Showing titles in History & Criticism

In this unique collection, Literary Witches co-creator Katy Horan unearths the true and fictional stories behind twenty traditional murder ballads, exploring the beauty and horror of the art form through stories, lyrics, and original interpretations. The audiobook includes covers of various folk songs by Okkervil River’s Will Sheff, Marissa Nadler, and Lizzie No.

Guthrie kept moving throughout his life, making friends, soaking up influences, and writing about his experiences. Along the way, he produced more than 3,000 songs, as well as fiction, journalism, poetry, and visual art, that gave voice to the distressed and dispossessed. In this insightful audiobook, Will Kaufman examines the artist’s career through a unique perspective: the role of time and place in Guthrie’s artistic evolution.

In this collection of musical portraits, jazz pianist and radio host Marian McPartland pays sparkling tribute to such beloved and legendary figures as Benny Goodman, Bill Evans, Joe Morello, Paul Desmond, Alec Wilder, Mary Lou Williams, and others.

Listen up! Embark on an electrifying journey through rock history with this witty and insightful guide to the albums that shaped the genre. From The Beatles' groundbreaking "Abbey Road" to The Clash's genre-defying "London Calling," author Staci Layne Wilson presents a meticulously curated list of 30 essential rock albums that every music lover should experience. This book isn't just a list—it's a time machine, whisking readers through three decades of musical innovation. Dive deep into the naked emotion of Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush," the conceptual brilliance of Pink Floyd's "The...

La biografía integral de Roger Waters, cerebro de una de las bandas más importantes de los últimos sesenta años, en un recorrido que va de su infancia—marcada por la desaparición de su padre en la guerra—a la ebullición cultural de la Inglaterra de los Beatles y los Stones y después. Syd Barrett, las giras, los discos, El lado oscuro de la luna, The Wall, David Gilmour, la militancia política y las peleas y polémicas de una carrera única que lo encuentra vital como siempre y tocando por todo el mundo a los 80.

Silenced on Stage The Censorship and Banning of Opera, Vaudeville, and Broadway Musicals from Shakespeare to Hamilton From the raucous riots over Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring to the fierce backlash against The Book of Mormon, Silenced on Stage takes you on a whirlwind journey through the fascinating history of censorship in theatre and music. In this compelling exploration, Richard Fleischman dives deep into the clashes between powerful authorities and the bold artists who have pushed boundaries and challenged the status quo. Whether it’s religious protests against rock operas, political...

And After All gives the mic to the fans that launched Oasis to stratospheric fame and takes a deep dive into the band’s formation, history, and reunion. Through the lens of the fans who were there for all the songs, feuds, and incredible shows, journalist Melissa Locker examines the path Oasis charted as they cemented their place in modern rock history.

In this volume, you will learn all the secrets and details regarding the conception, recording, and release of the legendary "Piece of Mind" album by Iron Maiden. The author tells all about the origins of the work, how it was conceived by the band, and also explains its historical context. He makes a meticulous analysis of each track on the album, mentioning its sources of inspiration, revealing details about the recording sessions, and much more. He explains the legacy left by the album and its influence over other artists and also in the world of music. In the end, there a bibliography ...

In this volume, you will learn all the secrets and details regarding the conception, recording, and release of the legendary "Clutching at Straws" album by Marillion. The author tells all about the origins of the work, how it was conceived by the band, and also explains its historical context. He makes a meticulous analysis of each track on the album, mentioning its sources of inspiration, revealing details about the recording sessions, and much more. He explains the legacy left by the album and its influence over other artists and also in the world of music. In the end, there a ...

The music of 1966 doesn’t have the cachet of some of the other years of that incredible decade. It’s not 1964 with The British Invasion, and the thrill of hearing The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Kinks for the first time, and it’s not 1967 with hippies, Flower Power, ‘All You Need Is Love’ and the psychedelic music explosion, or 1969 with Woodstock, The Rolling Stones’ infamous concert at Altamont or The Beatles’ last live performance on the rooftop of their Apple offices. Maybe nothing in particular about the music of 1966 stands out to you, but I bet you remember many...

