This book studies George Crumb’s The Winds of Destiny (2004) and Black Angels (1970) as artifacts of collective memory and cultural trauma. It situates these two pieces in Crumb’s output and unpacks the complex methodologies needed to understand these pieces as contributions and challenges to traditional narratives of the Civil War and the Vietnam War. The Winds of Destiny is shown to be a critical commentary on the legacy of American wars and militarism, both concepts crucial to American identity. The Winds of Destiny also acts as an ironic war memorial as a means of critiquing such concepts. Black Angels has long been associated with the Vietnam War. This book shows how this association began and how it endures through connections to iconic Vietnam War media, including films and books. Together these analyses show the legacy of trauma in American collective memory, which is in a continuous crisis. Crumb’s musical critiques point to a need to resist conventional narratives and to begin to heal trauma on a collective level. This book will be of interest to students of contemporary American music, American studies, and memory studies. It benefits readers by newly situating Crumb’s music within these three fields of study.

This book is the first study of John Zorn’s ‘file card’ works, with special focus made on the pieces Godard (1985), Spillane (1986), Interzone (2010), and Liber Novus (2010). It explains the unique creative process behind these compositions, contextualizing them in relation to the history of file cards, the ‘open work’ concept, cinematic listening, and uncreative aesthetics. Semiotic, hermeneutic, and ekphrastic analyses draw hypertextual links between the four file card compositions and the worlds of their respective dedicatees: author Mickey Spillane, filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, novelist William S. Burroughs and painter Brion Gysin, and psychiatrist C. G. Jung. This book will appeal not only to those interested in Zorn’s music, but also to scholars of music semiotics and hermeneutics, intermedia studies, and avant-garde music.

"A new approach to teaching general music. This book is a collection of lesson plans and units that artfully blend music making with relevant issues of social justice. Particularly accessible to middle and high school classroom music teachers, the book includes a companion website with links to all of the music listening and videos. Student-centered lessons include discussion prompts, experiences with diverse genres and styles of music, and music making projects with an integration of technology that activate students' creativity and empathy. Unit topics-ranging from "War" to "Climate Change"-include cross-disciplinary lessons with the arts playing a central role. Well-researched introductory materials as well as "how-to" guides for topics, such as "composing in the classroom," enhance its practicality. This book is a resource, with ready-to-go lessons and classroom materials, offering music teachers a lens for engaging students in purposeful music making toward social justice"--

How does music reflect the key moments in our lives? How do we choose the works that inspire, delight, comfort or console? Fiona Maddocks selects 100 classical works from across nine centuries, arguing passionately, persuasively and at times obstinately for their inclusion, putting each work in its cultural and musical context, discussing omissions, suggesting alternatives and always putting the music first.

The exhilarating mix of humour, philosophy, fact and whimsy that marks these essays derives from more than 200 lectures Bruce Adolphe has given over more of the past decade, at the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Centre and at music festivals around the States. The composer of four operas as well as chamber music, concertos and orchestral works, Adolphe has written for Itzhak Perlman, David Shifrin, the Beaux Arts Trio, the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra and many other renowned musicians. His essays, however divergent their apparent subjects, all serve a common purpose: to deepen our understanding of how music comes to be and how it may be enjoyed.

This volume surveys American piano music over the last two centuries, providing biographical information on composers as well as performance notes. Pieces are presented in their original form and have been selected for late-intermediate to advanced pianists.

Includes miscellaneous newsletters (Music at Michigan, Michigan Muse), bulletins, catalogs, programs, brochures, articles, calendars, histories, and posters.

Walt Whitman's poetry, especially his Civil War poetry, attracted settings by a wide variety of modern composers in both English- and German-speaking countries. The essays in this volume trace the transformation of Whitman's nineteenth-century texts into vehicles for confronting twentieth-century problems-aesthetic, social, and political. The contributors pay careful attention to music and poetry alike in examining how the Whitman settings become exemplary means of dealing with both the tragic and utopian faces of modernism. The book is accompanied by a recording by Joan Heller and Thomas Stumpf of complete Whitman cycles composed by Kurt Weill, George Crumb, and Lawrence Kramer, and the first recording of four Whitman songs composed in the 1920s by Marc Blitzstein.

Articulate and impassioned, sophisticated but never esoteric, Steinberg and Rothe offer invigorating reflections on music that will delight both the beginning and the seasoned listener.