San Antonio College Library

"In her new book, Carolyn Abbate considers the nature of operatic performance and the acoustic images of performance present in operas from Monteverdi to Ravel. Paying tribute to music's realization by musicians and singers, she argues that operatic works are indelibly bound to the contingency of live singing, playing, and staging. She seeks a middle ground between operas as abstractions and performance as the phenomenon that brings opera into being."--Jacket....

The author looks at why music affects us as it does, why are we deeply moved by some music by not by other music, what is it about music that "sends" us, and where it send us. He explores the relationship between music and human experience -- a portrayal, not of the tangible facts of experience, but of the concern aroused by our encounter with those facts. He explains that while avant-garde abstractionism is concerned only with music as art--a concern...

The three modern composers compared in this book were close together in age if not in attitude. Their most important contributions to culture were musical rather than literary, but when three highly successful practitioners of the musical art commit to writing their views on the nature and value of that art, the result is certain to be rewarding and stimulating.

What is music, and why does it move us? From Pythagoras to the present, writers have struggled to isolate the essence of "pure" or "absolute" music in ways that also account for its profound effect. In Absolute Music: The History of an Idea, Mark Evan Bonds traces the history of these efforts across more than two millennia, paying special attention to the relationship between music's essence and its qualities of form, expression, beauty, autonomy,...

Through a range of musical examples, Rosen details the array of stylistic devices and techniques used to represent or convey sentiment. This is not, however, a listener's guide to any 'correct' response to a particular piece. Instead, Rosen provides the tools and terms with which to appreciate this central aspect of musical aesthetics, and indeed explores the phenomenon of contradictory sentiments embodied in a single motif or melody.

This book explores religion through music, one of the most universally recognized forms of human experience. The only art form named after a divinity, music has been documented from prehistory to the present age in virtually all known cultures. For many, music is a vehicle for spiritual growth and community empowerment, whether it's understood as a gift of the gods or simply a practice for achieving mental states conducive to enlightenment. Traditionally,...