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Stambeli: Music, Trance, and Alterity in Tunisia (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology)
by Richard C. JankowskyIn Stambeli, Richard C. Jankowsky presents a vivid ethnographic account of the healing trance music created by the descendants of sub-Saharan slaves brought to Tunisia during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Stambeli music calls upon an elaborate pantheon of sub-Saharan spirits and North African Muslim saints to heal humans through ritualized trance. Based on nearly two years of participation in the musical, ritual, and social worlds of stambeli musicians, Jankowsky’s study explores the way the music evokes the cross-cultural, migratory past of its originators and their encounters with the Arab-Islamic world in which they found themselves. Stambeli, Jankowsky avers, is thoroughly marked by a sense of otherness—the healing spirits, the founding musicians, and the instruments mostly come from outside Tunisia—which creates a unique space for profoundly meaningful interactions between sub-Saharan and North African people, beliefs, histories, and aesthetics. Part ethnography, part history of the complex relationship between Tunisia’s Arab and sub-Saharan populations, Stambeli will be welcomed by scholars and students of ethnomusicology, anthropology, African studies, and religion.
Stalin’s Music Prize: Soviet Culture and Politics
by Marina Frolova-WalkerMarina Frolova-Walker's fascinating history takes a new look at musical life in Stalin's Soviet Union. The author focuses on the musicians and composers who received Stalin Prizes, awarded annually to artists whose work was thought to represent the best in Soviet culture. This revealing study sheds new light on the Communist leader's personal tastes, the lives and careers of those honored, including multiple-recipients Prokofiev and Shostakovich, and the elusive artistic concept of "Socialist Realism," offering the most comprehensive examination to date of the relationship between music and the Soviet state from 1940 through 1954.
Staging Voice (Routledge Voice Studies)
by Michal Grover-FriedlanderStaging Voice is a unique approach to the aesthetics of voice and its staging in performance. This study reflects on what it would mean to take opera’s decisive attribute—voice—as the foundation of its staged performance. The book thinks of staging through the medium of voice. It is a nuances exploration, which brings together scholarly and directorial interpretations, and engages in detail with less frequently performed works of major and influential 20th-century artists—Erik Satie, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill—as well as exposes readers to an innovative experimental work of Evelyn Ficarra and Valerie Whittington. The study is intertwined throughout with the author’s staging of the works accessible online. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in voice studies, opera, music theatre, musicology, directing, performance studies, practice-based research, theatre, visual art, stage design, and cultural studies.
Staging Voice (Routledge Voice Studies)
by Michal Grover-FriedlanderStaging Voice is a unique approach to the aesthetics of voice and its staging in performance. This study reflects on what it would mean to take opera’s decisive attribute—voice—as the foundation of its staged performance. The book thinks of staging through the medium of voice. It is a nuances exploration, which brings together scholarly and directorial interpretations, and engages in detail with less frequently performed works of major and influential 20th-century artists—Erik Satie, Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill—as well as exposes readers to an innovative experimental work of Evelyn Ficarra and Valerie Whittington. The study is intertwined throughout with the author’s staging of the works accessible online. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars in voice studies, opera, music theatre, musicology, directing, performance studies, practice-based research, theatre, visual art, stage design, and cultural studies.
Staging the French Revolution: Cultural Politics and the Paris Opera, 1789-1794 (New Cultural History of Music)
by Mark DarlowOver the last decade, the theatre and opera of the French Revolution have been the subject of intense scholarly reassessment, both in terms of the relationship between theatrical works and politics or ideology in this period and on the question of longer-scale structures of continuity or rupture in aesthetics. Staging the French Revolution: Cultural Politics and the Paris Opera, 1789-1794 moves these discussions boldly forward, focusing on the Paris Opéra (Académie Royale de Musique) in the cultural and political context of the early French Revolution. Both institutional history and cultural study, this is the first ever full-scale study of the Revolution and lyric theatre. The book concentrates on three aspects of how a royally-protected theatre negotiates the transition to national theatre: the external dimension, such as questions of ownership and governance and the institution's relationship with State institutions and popular assemblies; the internal management, finances, selection and preparation of works; and the cultural and aesthetic study of the works themselves and of their reception. In Staging the French Revolution, author Mark Darlow offers an unprecedented view of the material context of opera production, combining in-depth archival research with a study of the works themselves. He argues that a mixture of popular and State interventions created a repressive system in which cultural institutions retained agency, compelling individuals to follow and contribute to a shifting culture. Theatre thereby emerged as a locus for competing discourses on patriotism, society, the role of the arts in the Republic, and the articulation of the Revolution's relation with the 'Old Regime', and is thus an essential key to the understanding of public opinion and publicity at this crucial historical moment. Combining recent approaches to institutions, sociability, and authors' rights with cultural studies of opera, Staging the French Revolution takes a historically grounded and methodologically innovative cross-disciplinary approach to opera and persuasively re-evaluates the long-standing, but rather sterile, concept of propaganda.
