Timeless Troubadours

Introduction to the Updated Expanded Edition With the feedback from our readers we expanded our first edition's content. We have fixed the few errors and rare factual inaccuracies we had found. Several readers asked that we look at and make meaning about more of their songs. We have done that with three (see next page): 'Question, ' 'New Horizons, ' and 'I'm just a singer' (in a R&R band). Just after completing this book we went on their first "Moodies Cruise" and now include a summary of our experience there. We obtained the new Timeless Flight box set that was released three months after this book and listened to the CDs and watched its DVD video material. We also read their extensive accompanying "coffee table" sized book. We have read the many online comments on this box set and have included a relevant few of them in our 7 page review of this large box set. This is a landmark book by two long-time Moody Blues fans. In this book we examine and bring to light the music and message of this great band of poets and musicians who have produced hit music for almost 50 years! Here's a little on what our book is about and the areas that we explore: How they are unique among bands and music groups What critics and others have said The nature of their musical magic and message How the Moodies' words and music work, song by song Using 7 levels of listening to their music Why listening to their music raises our consciousness How their fans have listened consistently for so long Why they have excelled for nearly ve decades From the Foreword by Moody Blues co-founder, keyboardist and vocalist Mike Pinder "It was very interesting to read Charles and Barbara Whitfield's interpretations of our music and message. They suggest clear and useful ideas and ways for those who are newly exploring our music and for the many who have been on this journey with us from the beginning. I have always been interested in the broader qualities of music to inform, heal, raise consciousness and uplift. This was often on my mind when I wrote a song or painted the backdrop for others in the band with counter melodies and my Mellotron. In contrast to most observers of our music, I saw how the authors here delve below the surface and give us an enjoyable interpretation of our words and music. They examine essentially their every aspect. Not only do they address our lyrics from a scholarly and poetic perspective, but they offer us some insightful and sometimes surprising interpretations of them beyond what many listeners and fans may consider. Music has changed our world. It has the potential for reaching within, opening our minds and our hearts to the power of Universal Love. It transforms, strengthens, relaxes, teaches and enlightens us. The Whitfields realize these truths and give us a strong base from which to experientially understand them. They integrate the many positive messages of our words and music by giving us a clear and constructive map of healing that is on the cutting edge of psychology, consciousness studies and spirituality. Memories are also closely associated with music. I have always thought that we hang our memories on the shape of sound. With memorable melodies, counter melodies and instrumentation we were able to create soundscapes for many to hang the best memories of their lives. Those of us who remember the 1960s and beyond will appreciate their attention to the detail of our works and the history of how it all came about. They show us how the Moodies have expressed, preserved and continue to remind us of the message and wisdom of the 60s by keeping it so alive. And how there was a natural spirituality that still lives in all of us and that is manifested in our descriptions of Love."

This monster Rock-n-Roll survey focuses on the songs and the vibrant personalities who create them, for college audiences and the general public. Dean published the world's first history of Rock in 1966. Here, in his ebullient style, he buzzes through piles of musical singles from the whole last half century, describing what is fun about each major and minor hit, pointing out what elements were exciting or new or significant in the development of musical styles. He relates some tantalizing tidbits about the earlier musical heritage that artists have drawn upon in crafting ever more amazing evolutions of rock music. This snappy, witty and informative album has universal appeal, doubling as a coffee-table trivia treasure and a college-level popular music history text. It includes hundreds of photos, chapter questions, and an extensive index. Reader-friendly and informationally complete, it covers soft rock, heavy metal, rhythm & blues, country rock and classic oldies, all with tender loving care, for the specialist and casual listener alike. Its mini-portraits of the artists who move so many hearts (and feet), the photos and the insightful sound bites get to the essence of each song and each musician's contribution to the music of our age. The single-song focus makes the book unique. It's a playlist for R'n'R professors and the general public, written with a collegiate vocabulary, tight organization and a respect for all. "Hearing Elvis for the first time was like busting out of jail." - Bob Dylan That being said, no one is being incited, here, to bust out of jail or to emulate the quixotic habits of rock stars. "There's nothing in here to hide from the kids, the clergy or grandma." Gold Rush can be used as a university or community college text, but most people will grab it for the sheer pleasure of reading about everyone's favorites. Great gift for Rock enthusiasts. Gold Rush is the first book of its kind to feature a celebration of the great single songs of the rock era and beyond. Gold Rush takes thousands of songs, spanning three centuries, and brings them back uniquely as if they came out just yesterday. Gold Rush unites the Anglo-American and later worldwide spirit of Rock and Roll in a tapestry of interconnected melodies and adventures. As Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide helps you select videos at Blockbuster, so Gold Rush is a powerful playlist for your music collection, with many new and fascinating photos of favorite stars. Gold Rush explains the most important stories behind the songs you picked to be played, the songs that 'went gold,' from the 1897 Alaska/Klondike Gold Rush to the #1 songs of today and beyond.