Derived from a popular series of lecture-recitals presented by Carol Montparker over the past several years, The Composer's Landscape features eight insightful essays on the piano repertoire. Each chapter focuses on a single composer: Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Brahms, Chopin, and Mendelssohn. Montparker uses landscape as a metaphor for the score, whether it's a well-tended garden of Mozart or the thorny thickets on a Schumann page.

Far from being "the quiet one," George Harrison was a writer and arranger of terrific power and beauty, and his guitar playing was fundamental to the Beatles' sound and success. Now fully revised and expanded, this new edition of While My Guitar Gently Weeps: The Music of George Harrison is the most comprehensive evaluation of George Harrison's musical career ever published.

It's a big question, and one that has been written about endlessly in an attempt to reveal the "formula" for creating a worldwide, smash hit record. First of all a good song speaks to you. You remember it, even if it's just one really good line.... It fills you with emotions, whether those be sad or happy ones. Then there is something else...it's the way the music was produced and its techniques which hook you in and enhance the listening experience. Inside this book, you will find a timeless blueprint for making smash hit songs.

By turns fascinating, funny, and bizarre, this book offers insight into the peculiar choices and idiosyncratic psychologies of hundreds of top musicians from the 1960s to the present. Originally published more than two decades ago to great success, it's been out of print for years and has now been completely updated and expanded to feature dozens of exclusive interviews, including conversations with groups like The Black Keys, The Killers, Twenty One Pilots, Coldplay, Cage the Elephant, and Vampire Weekend.

Jonathan Cott met John Lennon in 1968 and remained friends with him and Yoko Ono until John's death in 1980. He has kept in touch with Yoko since that time, and is one of the few writers who understands her profoundly positive influence on Lennon. This deeply personal book recounts the course of these friendships over the decades and provides an intimate look at two of the most astonishing cultural figures of our time. And what Jonathan Cott has to say will be found nowhere else.

In October 1942, SS guards at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp violently disbanded a rehearsal of a secret Jewish choir led by conductor Rosebery d'Arguto. Many in the group did not live to see morning, and those who survived were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Only one of its members survived the Holocaust. Yet their story survives, thanks to Aleksander Kulisiewicz. An amateur musician, he was not Jewish, but became friends with d'Arguto in Sachsenhausen. D'Arguto tasked him with a mission: to save the musical heritage of the victims of the Nazi camps.

From renowned diplomat and musician András Simonyi - whom Stephen Colbert calls "the only ambassador I know who can shred a mean guitar!" - comes a timely and revealing memoir about growing up behind the Iron Curtain and longing for freedom while chasing the great power of rock and roll. In Rocking Toward a Free World, Simonyi charts the struggle of growing up in 1960s Hungary, a world in which listening to his favorite music was a powerful but furtive endeavor: records were black-market bootlegs, and concerts were held under strict control, even banned....

From the award-winning author of Bring It On Home: Peter Grant, Led Zeppelin, and Beyond and Comfortably Numb: The Inside Story of Pink Floyd comes this deeply researched alphabetical biography of Queen and each of its dynamic members. Addressing the phenomenal success of the movie Bohemian Rhapsody, acclaimed music journalist Mark Blake builds on the legend of Queen and their enduring audience appeal.

Immerse yourself in more than 400 years of the world's most celebrated operas and discover the fascinating stories behind them. Explore the lives of singers such as Maria Callas, Luciano Pavarotti, and Jonas Kaufmann. Meet composers like Mozart, Wagner, and Britten, and the librettists with whom they collaborated to create the magical blend of words and music that make up opera.

In 1948, the Orioles, a Baltimore-based vocal group, recorded "It's Too Soon to Know". Combining the sound of Tin Pan Alley with gospel and blues sensibilities, the Orioles saw their first hit reach #13 on the pop charts, thus introducing the nation to vocal rhythm & blues and paving the way for the most successful groups of the 1950s. In the first scholarly treatment of this influential musical genre, Stuart Goosman chronicles the Orioles' story and that of myriad other black vocal groups in the postwar period.