Staging Rebellion in the Musical, Hair: Marginalised Voices in Musical Theatre (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
by Sarah Elisabeth BrowneThis volume provides a comprehensive survey of the musical Hair and will offer critical analysis which focuses on giving voice to those who are historically considered to be on the margins of musical theatre history. Sarah Browne interrogates key scenes from the musical which will seek to identify the relationship between performance and the cultural moment. Whilst it is widely acknowledged that Hair is a product of the sixties counter-culture, this study will place the analysis in its socio-historical context to specifically reveal American values towards race, gender, and adolescence. In arguing that Hair is a rebellion against the established normative values of both American society and the art form of the musical itself, this book will suggest ways in which Hair can be considered utopian: not only as a utopian ‘text’ but in the practices and values it embodies, and the emotions it generates in its audiences. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of music, musical theatre, popular music, American studies, film studies, gender studies, or African American studies.
Staging Rebellion in the Musical, Hair: Marginalised Voices in Musical Theatre (Routledge Advances in Theatre & Performance Studies)
by Sarah Elisabeth BrowneThis volume provides a comprehensive survey of the musical Hair and will offer critical analysis which focuses on giving voice to those who are historically considered to be on the margins of musical theatre history. Sarah Browne interrogates key scenes from the musical which will seek to identify the relationship between performance and the cultural moment. Whilst it is widely acknowledged that Hair is a product of the sixties counter-culture, this study will place the analysis in its socio-historical context to specifically reveal American values towards race, gender, and adolescence. In arguing that Hair is a rebellion against the established normative values of both American society and the art form of the musical itself, this book will suggest ways in which Hair can be considered utopian: not only as a utopian ‘text’ but in the practices and values it embodies, and the emotions it generates in its audiences. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of music, musical theatre, popular music, American studies, film studies, gender studies, or African American studies.
St. Matthew Passion: In Full Score
by Johann Sebastian BachOne of the most performed and recorded of Bach's major works, the St. Matthew Passion has been a focal point of concert seasons and festivals around the world for over 150 years. First performed in the late 1720s, it is a drama of epic grandeur, long considered the noblest, most inspired musical treatment of the story of the crucifixion of Christ. Bach set the text, based on two chapters from the Gospel of St. Matthew, using a large ensemble of two choruses, soloists, and two orchestras. The full score is reprinted here from the fine edition prepared by the Bach-Gesellschaft.Although the St. Matthew Passion is often held to be the apotheosis of Lutheran church music, this magnificent oratorio reaches out to its audience in the language, form, and spirit of opera. Richly dramatic and theatrical, following the general form of Baroque opera, it unfolds its deeply moving story in recitatives, ariosos, arias, chorales, and mighty choral movements. This finely produced score offers music lovers the opportunity -- at a price far lower than comparable editions -- to follow performances score in hand, and to gain a more intimate knowledge of the rich musical textures of this great masterwork.
Springer Handbook of Systematic Musicology (Springer Handbooks)
by Rolf BaderThis unique reference book offers a holistic description of the multifaceted field of systematic musicology, which is the study of music, its production and perception, and its cultural, historical and philosophical background. The seven sections reflect the main topics in this interdisciplinary subject. The first two parts discuss musical acoustics and signal processing, comprehensively describing the mathematical and physical fundamentals of musical sound generation and propagation. The complex interplay of physiology and psychology involved in sound and music perception is covered in the following sections, with a particular focus on psychoacoustics and the recently evolved research on embodied music cognition. In addition, a huge variety of technical applications for professional training, music composition and consumer electronics are presented. A section on music ethnology completes this comprehensive handbook. Music theory and philosophy of music are imbedded throughout. Carefully edited and written by internationally respected experts, it is an invaluable reference resource for professionals and graduate students alike.
