In Harmony: The Complementary Musical Tales of the Brockton Symphony Orchestra, Sharon Civic Orchestra, and Sharon Community Chamber Orchestra is a stirring, historical account of these three Massachusetts ensembles. Each chapter documents the orchestras' operations ranging from their founders to the conductors, repertoire, players, soloists, volunteers, fundraisers, behind-the-scenes realities, and special features. While details of each organization are presented in depth, a seasoning of interesting, humorous, and at times tragic human-interest stories make these tales come alive. Musicians, audience members, supporters, and readers with a passion for history will find connections to the events told here. Welcome to the inside world of these venerable ensembles which take their places in...

While it is widely recognized that music contributes to the health and well-being of societies, the reverse is not necessarily true. Being a professional musician is a rewarding yet challenging occupation, and the results of newer survey studies show musicians experience psychological challenges, like depression and anxiety, at much higher rates than adults in the general public. This book introduces Acceptance and Commitment Training (ACT) as an intervention for addressing some of the most common problems facing student and professional musicians across the world. A broadly applicable model for behavior change, ACT can be used by professionals in both clinical and non-clinical settings with adequate training. Thus, this book is intended for musicians and practitioners from various back...

A lightning rod for powerful emotions, Thomas Schippers began his escalation to fame at nineteen continuing with performances in many renowned venues in the world. Here his career is traced through the accounts of those who knew or performed with him, redressing the astonishing lack of information about him which could be of interest to music historians and performers of today. "The brilliant young conductor, Thomas Schippers, is tall, with the face and body of a Greek god at a time when Greek gods are hard to find." (Life magazine, December 6, 1963). Admired by many for his classic handsomeness, he was highly praised for his musicianship and for the ease with which he conducted complex scores, often by memory. But following his untimely death at the age of forty-seven, he was rapidly f...

This study addresses a long-standing mythology concerning the "Unfinished" Symphony and reviews anachronistic performance practices that prevent listeners from experiencing the work as a product of its own time. David Montgomery’s Unfinished History challenges the traditional story of Franz Schubert’s B-minor Symphony and searches for a more credible account of this great work. Written for all Schubert lovers from lay readers to musicians and musicologists, the book reviews a strangely persistent mythology concerning the symphony, continuing with the first in-depth examination of its manuscript and related documents. Details of handwriting, notation, paper, watermarks, compositional procedures, and stylistic contexts suggest a new year and country of origin for the “Unfinished”...

Band Aids is an organizational guide for early career band directors and for more experienced directors seeking new organizational and management strategies and approaches for their school and community bands. The authors present a practical approach to organizing, managing, and teaching an instrumental music program. Classroom management, instrumentation, starting beginners, parent organizations, band trips, and assessment are among the relevant topics presented and discussed. This text is an invaluable guide for directors searching for assistance, not with music skills, but with the day-to-day teaching and management of a band program. "Tips" and "Key Points" enable a quick review of material covered.

There are millions of self-taught musicians in this world. Some can't read a stitch of music and can only play by ear. If this describes you and you want to learn how to read and write music in a step-by-step, easy to follow fashion, you have come to the right place. Knowing the fundamentals of music will make playing even more fun. This book is also designed for all those non-musical types who are taking a college music fundamentals course and don't have a clue about what is going on. This book will come to your rescue. Music professors teaching such a course will find this text perfect for their students. Just reading about music fundamentals won’t do much for you. You’ve got to jump in and begin to write music. At the end of each chapter, there are exercises for you to do to see...

"Painting is my passion. Painting is as natural for me as breathing. Having been attached to painting since childhood, I felt that the necessity to paint grows bigger year after year. I respond creatively to everything that surrounds me." This collection of original paintings by Maya Green displays her deep passion for color. Key in the works is her use of a palette knife, which allows her to apply pure color, delicate lines and perhaps most importantly, to express energy that no brush is able to capture.

An in depth study of the most superlative violin performers and teachers in history. The result of more than eleven years of deep investigation on the subject, this New History is by far the best available in the 21st century. It studies specifically the vibrato and its evolution. A study of the main violin schools of the world, with special emphasis in their evolution, and the direct conexión teacher-pupil. In the course of this history we will see how the great performers became, often, the great masters of new great violinists, who, in their turn, became the teachers of new superlative performers, and so on, in an uninterrupted chain of teacher-pupil intercommunication, the interrelation of whom is carefully studied, to higlight the evolution of the main violin playing school...

In the history of music there are seldom as rapid musical developments as we can find in Scriabin's works. In only 31 years Scriabin made a breathtaking development: in his early works he still uses a romantic tonal language, while his later works are far-reaching into the 20th century. Scriabin's development is gradual and consequent, each step can be derived from the preceding, thus connecting the music of the 19th and 20th centuries. He can be regarded as a key composer of his age.Harmony is the central factor in Scriabin's musical thinking. From harmony everything else is developed. It defines the form, also the melody and tone systems are developed from it.This book is concerned with the following basic issues: Which elements in Scriabin's harmony are new, and what has been derived fr...

This thesis provides an examination of Disc Jockey (DJ) technology, technique, and aesthetics. The history of popular dance music is explored in an attempt to demonstrate the role that technology has played in the development and future of the DJ aesthetic. Criteria for evaluating and producing Disc Jockey Music Technology is pursued in order to define the fundamentals of dance music and the essence of an authentic DJ performance.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the potential for increasing informal music-making in elementary school culture, and create a model of such music-making. Precedence for this model can be found in the literature of ethnomusicology, educational psychology and learning theory, multicultural music education, and cultural anthropology. Literature from four distinct traditions and contexts of music-making in integrative sociocultural contexts—sub-Saharan African ngoma, and Community Music as manifested in New Orleans second lines, old-time music and dance, and summer camp music-making—was parsed with a philosophical lens to determine and assess possible areas of intersection between these four participatory cultures and North American public school culture. Each of these five ar...

This research examines the string literature of American composer and violist Louise Lincoln Kerr. A biography of Mrs. Kerr is given, emphasizing compositional training and skill, her style of composition, contributions to musical organizations in the Phoenix area, and her donation of the Kerr Cultural Center and her manuscripts to the Arizona State University College of Fine Arts. Selected string compositions are examined for their historical significance, compositional style, performer accessibility, and significance to the repertoire. Kerr made use of Native American and Spanish folk melodies in some of her compositions in a Southwest Impressionist genre. It is the findings of this study that Louise Kerr made significant contributions to the string repertoire and that these works s...

This dissertation introduces a new design for a computer-aided algorithmic music composition system. Rather than exploring specific algorithms, this study focuses on system and component design. The design introduced here is demonstrated through its implementation in athenaCL, a modular, polyphonic, poly-paradigm algorithmic music composition system in a cross-platform interactive command-line environment. The athenaCL system offers an open-source, object-oriented composition tool written in Python. The system can be scripted and embedded, and includes integrated instrument libraries, post-tonal and microtonal pitch modeling tools, multiple-format graphical outputs, and musical output in Csound, MIDI, audio file, XML, and text formats. Software design analysis is framed within a broad his...