Style And Music

Leonard Meyer proposes a theory of style and style change that relates the choices made by composers to the constraints of psychology, cultural context, and musical traditions. He explores why, out of the abundance of compositional possibilities, composers choose to replicate some patterns and neglect others. Meyer devotes the latter part of his book to a sketch-history of nineteenth-century music. He shows explicitly how the beliefs and attitudes of Romanticism influenced the choices of composers from Beethoven to Mahler and into our own time. "A monumental work. . . . Most authors concede the relation of music to its cultural milieu, but few have probed so deeply in demonstrating this interaction."—Choice "Probes the foundations of musical research precisely at the joints where theory and history fold into one another."—Kevin Korsyn, Journal of American Musicological Society "A remarkably rich and multifaceted, yet unified argument. . . . No one else could have brought off this immense project with anything like Meyer's command."—Robert P. Morgan, Music Perception "Anyone who attempts to deal with Romanticism in scholarly depth must bring to the task not only musical and historical expertise but unquenchable optimism. Because Leonard B. Meyer has those qualities in abundance, he has been able to offer fresh insight into the Romantic concept."—Donal Henahan, New York Times

From the fashion and music brand and talent incubator VFILES comes a style book celebrating the young, diverse street trends influencing the hottest looks and sounds in fashion and music today. VFILES was started for the kids in the line, the kids at the fashion shows and concerts who are always pushing culture forward. A ubiquitous social media platform at the crossroads of art, design, popular culture, and street savvy, VFILES represents what’s happening on the streets right now. Known for creating one of the buzziest shows of New York Fashion Week, VFILES regularly launches the next big talents in all areas of the music and fashion worlds. The pages of VFILES: Style, Fashion, Music showcase the most exciting moments from VFILES’s creations and collaborations over the last ten years. The authors look at the young innovators shaping contemporary culture and highlight their influence on some of the biggest names of today. With photos of such style arbiters as Rihanna, Cardi B, Janelle Monáe, Solange, and Erykah Badu wearing VFILES designs, this book celebrates all aspects of street culture, from hair and makeup to art, design, and lingo. A visual feast of street style, along with glamorous runway and editorial images of hip hop celebrities in their distinctive looks, these pages celebrate the intersection between music and fashion. This book embodies the VFILES credo that you can’t have fashion without music or music without fashion. And you can’t have either without the street.

Music in the Galant Style is an authoritative and readily understandable study of the core compositional style of the eighteenth century. Gjerdingen adopts a unique approach, based on a massive but little-known corpus of pedagogical workbooks used by the most influential teachers of the century, the Italian partimenti. He has brought this vital repository of compositional methods into confrontation with a set of schemata distilled from an enormous body of eighteenth-century music, much of it known only to specialists, formative of the "galant style."

Virtual Music is about artificial creativity. Focusing on the author's Experiments in Musical Intelligence computer music composing program, the author and a distinguished group of experts discuss many of the issues surrounding the program, including artificial intelligence, music cognition, and aesthetics. The book is divided into four parts. The first part provides a historical background to Experiments in Musical Intelligence, including examples of historical antecedents, followed by an overview of the program by Douglas Hofstadter. The second part follows the composition of an Experiments in Musical Intelligence work, from the creation of a database to the completion of a new work in the style of Mozart. It includes, in sophisticated lay terms, relatively detailed explanations of how each step in the process contributes to the final composition. The third part consists of perspectives and analyses by Jonathan Berger, Daniel Dennett, Bernard Greenberg, Douglas R. Hofstadter, Steve Larson, and Eleanor Selfridge-Field. The fourth part presents the author's responses to these commentaries, as well as his thoughts on the implications of artificial creativity. The book (and corresponding Web site) includes an appendix providing extended musical examples referred to and discussed in the book, including composers such as Scarlatti, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Puccini, Rachmaninoff, Prokofiev, Debussy, Bartok, and others. It is also accompanied by a CD containing performances of the music in the text.

Now appearing in an English translation, this book by Szymon Paczkowski is the first in-depth exploration of the Polish style in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach spent almost thirty years living and working in Leipzig in Saxony, a country ruled by Friedrich August I and his son Friedrich August II, who were also kings of Poland (as August II and August III). This period of close Polish-Saxon relations left a significant imprint on Bach’s music. Paczkowski’s meticulous account of this complex political and cultural dynamic sheds new light on many of Bach’s familiar pieces. The book explores the semantic and rhetorical functions that undergird the symbolism of the Polish style in Baroque music. It demonstrates how the notion of a Polish style in music was developed in German music theory, and conjectures that Bach’s successful application for the title of Court Composer at the court of the Elector of Saxony and King of Poland would induce the composer to deliberately use elements of the Polish style. This comprehensive study of the way Bach used the Polish style in his music moves beyond technical analysis to place the pieces within the context of Baroque customs and discourse. This ambitious and inspiring study is an original contribution to the scholarly conversation concerning Bach’s music, focusing on the symbolism of the polonaise, the most popular and recognizable Polish dance in 18th-century Saxony. In Saxony at this time the polonaise was associated with the ceremonies of the royal-electoral court in Dresden, and Saxon musicians regarded it as a musical symbol of royalty. Paczkowski explores this symbolism of the Polish royal dance in Bach’s instrumental music and, which is also to be found to an even greater extent, in his vocal works. The Polish Style in the Music of Johann Sebastian Bach provides wide-ranging interpretations based on a careful analysis of the sources explored within historical and theological context. The book is a valuable source for both teaching and further research, and will find readers not only among musicologists, but also historians, art historians, and readers in cultural studies. All lovers of Bach’s music will appreciate this lucid and intriguing study.

This exclusive volume presents the best features and radically designed pages of the 1990’s most uncompromising document of alternative music, style, and pop culture. Founded in 1992, Ray Gun was the only magazine wherein a die-hard culture seeker could find information on alternative music and the street-inspired style that really mattered. Punk rock had torn pop music to shreds and created a hunger for an original lifestyle beyond mainstream culture, and Ray Gun was its graphic chronicler: across its pages blasted a visual feast made up of era-defining artists such as Sonic Youth or Iggy Pop, music-inspired art, and a complete redefinition of sartorial style. The magazine’s original art director, David Carson, and his peers who followed, created an entirely new visual culture that shattered the limitations of graphic design. Ray Gun was as radical as the lifestyle it reported on, deeply committed to visually representing an alternative culture as a new way of seeing and being in the world. With over 200 full-color photographs, Ray Gun: The Bible of Music and Style gathers the most outrageous pages from the magazine that helped to shape the ’90s. This epic anthology features exclusive photographs and articles on rock legends such as R.E.M., HenryRollins, Jane’s Addiction, The Pixies, Dinosaur Jr., U2, Marilyn Manson, Smashing Pumpkins, NineInch Nails, Mudhoney, Pearl Jam, Bjork, Morrissey, PJ Harvey, Beastie Boys, Soundgarden, Beck and an exclusive interview with David Bowie.

Traces the currents that have shaped the development of music in the twentieth century and discusses the contributions of such composers as Mahler, Debussy, Stockhausen, Vaughan Williams, Bartok, and Stravinsky