Sprechen und Singen: Ästhetik und Erscheinungsformen der Dialogoper
by Thomas BetzwieserDie Studie nimmt erstmals die Dialogoper unter theoretischen und strukturellen Gesichtspunkten in den Blick. Sie geht den spezifischen Implikationen von Opéra comique und Singspiel nach, die aus dem Nebeneinander von gesprochenem Dialog und Musik resultieren.
Sportin' Life: John W. Bubbles, An American Classic (Cultural Biographies)
by Brian HarkerJohn W. Bubbles was the ultimate song-and-dance man. A groundbreaking tap dancer, he provided inspiration to Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, and the Nicholas Brothers. His vaudeville team Buck and Bubbles captivated theater audiences for more than thirty years. Most memorably, in the role of Sportin' Life he stole the show in the original production of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, in the process crafting a devilish alter ego that would follow him through life. Coming of age with the great jazz musicians, he shared countless stages with the likes of Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, and Ella Fitzgerald. Some of his disciples believed his rhythmic ideas had a formative impact on jazz itself. In later years he made a comeback as a TV personality, revving up the talk shows of Steve Allen and Johnny Carson and playing comic foil to Bob Hope, Judy Garland, and Lucille Ball. Finally, after a massive stroke ended his dancing career, he made a second comebackcomplete with acclaimed performances from his wheelchairas a living legend inspiring a new generation of entertainers. His biggest obstacle was the same one blocking the path of every other Black performer of his time: unrelenting, institutionalized racism. Yet Bubbles was an entertainer of the old school, fierce and indestructible. In this compelling and deeply researched biography, his dramatic story is told for the first time.
Sportin' Life: John W. Bubbles, An American Classic (Cultural Biographies)
by Brian HarkerJohn W. Bubbles was the ultimate song-and-dance man. A groundbreaking tap dancer, he provided inspiration to Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, and the Nicholas Brothers. His vaudeville team Buck and Bubbles captivated theater audiences for more than thirty years. Most memorably, in the role of Sportin' Life he stole the show in the original production of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, in the process crafting a devilish alter ego that would follow him through life. Coming of age with the great jazz musicians, he shared countless stages with the likes of Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, and Ella Fitzgerald. Some of his disciples believed his rhythmic ideas had a formative impact on jazz itself. In later years he made a comeback as a TV personality, revving up the talk shows of Steve Allen and Johnny Carson and playing comic foil to Bob Hope, Judy Garland, and Lucille Ball. Finally, after a massive stroke ended his dancing career, he made a second comebackcomplete with acclaimed performances from his wheelchairas a living legend inspiring a new generation of entertainers. His biggest obstacle was the same one blocking the path of every other Black performer of his time: unrelenting, institutionalized racism. Yet Bubbles was an entertainer of the old school, fierce and indestructible. In this compelling and deeply researched biography, his dramatic story is told for the first time.
Spiritual Dimensions in the Music of Edmund Rubbra
by Lucinda CradduckEdmund Rubbra’s music has given him a reputation as a ‘spiritual’ composer, who had an interest in Eastern thought, and a mid-life conversion to Roman Catholicism. This book takes a wide and detailed view of ‘spiritual’ dimensions or strands that were important in his life, positioning them both biographically and within the context of contemporaneous English culture. It proceeds to interpret through detailed analysis the ways these spiritual aspects are reflected in specific compositions. Thematical treatment of these spiritual issues, touching on Theosophy, dance, Eastern religions and thought, nature, the evolutionary theory of Teilhard de Chardin and the Christ figure, presents a multi-faceted view of Rubbra’s life and music. Its contribution to a scholarly re-evaluation of his place within twentieth-century British music and culture engages and meshes with several areas of current scholarly research in the arts and humanities, including academic interest in Theosophy, modernism and the arts, experimental dance and the Indian cultural renaissance and East–West musical interactions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It also adds to a burgeoning body of writings on music and spirituality, fuelled by the popularity of later twentieth-century and contemporary composers who make more overt spiritual references in their music.
