Showing titles in History & Criticism

Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel are the three great composers of the Baroque era, though there are many other well-known figures, including Albinoni, Pachelbel, and Scarlatti. This engaging introduction, interspersed liberally with music, shows how the works of these composers graced the courts and churches of Europe from 1600 to 1750. It is a fascinating story.

Taking listeners inside the songwriting mecca of Nashville’s Music Row for the real stories behind country’s most influential songs—and featuring exclusive interviews with songwriters like Vince Gill, Clint Black, Buddy Cannon, Jelly Roll, and Taylor Swift co-writer Liz Rose—Songs of Nashville gives you a front-row seat to the lives and work of the artists who’ve shaped country music.

Dal primo nucleo di quelli che diventeranno i Rolling Stones, all'arrivo di Brian Jones, che ne sarà l'anima per qualche tempo, fino alla costituzione della vera "fabbrica" Jagger/Richards. Questo audioBook è un viaggio avventuroso e a volte impietoso lungo le tappe di una delle carriere più "granitiche" del rock: quella delle Pietre per eccellenza, i Rolling Stones. Un disco dopo l'altro per raccontare l'avventura della band più longeva della musica senza dimenticare qualche aneddoto curioso e, soprattutto, dando il giusto spazio a quello che più conta.

From the joyous communal connections fostered through shared auditory experience to the devastating impact of noise pollution in the deep sea, musician and author Damon Krukowski urges readers to reconsider the significance of sound and its role in both our personal and collective well-being. He looks despairingly at how the multipronged efforts of urban dwellers to mitigate city noise have led to increased isolation, loss of community, and a sense of physical detachment from one’s surroundings.

The Real Rock Follies is a real-life story of youthful trust betrayed, dreams of stardom dashed and cruel lessons learnt. The three girls, then in their late twenties, learned too late that in the harsh showbiz world you can hardly trust anyone, not even your friends. However, despite everything, they got the last laugh.

Relive the Magic of the 80s: Discover the Untold Stories Behind the Decade's Biggest Chart-Toppers! Step into a time machine and relive the golden era of music with “Stories Behind the Songs: 1980-1989.” This captivating book takes you on a journey through the biggest hits of the 80s, unraveling the secrets, inspirations, and untold stories behind the top 100 chart-toppers that defined a generation.

“The happiest, saddest, sweetest book about rock ‘n’ roll that I’ve ever experienced.”—Chuck Klosterman Mix tapes: We all have our favorites. Stick one into a deck, press play, and you’re instantly transported to another time in your life. For Rob Sheffield, that time was one of...

There have been few times in modern music history that an instant shift in how we listen to - and view - music has occurred. However, the launch of MTV on August 1, 1981, was certainly one such occurrence. Instantly, music fans were now “listening with their eyes” rather than relying solely on their ears.

Bloomsbury presents Make My Funk the P-Funk by Daniel Bedrosian, read by Kenneth Medford. P-Funk keyboardist Daniel Bedrosian brings to life the recording and musical activity of Parliament-Funkadelic in 1975, an epoch-making year marked by the release of three seminal albums: Chocolate City...

Thirty years ago, Chuck Berry starred in the seminal music documentary Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock 'N' Roll, which profiled the legend during a star-studded concert celebrating his 60th birthday. Now comes the complete story behind one of America's most enduring and embattled icons. Compiled as an oral history by the film's producer, Stephanie Bennett, Johnny B. Bad combines interviews from the film's participants, including its music director - Keith Richards. These unique interviews and accounts paint a vivid and multifaceted picture of the artist.

Can’t Stop Won’t Stop meets Girls to the Front in this essential and long overdue history of hip-hop’s female pioneers and its enduring stars. Every history of hip-hop previously published, from Jeff Chang’s Can’t Stop Won’t Stop to Shea Serrano’s The Rap Yearbook, focuses...

Bloomsbury presents Raps of Resistance by Jeremy C. McCool and Earl Hopkins, read by Greg Lockett Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole blazed paths that salvaged socially conscious rap at a pivotal time in history. Conscious rap, a subgenre of hip-hop music that engages in dialogue about social and...

James Douglas Morrison (December 8, 1943 - July 3, 1971), born in Melbourne, FL, was an American singer, songwriter and poet who was the lead vocalist and primary lyricist of the rock band The Doors. Due to his distinctive voice, poetic lyrics, erratic and unpredictable performances, along with the dramatic circumstances surrounding his life and early death, Morrison is regarded by music critics and fans as one of the most influential frontmen in rock history. The following recording is from a June 1970 interview.

Craze is a journey into sound, a book which along the way will bring to you a new colour; new dimension; a new understanding of the cultural, technological, and chemical strands that led to the Electronic Music Revolution. Take a trip down rave memory lane into Sydney’s early warehouse scene and explore the forging of a global cultural phenomenon. Re-live the Second Summer of Love from the unique Australian perspective of its farthest flung outpost.

Beloved music critic Tom Breihan's fascinating narrative of the history of popular music through the lens of game-changing #1 singles from the Billboard Hot 100. When Tom Breihan launched his Stereogum column in early 2018, “The Number Ones”—a space in which he has been writing about every...

In this book, Mark Polizzotti examines just what makes the songs on Highway 61 Revisited so affecting, how they work together as a suite, and how lyrics, melody, and arrangements combine to create an unusually potent mix. He blends musical and literary analysis of the songs themselves, biography (where appropriate) and recording information (where helpful).

André Gide, one of the great intellectuals of the 20th century and a devoted pianist, invites readers to reevaluate Frédéric Chopin as a composer "betrayed...deeply, intimately, totally violated" by a music community that had fundamentally misinterpreted his work. As a profound admirer of Chopin’s "promenade of discoveries", Gide intersperses musical notation throughout the text to illuminate his arguments, but most moving is Gide’s own poetic expression for the music he so loved.

A veteran music journalist explores how four legendary rock bands—KISS, Cheap Trick, Aerosmith, and Starz—laid the foundation for two diametrically opposed subgenres: hair metal in the '80s and grunge in the '90s. It was the age when heavy-footed, humorless dinosaurs roamed the hard-rock...

A delightful biography of a celebrated Stradivarius cello and an inviting overview of cello music and musicians by world-famous concert cellist Carlos Prieto.

This volume opens a new chapter on the guitar in America, considering its cultivated past and documenting how banjoists and mandolinists aligned their instruments to it in an effort to raise social and cultural standing. At the same time, the audiobook considers the BMG community within America's larger musical scene, examining its efforts as manifestations of this country's uneasy coupling of musical art and commerce.