The Spell Of The Song

The Lost Words by composer James Burton takes its inspiration and text from the award-winning 'cultural phenomenon' and book of the same name by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris: a book that was, in turn, a creative response to the removal of everyday nature words like acorn, newt and otter from a new edition of a widely used children's dictionary. Both the book and Burton's 32-minute work, which is written in 12 short movements for upper-voice choir in up to 3 voice parts (with either orchestral or piano accompaniment), celebrates each lost word with a beautiful poem or 'spell', magically brought to life in Burton's music. At its heart, the work delivers a powerful message about the need to close the gap between childhood and the natural world. Burton's piece was co-commissioned by the Hallé Concerts Society for the Hallé Children's Choir and the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The piano accompaniment version was premiered at the Tanglewood Festival in 2019 by the Boston Symphony Children's Choir, of which Burton is founder and director. The Hallé Children's Choir will premiere the orchestral version of the full work in Manchester, UK, post-pandemic. Vocal Score Co-commission by Boston Symphony and Hallé Concerts Society for their respective Children's Choirs. Two versions - with orchestral or with piano accompaniment. The vocal score is the same for both versions. James Burton is a composer but also a conductor. He is conductor of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus and choral director of the Boston Symphony. The book The Lost Words, exquisitely designed, has won multiple awards and is an international best-seller. The vocal score includes Jackie Morris's beautiful imagery in its cover design.

This book investigates the nature of the alphabet as a medium of communication. The general thesis is that writing is not a merely transparent or empty item like air or glass; rather, the alphabet is both modifier and enabler of meaning itself: The book investigates the general implications of this thesis.

Poet, critic, and hybrid-genre artist Johnson tracks the use of trouble in word, concept, and practice in this debut of brief, elliptical, lyric essays. He moves through a wide swath of 20th- and 21st-century music, always alert to a sense of melancholy shared among songwriters, their songs, and their listeners in the ever-growing web of popular music. "When we say 'trouble,' we refer to the history of trouble whether or not we have it in mind. When we sing trouble, we sing (with) history," Johnson writes. "A Trouble Song is a complaint, a grievance, an aside, a come-on, a confession, an admission, a resignation, a plea. It's an invitation-to sorrow." The effect of all this trouble is dizzying. Highly annotated-often to personal, humorous, and hidden effects-the book weaves among genres, chronologies, and various forms of trouble to ask "Where are we in song? Who are we in song?" Johnson suggests that an answer lies somewhere in the locus of singer, song, and listener-the "essential relations in the Trouble Song." Detouring into philosophy, cultural theory, and verse, Johnson works multilaterally to explore what trouble in popular music does to connect listeners, embolden them, and open a space from which trouble can be addressed across time.

Winner of the International Lannan Literary Award for Nonfiction Animal tracks, word magic, the speech of stones, the power of letters, and the taste of the wind all figure prominently in this intellectual tour de force that returns us to our senses and to the sensuous terrain that sustains us. This major work of ecological philosophy startles the senses out of habitual ways of perception. For a thousand generations, human beings viewed themselves as part of the wider community of nature, and they carried on active relationships not only with other people with other animals, plants, and natural objects (including mountains, rivers, winds, and weather patters) that we have only lately come to think of as "inanimate." How, then, did humans come to sever their ancient reciprocity with the natural world? What will it take for us to recover a sustaining relation with the breathing earth? In The Spell of the Sensuous David Abram draws on sources as diverse as the philosophy of Merleau-Ponty, Balinese shamanism, Apache storytelling, and his own experience as an accomplished sleight-of-hand of magician to reveal the subtle dependence of human cognition on the natural environment. He explores the character of perception and excavates the sensual foundations of language, which--even at its most abstract--echoes the calls and cries of the earth. On every page of this lyrical work, Abram weaves his arguments with a passion, a precision, and an intellectual daring that recall such writers as Loren Eisleley, Annie Dillard, and Barry Lopez.

The New York Times bestseller – a “crystal-clear, constantly engaging” (Jared Diamond) exploration of the role that religious belief plays in our lives and our interactions For all the thousands of books that have been written about religion, few until this one have attempted to examine it scientifically: to ask why—and how—it has shaped so many lives so strongly. Is religion a product of blind evolutionary instinct or rational choice? Is it truly the best way to live a moral life? Ranging through biology, history, and psychology, Daniel C. Dennett charts religion’s evolution from “wild” folk belief to “domesticated” dogma. Not an antireligious screed but an unblinking look beneath the veil of orthodoxy, Breaking the Spell will be read and debated by believers and skeptics alike.

Stephen Sondheim is one of the best-known and most-loved musical theatre composers, but also one of the most misunderstood, often being labelled as 'distant' or 'cynical'. Careful the Spell You Cast instead argues that Sondheim firmly belongs to the Broadway aspirational tradition, in that many of his characters are defined by their dreams: to abandon one's dream (as Ben does in Follies, Frank does in Merrily We Roll Along, and Addison does in Road Show) is to lose one's soul. Rather than take the established view of Sondheim as a cynic, this book contends that throughout Sondheim's work, letting go of one's illusions is a process that his characters need to go through, that they must cast off illusions and false dreams, without becoming cynical and destroying their genuine dreams in the process. In turn this view aligns Sondheim's work as being aspirational and a logical continuation from the work of his mentor, Oscar Hammerstein II. Following the trajectory of Sondheim's career, Careful the Spell You Cast shows how Sondheim has dramatized this process throughout his writing life alongside different collaborators. From his work as a lyricist with the musicals Gypsy and West Side Story through to his later collaborations with Hal Prince (Company, Follies) and James Lapine (Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George), this book reframes the established view through lyrical and structural analysis in relation to the characters within each of these celebrated works of musical theatre, arguing that Sondheim is, in the popular sense of the word, a romantic within the tradition of the Broadway musical.

The Book of the Sacred Magic of Abramelin the Mage-originally published in 1900, translated by Samuel Mathers from a 15th-century French document-was purportedly written by Abraham for his son Lamech. Within this volume are three books. The first book is Abraham's autobiography in which he speaks to his son. The second book is an explanation of the purification rituals necessary to bring the magician's personal demon under his control. And the third book details what feats can be accomplished once the practitioner is able to use a form of magic controlled and directed through sigils of magic words written on a grid. Anyone with an interest in the occult will find this an interesting, though perhaps impractical, guide for exploring mystic arts.