Spiritual Dimensions in the Music of Edmund Rubbra
by Lucinda CradduckEdmund Rubbra’s music has given him a reputation as a ‘spiritual’ composer, who had an interest in Eastern thought, and a mid-life conversion to Roman Catholicism. This book takes a wide and detailed view of ‘spiritual’ dimensions or strands that were important in his life, positioning them both biographically and within the context of contemporaneous English culture. It proceeds to interpret through detailed analysis the ways these spiritual aspects are reflected in specific compositions. Thematical treatment of these spiritual issues, touching on Theosophy, dance, Eastern religions and thought, nature, the evolutionary theory of Teilhard de Chardin and the Christ figure, presents a multi-faceted view of Rubbra’s life and music. Its contribution to a scholarly re-evaluation of his place within twentieth-century British music and culture engages and meshes with several areas of current scholarly research in the arts and humanities, including academic interest in Theosophy, modernism and the arts, experimental dance and the Indian cultural renaissance and East–West musical interactions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It also adds to a burgeoning body of writings on music and spirituality, fuelled by the popularity of later twentieth-century and contemporary composers who make more overt spiritual references in their music.
Spirits Rejoice!: Jazz and American Religion
by Jason C. BivinsIn Spirits Rejoice! Jason Bivins explores the relationship between American religion and American music, and the places where religion and jazz have overlapped. Much writing about jazz tends toward glorified discographies or impressionistic descriptions of the actual sounds. Rather than providing a history, or series of biographical entries, Spirits Rejoice! takes to heart a central characteristic of jazz itself and improvises, generating a collection of themes, pursuits, reoccurring foci, and interpretations. Bivins riffs on interviews, liner notes, journals, audience reception, and critical commentary, producing a work that argues for the centrality of religious experiences to any legitimate understanding of jazz, while also suggesting that jazz opens up new interpretations of American religious history. Bivins examines themes such as musical creativity as related to specific religious traditions, jazz as a form of ritual and healing, and jazz cosmologies and metaphysics. Spirits Rejoice! connects Religious Studies to Jazz Studies through thematic portraits, and a vast number of interviews to propose a new, improvisationally fluid archive for thinking about religion, race, and sound in the United States. Bivins's conclusions explore how the sound of spirits rejoicing challenges not only prevailing understandings of race and music, but also the way we think about religion. Spirits Rejoice! is an essential volume for any student of jazz, American religion, or American culture.
Spirits Rejoice!: Jazz and American Religion
by Jason C. BivinsIn Spirits Rejoice! Jason Bivins explores the relationship between American religion and American music, and the places where religion and jazz have overlapped. Much writing about jazz tends toward glorified discographies or impressionistic descriptions of the actual sounds. Rather than providing a history, or series of biographical entries, Spirits Rejoice! takes to heart a central characteristic of jazz itself and improvises, generating a collection of themes, pursuits, reoccurring foci, and interpretations. Bivins riffs on interviews, liner notes, journals, audience reception, and critical commentary, producing a work that argues for the centrality of religious experiences to any legitimate understanding of jazz, while also suggesting that jazz opens up new interpretations of American religious history. Bivins examines themes such as musical creativity as related to specific religious traditions, jazz as a form of ritual and healing, and jazz cosmologies and metaphysics. Spirits Rejoice! connects Religious Studies to Jazz Studies through thematic portraits, and a vast number of interviews to propose a new, improvisationally fluid archive for thinking about religion, race, and sound in the United States. Bivins's conclusions explore how the sound of spirits rejoicing challenges not only prevailing understandings of race and music, but also the way we think about religion. Spirits Rejoice! is an essential volume for any student of jazz, American religion, or American culture.
SPIRIT SONG C: Afro-Brazilian Religious Music and Boundaries
by Marc GidalIn Spirit Song: Afro-Brazilian Religious Music and Boundaries, Marc Gidal investigates how and why a multi-faith community in southern Brazil utilizes music to combine and segregate three Afro-Brazilian religions: Umbanda, Quimbanda, and Batuque. Combining ethnomusicology and symbolic boundary studies, Gidal advances a theory of musical boundary-work: the ways music reinforces, bridges, or blurs boundaries, whether for personal, social, spiritual, or political purposes. Gidal focuses on spirit-mediumship rituals and their musical accompaniment, exploring how the Afro-gaucho religious community employs music and rituals to variously promote innovation and egalitarianism in Umbanda and Quimbanda, while it reinforces musical preservation and hierarchies in Batuque. Religious and musical leaders carefully restrict the cosmologies, ceremonial sequences, and sung prayers of one religion from affecting the others so as to safeguard Batuque's African heritage. Members of disenfranchised populations view the religions as vehicles for empowerment, whether based on race-ethnicity, gender, or religious belief; and innovations in ritual music reflect this activism. These rituals come to life through illustrative video and audio examples on the book's companion website. The first book in English to focus on music in Afro-Brazilian religions, Spirit Song is a landmark study that will be of interest to ethnomusicologists, anthropologists, and religious studies scholars.
