over three thousand songs, yet never learned to play the piano properly. A composer who calls himself a songwriter, whose songs are to him no more than "tunes," he can't read music. When asked once what effect music education might have on his music, he replied, "Ruin it." "Irving Berlin," says Jerome Kern, "has no place in American music - he is American music." And some of America's legendary performers--Bing Crosby, Fred Astaire, Ethel...

"The Man I Love," "Fascinating Rhythm," "Someone to Watch Over Me," "A Foggy Day"--together the Gershwin brothers wrote 700 songs and dozens of shows that defined an age and revolutionized the musical theater. Essential to any consideration of their achievement is this work, the only book to closely examine the brothers' extraordinary collaboration. This pioneering work--which grew out of extensive interviews with Ira Gershwin and draws on much unpublished...

Cole Porter, urbane composer-lyricist of such hits as "Let's Fall in Love," "Night and Day," "Begin the Beguine," and others among the longest-lived ballads of our time, set new standards of invention and craftsmanship that changed popular songwriting permanently. His lavish life-style matched the sophistication and elegance of his songs. He was a leader of the glamorous international set of the fabulous twenties and thirties and remained an arbiter...

Each year, Scott Yoo and his musician friends spend a month teaching students--just as Aaron Copland did over his career--carrying on the long musical tradition of masters teaching students, who become masters themselves. Together they'll play the works of Copland, to discover how he drew from his Jewish roots, Modernism, and most importantly American folk music to invent the American sound.

In what has become the biography of the father of American musical theatre, the author demonstrates a keen understanding and sympathy for Kern the man, as well as Kern the musician. No "rags-to-riches" folk hero, Jerome Kern grew up on the periphery of the American-Jewish elite, achieved early success, and moved throughout his life among the era's leading personalities and performers. Bordman follows Kern's career from its beginnings on Broadway and...

Charles Ives was an extraordinary personality as well as a brilliant composer and insurance genius. The publication of this unique work, based on Ives's manuscripts and papers from the Charles Ives Collection in the Yale Music Library and on extensive interviews with people from all aspects of his multifaceted life, coincides with the centenary of Ives's birth. Integrating all this material into a highly readable narrative, Vivian Perlis has woven...