Intimate Music

This is the first comprehensive overview of instrumental chamber music from the 16th century to the present. There are comparisons of different genres, composers, and periods. Situations for chamber music at different moments in history are brought into a continuum, and all aspects of chamber music are placed into perspective. A History of the Idea of Chamber Music is chronologically organized at the most general level. Beyond that, national schools figure prominently, as well as genres and personalities. Throughout this book the composition of chamber music, the performance of chamber music, and the social, economic, political, and aesthetic conditions for chamber music have been considered per se and as they interact. (From the Introduction)

The stories and reflections in this book describe powerful encounters between nine music therapists and their clients. These clients include four-year-old Giorgios, who is terminally ill; Wendy, a passionate, battered child who has been rejected by her mother; Olive, suffering from senile dementia; Martha, whose successful life is in crisis; and Steve, who is living with HIV/AIDS. Through music therapy the clients - and therapists - discover their creativity, and, in the process, come to terms with suffering. The stories reveal the passion and integrity of nine music therapists who themselves undergo profound changes as a result of their work. Music Therapy - Intimate Notes is a practical and inspiring introduction to music therapy, showing its range of possibilities in various settings. The book provides a lively and informal theoretical foundation, and connects music to our intimate lives.

Leading authorities explore, in direct and accessible language, chamber-music masterpieces by twenty-one prominent composers since 1900.

Leading authorities explore, in direct and accessible language, chamber-music masterpieces by twenty-one prominent composers since 1900.

At the heart of The Republic of Love are the voices of three musicians—queer nightclub star Zeki Müren, arabesk originator Orhan Gencebay, and pop diva Sezen Aksu—who collectively have dominated mass media in Turkey since the early 1950s. Their fame and ubiquity have made them national icons—but, Martin Stokes here contends, they do not represent the official version of Turkish identity propagated by anthems or flags; instead they evoke a much more intimate and ambivalent conception of Turkishness. Using these three singers as a lens, Stokes examines Turkey’s repressive politics and civil violence as well as its uncommonly vibrant public life in which music, art, literature, sports, and journalism have flourished. However, Stokes’s primary concern is how Müren, Gencebay, and Aksu’s music and careers can be understood in light of theories of cultural intimacy. In particular, he considers their contributions to the development of a Turkish concept of love, analyzing the ways these singers explore the private matters of intimacy, affection, and sentiment on the public stage.

This is a book about Andean music, its reception in Japan, and the resultant transcultural connection. Michelle Bigenho toured Japan with Bolivian musicians and dancers and describes how the two nationalites connected with each other through song and dance.

The romanticized image of the heroic male resistance fighter in World War II belies a truth that is both darker and more personal. This literary history explores, for the first time, the reality of European women’s roles in fighting Nazism. By comparing the resistance literature of French and German authors—both famous and more obscure—this innovative book links the traditional gender expectations for women and the conventions of their everyday lives with their unique forms of resistance. Theirs was an opposition grounded in the ordinary, beyond the sphere of political violence. Women were long regarded as outsiders to combat and politics, with no stake in upholding resistance myths. Women authors therefore freely rendered the personal and moral landscape of the resister’s world in a new vocabulary. They revised standard rhetoric and replaced heroism and bullets with the values of home, human relationships, and candid acknowledgement of the sorrow, fear, and uncertainty of war. A groundbreaking study for students of European history, women’s studies, peace studies, or comparative literature, this volume is also accessible to a general audience interested in the role of women in World War II.

An ethnographic study of music, performance, migration, and circulation, Singing Across Divides examines how forms of love and intimacy are linked to changing conceptions of political solidarity and forms of belonging, through the lens of Nepali dohori song. The book describes dohori: improvised, dialogic singing, in which a witty repartee of exchanges is based on poetic couplets with a fixed rhyme scheme, often backed by instrumental music and accompanying dance, performed between men and women, with a primary focus on romantic love. The book tells the story of dohori's relationship with changing ideas of Nepal as a nation-state, and how different nationalist concepts of unity have incorporated marginality, in the intersectional arenas of caste, indigeneity, class, gender, and regional identity. Dohori gets at the heart of tensions around ethnic, caste, and gender difference, as it promotes potentially destabilizing musical and poetic interactions, love, sex, and marriage across these social divides. In the aftermath of Nepal's ten-year civil war, changing political realities, increased migration, and circulation of people, media and practices are redefining concepts of appropriate intimate relationships and their associated systems of exchange. Through multi-sited ethnography of performances, media production, circulation, reception, and the daily lives of performers and fans in Nepal and the UK, Singing Across Divides examines how people use dohori to challenge (and uphold) social categories, while also creating affective solidarities.