Spirit Song: Afro-Brazilian Religious Music and Boundaries
by Marc GidalIn Spirit Song: Afro-Brazilian Religious Music and Boundaries, Marc Gidal investigates how and why a multi-faith community in southern Brazil utilizes music to combine and segregate three Afro-Brazilian religions: Umbanda, Quimbanda, and Batuque. Combining ethnomusicology and symbolic boundary studies, Gidal advances a theory of musical boundary-work: the ways music reinforces, bridges, or blurs boundaries, whether for personal, social, spiritual, or political purposes. Gidal focuses on spirit-mediumship rituals and their musical accompaniment, exploring how the Afro-gaucho religious community employs music and rituals to variously promote innovation and egalitarianism in Umbanda and Quimbanda, while it reinforces musical preservation and hierarchies in Batuque. Religious and musical leaders carefully restrict the cosmologies, ceremonial sequences, and sung prayers of one religion from affecting the others so as to safeguard Batuque's African heritage. Members of disenfranchised populations view the religions as vehicles for empowerment, whether based on race-ethnicity, gender, or religious belief; and innovations in ritual music reflect this activism. These rituals come to life through illustrative video and audio examples on the book's companion website. The first book in English to focus on music in Afro-Brazilian religions, Spirit Song is a landmark study that will be of interest to ethnomusicologists, anthropologists, and religious studies scholars.
The Spirit of This Place: How Music Illuminates the Human Spirit (The Rice University Campbell Lectures)
by Patrick SummersArtists today are at a crossroads. With funding for the arts and humanities endowments perpetually under attack, and school districts all over the United States scrapping their art curricula altogether, the place of the arts in our civic future is uncertain to say the least. At the same time, faced with the problems of the modern world—from water shortages and grave health concerns to global climate change and the now constant threat of terrorism—one might question the urgency of this waning support for the arts. In the politically fraught world we live in, is the “felt” experience even something worth fighting for? In this soul-searching collection of vignettes, Patrick Summers gives us an adamant, impassioned affirmative. Art, he argues, nurtures freedom of thought, and is more necessary now than ever before. As artistic director of the Houston Grand Opera, Summers is well positioned to take stock of the limitations of the professional arts world—a world where the conversation revolves almost entirely around financial questions and whose reputation tends toward elitism—and to remind us of art’s fundamental relationship to joy and meaning. Offering a vehement defense of long-form arts in a world with a short attention span, Summers argues that art is spiritual, and that music in particular has the ability to ask spiritual questions, to inspire cathartic pathos, and to express spiritual truths. Summers guides us through his personal encounters with art and music in disparate places, from Houston’s Rothko Chapel to a music classroom in rural China, and reflects on musical works he has conducted all over the world. Assessing the growing canon of new operas performed in American opera houses today, he calls for musical artists to be innovative and brave as opera continues to reinvent itself. This book is a moving credo elucidating Summers’s belief that the arts, especially music, help us to understand our own humanity as intellectual, aesthetic, and ultimately spiritual.
The Spirit of This Place: How Music Illuminates the Human Spirit (The Rice University Campbell Lectures)
by Patrick SummersArtists today are at a crossroads. With funding for the arts and humanities endowments perpetually under attack, and school districts all over the United States scrapping their art curricula altogether, the place of the arts in our civic future is uncertain to say the least. At the same time, faced with the problems of the modern world—from water shortages and grave health concerns to global climate change and the now constant threat of terrorism—one might question the urgency of this waning support for the arts. In the politically fraught world we live in, is the “felt” experience even something worth fighting for? In this soul-searching collection of vignettes, Patrick Summers gives us an adamant, impassioned affirmative. Art, he argues, nurtures freedom of thought, and is more necessary now than ever before. As artistic director of the Houston Grand Opera, Summers is well positioned to take stock of the limitations of the professional arts world—a world where the conversation revolves almost entirely around financial questions and whose reputation tends toward elitism—and to remind us of art’s fundamental relationship to joy and meaning. Offering a vehement defense of long-form arts in a world with a short attention span, Summers argues that art is spiritual, and that music in particular has the ability to ask spiritual questions, to inspire cathartic pathos, and to express spiritual truths. Summers guides us through his personal encounters with art and music in disparate places, from Houston’s Rothko Chapel to a music classroom in rural China, and reflects on musical works he has conducted all over the world. Assessing the growing canon of new operas performed in American opera houses today, he calls for musical artists to be innovative and brave as opera continues to reinvent itself. This book is a moving credo elucidating Summers’s belief that the arts, especially music, help us to understand our own humanity as intellectual, aesthetic, and ultimately spiritual.
