In the first major book devoted to the trumpet in more than two decades, John Wallace and Alexander McGrattan trace the surprising evolution and colourful performance history of one of the world's oldest instruments. They chart the introduction of th...

Austrian composer Alban Berg (1885-1935), along with his contemporaries Arnold Schoenberg and Anton von Webern, dramatically altered the musical landscape of the Western world. Dave Headlam offers a comprehensive analysis of Berg's music in this orig...

First published in Rome in 1555, Nicola Vicentino's treatise was one of the most influential music theory texts of the sixteenth century. This translation by Maria Rika Maniates is the first English-language edition of Vicentino's important work. Unl...

How does a work of music stir the senses, creating feelings of joy, sadness, elation, or nostalgia? Though sentiment and emotion play a vital role in the composition, performance, and appreciation of music, rarely have these elements been fully obser...

From the school yards of the South Bronx to the tops of the Billboard charts, rap has emerged as one of the most influential cultural forces of our time. In "The Anthology of Rap", editors Adam Bradley and Andrew DuBois demonstrate that rap is also a...

The concept of genius intrigues us. Artistic geniuses have something other people don't have. In some cases that something seems to be a remarkable kind of inspiration that permits the artist to exceed his own abilities. It is as if the artist is sud...

This book is the first to examine the brilliant gathering of composers, conductors, and other musicians who fled Nazi Germany and arrived in the Los Angeles area. Musicologist Dorothy Lamb Crawford looks closely at the lives, creative work, and influ...

In this meticulously researched book, Oliver Hilmes paints a fascinating and revealing picture of the extraordinary Cosima Wagner – illegitimate daughter of Franz Liszt, wife of the conductor Hans von Bulow, then mistress and subsequently wife of Ric...

First performed at the midpoint of the twentieth century, John Cage's 4'33", a composition conceived of without a single musical note, is among the most celebrated and ballyhooed cultural gestures in the history of modern music. A meditation on the a...

Despite the apparent incompatibility between Mozart's humanitarian and cosmopolitan outlook and Nazi ideology, the Third Reich tenaciously promoted the great composer's music to further the goals of the fascist regime. In this revelatory book, Erik L...