Music is often our companion when dealing with the incomprehensibility of loss. This edited collection speaks to the multifarious and complex ways in which music accompanies, supplements, and complements aspects of death and dying, whether this is the death of a loved one, or a celebrity from popular culture.

This edited collection offers a range of critical, analytic and personal reflections on how music provides a container and a medium for experiencing, processing and integrating embodied encounters with death. It showcases interdisciplinary case studies written by authors from across Australia, France, The Netherlands, Poland and the UK.

A song holds the key to murder in this Dr. Hugh Westlake mystery from the Edgar Award–winning author who wrote the Peter Duluth series as Patrick Quentin. Patrick Quentin, best known for the Peter Duluth puzzle mysteries, also penned outstanding detective novels from the 1930s through the 1960s under other pseudonyms, including Q. Patrick and Jonathan Stagge. Anthony Boucher wrote: “Quentin is particularly noted for the enviable polish and grace which make him one of the leading American fabricants of the murderous comedy of manners; but this surface smoothness conceals intricate and meticulous plot construction as faultless as that of Agatha Christie.” The affluent Bray family was known for throwing the most enjoyable picnics, and this one seemed to be no different to Dr. Hugh Westlake and his precocious progeny, Dawn. When their host’s daughter breaks into a version of the old English folk ballad, “Green Grow the Rushes, O,” no one gives it a second thought. Little do they know the song portends death. It begins with the bodies of twin boys found in the river, which connects to a lyric from the ballad. And before anyone can even recover from such a horror, more killings occur—all diabolically tied to the song. With help from Dawn and his old friend, Inspector Cobb, Westlake must sort through an ever-shrinking circle of suspects and stop a murderer from striking another deadly note.

Out of the deserts of the Southwest rides a band of renegade Apaches. Led by the mysterious warrior and holy man, Juliano, they have fled the reservation in a last-gasp effort to unite with other bands of free Indians in a violent uprising against the hated white man. In a remote corner of Utah Territory, a small company of Mormon settlers crosses the canyon of the Colorado, blasting a treacherous road through a steep, narrow notch in the imposing sandstone cliff s. Sent by command of their prophet, they hope to befriend the Indians and establish a new settlement near the San Juan River. And hidden deep in the labyrinthine, red rock canyons lives a mysterious and ancient people who inhabit the graceful cliff dwellings of their long-dead ancestors. Three widely different cultures will collide in a whirlwind of violence and betrayal; Philo Hatch and his Mormon brethren, in search of their abducted children; Juliano and his followers, seeking a sacred treasure once spoken of in ancient tribal legends; and the Recordkeepers, an ancient indigenous tribe isolated for centuries in the twisting canyons of the southwestern desert, a people who only wish to preserve their dying way of life and the sacred records they were entrusted with in a distant age.

This much-needed book provides valuable insights into themes and genres in popular song in the period c. 1600-1900. In particular it is a study of popular ballads as they appeared on printed sheets and as they were recorded by folk song collectors. Vic Gammon displays his interest in the way song articulates aspects of popular mentality and he relates the discourse of the songs to social history. Gammon discusses the themes and narratives that run through genres of song material and how these are repeated and reworked through time. He argues that in spite of important social and economic changes, the period 1600-1850 had a significant cultural consistency and characteristic forms of popular musical and cultural expression. These only changed radically under the impact of industrialization and urbanization in the nineteenth century. The book will appeal to those interested in folk song, historical popular music (including church music), ballad literature, popular literature, popular culture, social history, anthropology and sociology.

In this compulsively readable, fascinating, and provocative guide to classical music, Norman Lebrecht, one of the world’s most widely read cultural commentators tells the story of the rise of the classical recording industry from Caruso’s first notes to the heyday of Bernstein, Glenn Gould, Callas, and von Karajan. Lebrecht compellingly demonstrates that classical recording has reached its end point–but this is not simply an expos? of decline and fall. It is, for the first time, the full story of a minor art form, analyzing the cultural revolution wrought by Schnabel, Toscanini, Callas, Rattle, the Three Tenors, and Charlotte Church. It is the story of how stars were made and broken by the record business; how a war criminal conspired with a concentration-camp victim to create a record empire; and how advancing technology, boardroom wars, public credulity and unscrupulous exploitation shaped the musical backdrop to our modern lives. The book ends with a suitable shrine to classical recording: the author’s critical selection of the 100 most important recordings–and the 20 most appalling. Filled with memorable incidents and unforgettable personalities–from Goddard Lieberson, legendary head of CBS Masterworks who signed his letters as God; to Georg Solti, who turned the Chicago Symphony into “ the loudest symphony on earth”–this is at once the captivating story of the life and death of classical recording and an opinioned, insider’s guide to appreciating the genre, now and for years to come.

In traditional China, a funeral and the accompanying death rituals represented a critical moment for the immediate family of the deceased to show their filial piety, a core value of the society. At the same time, death rituals were social occasions, and channels for the outward demonstration of belief in a religiously pluralistic society. During the Northern Song period, however, death rituals increasingly became an arena for political contention as attempts were made to transform these practices from a private matter into one subject to state control. Death Rituals and Politics in Northern Song China examines how political confrontations over the proper conduct of death rituals during Northern Song dynasty (960-1127) inaugurated a period of Confucian revivalism. Mihwa Choi interprets Northern Song court politics, family ritual practices, burial practices, and the popular imagination of the afterlife as sites of contest between groups of varying social status, political vision, and religious belief. She demonstrates that the oversight of ritual affairs by scholar-officials helped them gain the political upper hand they sought, and, more broadly, fostered a revival of Confucianism as the dominant value system of Chinese society in the period that followed.

Death Metal is among the most despised forms of violently themed entertainment. Many politicians, conservative groups and typical Americans attribute youth violence and the destruction of social values to such entertainment. The usual assumptions about the Death Metal scene and its fans have rarely been challenged. This book investigates the demographic trends, attitudes, philosophical beliefs, ethical systems, and behavioral patterns within the scene, seeking to situate death metal in the larger social order. The Death Metal community proves to be a useful microcosm for much of American subculture and lends insight into the psychological and social functions of many forbidden or illicit entertainment forms. The author's analysis, rich in interviews with rock stars, radio hosts, and average adolescent fans, provides a key to comprehending deviant tendencies in modern American culture.

The Poetical gazette; the official organ of the Poetry society and a review of poetical affairs, nos. 4-7 issued as supplements to the Academy, v. 79, Oct. 15, Nov. 5, Dec. 3 and 31, 1910