The Spirit of This Place: How Music Illuminates the Human Spirit (The Rice University Campbell Lectures)
by Patrick SummersArtists today are at a crossroads. With funding for the arts and humanities endowments perpetually under attack, and school districts all over the United States scrapping their art curricula altogether, the place of the arts in our civic future is uncertain to say the least. At the same time, faced with the problems of the modern world—from water shortages and grave health concerns to global climate change and the now constant threat of terrorism—one might question the urgency of this waning support for the arts. In the politically fraught world we live in, is the “felt” experience even something worth fighting for? In this soul-searching collection of vignettes, Patrick Summers gives us an adamant, impassioned affirmative. Art, he argues, nurtures freedom of thought, and is more necessary now than ever before. As artistic director of the Houston Grand Opera, Summers is well positioned to take stock of the limitations of the professional arts world—a world where the conversation revolves almost entirely around financial questions and whose reputation tends toward elitism—and to remind us of art’s fundamental relationship to joy and meaning. Offering a vehement defense of long-form arts in a world with a short attention span, Summers argues that art is spiritual, and that music in particular has the ability to ask spiritual questions, to inspire cathartic pathos, and to express spiritual truths. Summers guides us through his personal encounters with art and music in disparate places, from Houston’s Rothko Chapel to a music classroom in rural China, and reflects on musical works he has conducted all over the world. Assessing the growing canon of new operas performed in American opera houses today, he calls for musical artists to be innovative and brave as opera continues to reinvent itself. This book is a moving credo elucidating Summers’s belief that the arts, especially music, help us to understand our own humanity as intellectual, aesthetic, and ultimately spiritual.
The Spirit of This Place: How Music Illuminates the Human Spirit (The Rice University Campbell Lectures)
by Patrick SummersArtists today are at a crossroads. With funding for the arts and humanities endowments perpetually under attack, and school districts all over the United States scrapping their art curricula altogether, the place of the arts in our civic future is uncertain to say the least. At the same time, faced with the problems of the modern world—from water shortages and grave health concerns to global climate change and the now constant threat of terrorism—one might question the urgency of this waning support for the arts. In the politically fraught world we live in, is the “felt” experience even something worth fighting for? In this soul-searching collection of vignettes, Patrick Summers gives us an adamant, impassioned affirmative. Art, he argues, nurtures freedom of thought, and is more necessary now than ever before. As artistic director of the Houston Grand Opera, Summers is well positioned to take stock of the limitations of the professional arts world—a world where the conversation revolves almost entirely around financial questions and whose reputation tends toward elitism—and to remind us of art’s fundamental relationship to joy and meaning. Offering a vehement defense of long-form arts in a world with a short attention span, Summers argues that art is spiritual, and that music in particular has the ability to ask spiritual questions, to inspire cathartic pathos, and to express spiritual truths. Summers guides us through his personal encounters with art and music in disparate places, from Houston’s Rothko Chapel to a music classroom in rural China, and reflects on musical works he has conducted all over the world. Assessing the growing canon of new operas performed in American opera houses today, he calls for musical artists to be innovative and brave as opera continues to reinvent itself. This book is a moving credo elucidating Summers’s belief that the arts, especially music, help us to understand our own humanity as intellectual, aesthetic, and ultimately spiritual.
The Spirit of This Place: How Music Illuminates the Human Spirit (The Rice University Campbell Lectures)
by Patrick SummersArtists today are at a crossroads. With funding for the arts and humanities endowments perpetually under attack, and school districts all over the United States scrapping their art curricula altogether, the place of the arts in our civic future is uncertain to say the least. At the same time, faced with the problems of the modern world—from water shortages and grave health concerns to global climate change and the now constant threat of terrorism—one might question the urgency of this waning support for the arts. In the politically fraught world we live in, is the “felt” experience even something worth fighting for? In this soul-searching collection of vignettes, Patrick Summers gives us an adamant, impassioned affirmative. Art, he argues, nurtures freedom of thought, and is more necessary now than ever before. As artistic director of the Houston Grand Opera, Summers is well positioned to take stock of the limitations of the professional arts world—a world where the conversation revolves almost entirely around financial questions and whose reputation tends toward elitism—and to remind us of art’s fundamental relationship to joy and meaning. Offering a vehement defense of long-form arts in a world with a short attention span, Summers argues that art is spiritual, and that music in particular has the ability to ask spiritual questions, to inspire cathartic pathos, and to express spiritual truths. Summers guides us through his personal encounters with art and music in disparate places, from Houston’s Rothko Chapel to a music classroom in rural China, and reflects on musical works he has conducted all over the world. Assessing the growing canon of new operas performed in American opera houses today, he calls for musical artists to be innovative and brave as opera continues to reinvent itself. This book is a moving credo elucidating Summers’s belief that the arts, especially music, help us to understand our own humanity as intellectual, aesthetic, and ultimately spiritual.
The Spirit of This Place: How Music Illuminates the Human Spirit (The Rice University Campbell Lectures)
by Patrick SummersArtists today are at a crossroads. With funding for the arts and humanities endowments perpetually under attack, and school districts all over the United States scrapping their art curricula altogether, the place of the arts in our civic future is uncertain to say the least. At the same time, faced with the problems of the modern world—from water shortages and grave health concerns to global climate change and the now constant threat of terrorism—one might question the urgency of this waning support for the arts. In the politically fraught world we live in, is the “felt” experience even something worth fighting for? In this soul-searching collection of vignettes, Patrick Summers gives us an adamant, impassioned affirmative. Art, he argues, nurtures freedom of thought, and is more necessary now than ever before. As artistic director of the Houston Grand Opera, Summers is well positioned to take stock of the limitations of the professional arts world—a world where the conversation revolves almost entirely around financial questions and whose reputation tends toward elitism—and to remind us of art’s fundamental relationship to joy and meaning. Offering a vehement defense of long-form arts in a world with a short attention span, Summers argues that art is spiritual, and that music in particular has the ability to ask spiritual questions, to inspire cathartic pathos, and to express spiritual truths. Summers guides us through his personal encounters with art and music in disparate places, from Houston’s Rothko Chapel to a music classroom in rural China, and reflects on musical works he has conducted all over the world. Assessing the growing canon of new operas performed in American opera houses today, he calls for musical artists to be innovative and brave as opera continues to reinvent itself. This book is a moving credo elucidating Summers’s belief that the arts, especially music, help us to understand our own humanity as intellectual, aesthetic, and ultimately spiritual.
Spirit of the Century: Our Own Story
by The Blind Boys of AlabamaAn insider history of the Blind Boys of Alabama, the longest running group in American music, and the untold story of their world, written with band members and key musical colleagues. The Blind Boys of Alabama are the quintessential Gospel vocal group, and the longest-running musical institution in America. Their story intersects with pivotal moments and issues in American history and is an ideal prism through which to trace music, culture, history, and race in America. Spirit of the Century invites readers to follow along the Blind Boys&’ eight-decade journey together from a segregated trade school, through the rough and tumble indie record game and grinding tour schedule of the golden age of gospel, to starring in an iconic Broadway musical, performing at the White House for three presidents twice, collaborating with Tom Petty, Lou Reed, and Ben Harper, among others, singing the theme song for &“The Wire,&” and winning five Grammys. More than just a story of the Blind Boys' illustrious career, Spirit of the Century also sheds new light on the larger world of African American gospel music, its origins, and the colorful characters at its center. Though there have been several iterations of the group over the decades, Spirit of the Century rounds up all surviving members of the group as contributors to the telling of their own story, and a result, the book offers a unique and intimate perspective on the group's enduring success. Current drummer and road manager Rickie McKinney has been with the group throughout its renaissance, while guitarist Joey Williams, the group&’s sighted member, has been the eyes of the Blind Boys since 1992. Octogenarian Jimmy Lee Carter has a fascinating history, as a fellow student of the original but deceased Blind Boys Clarence Fountain, George Scott, Olice Thomas, Johnny Fields, J.T. Hutton, and Velma Traylor at the Talladega school. Carter is one of a few performers who have been in both the Blind Boys of Alabama and Mississippi. He fronts the Alabama group today as a classic quartet leader and fiery preacher. Along with extensive interviews of Fountain, these legendary musicians provide this book with the voice, firsthand perspective, and authenticity that bring their story the same inspirational power that you hear in their songs. Thought-provoking, heartfelt, and deeply inspiring, Spirit of the Century is a fascinating and one-of-a-kind read that you won't be able to put down.