This 2004 book traces the changing interpretation of troubadour and trouvere music, a repertoire of songs which have successfully maintained public interest for eight centuries, from the medieval chansonniers to contemporary rap renditions. A study of their reception therefore serves to illustrate the development of the modern concept of 'medieval music'. Important stages include sixteenth-century antiquarianism, the Enlightenment synthesis of scholarly and popular traditions and the infusion of archaeology and philology in the nineteenth century, leading to more recent theories on medieval rhythm. More often than now, writers and performers have negotiated a compromise between historical research and a more imaginative approach to envisioning the music of troubadours and trouveres. This book points not so much to a resurrection of medieval music in modern times as to a continuous tradition of interpreting these songs over eight centuries.

This book is a reference volume and a digest of more than a century of scholarly work on troubadour poetry. Written by leading scholars, it summarizes the current consensus on the various facets of troubadour studies. Standing at the beginning of the history of modern European verse, the troubadours were the prime poets and composers of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the South of France. No study of medieval literature is complete without an examination of the courtly love which is celebrated in the elaborately rhymed stanzas of troubadour verse, creations whose words and melodies were imitated by poets and musicians all over medieval Europe. The words of about 2,500 troubadour songs have survived, along with 250 melodies, and all have come under intense scholarly scrutiny. This Handbook brings together the fruits of this scrutiny, giving teachers and students an overview of the fundamental issues in troubadour scholarship. All quotations are given in the original Old Occitan and in English. The editors provide a list of troubadour editions and an index, and each chapter includes a list of additional readings.

Although it seemed in the mid-1970s that the study of the troubadours and of Occitan literature had reached a sort of zenith, it has since become apparent that this moment was merely a plateau from which an intensive renewal was being launched. In this new bibliographic guide to Occitan and troubadour literature, Robert Taylor provides a definitive survey of the field of Occitan literary studies - from the earliest enigmatic texts to the fifteenth-century works of Occitano-Catalan poet Jordi de Sant Jordi - and treats over two thousand recent books and articles with full annotations. Taylor includes articles on related topics such as practical approaches to the language of the troubadours and the musicology of select troubadour songs, as well as articles situated within sociology, religious history, critical methodology, and psychoanalytical analysis. Each listing offers descriptive comments on the scholarly contribution of each source to Occitan literature, with remarks on striking or controversial content, and numerous cross-references that identify complementary studies and differing opinions. Taylor's painstaking attention to detail and broad knowledge of the field ensure that this guide will become the essential source for Occitan literary studies worldwide.

The torch song has long been a vehicle for expression—perhaps American song's most sheerly visceral one. Two artists in particular have built upon this tradition to express their own unique outlooks on their lives and the world around them. Joni Mitchell, Elvis Costello, and the Torch Song Tradition combines biographical material, artist commentary, critical interpretation, and selected exemplars of the writers' work to reveal the power of authorship and the creative drive necessary to negotiate an artistic vision in the complicated mechanisms of the commercial music industry. Author Larry David Smith, as in his Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, and American Song, considers the complicated intersection of biography, creative philosophy, artistic imperative, and stylistic tendencies in the work of both Joni Mitchell and Elvis Costello—two songwriters with seemingly nothing in common, one famously confessional and one famously confrontational. Yet, as Smith shows so incisively, they are two personalities that prove fascinatingly complementary. Mitchell and Costello both yielded bodies of work that are cohesive, coherent, and rich in meaning. Both have made historic contributions to the singer-songwriter model, two rebellious respones to the creative and commercial compromises associated with their chosen field, and two distinct thematic responses to the torch song tradition. Smith examines these responses, offering a unique and invaluable exploration of the craft of two of the last century's most towering musical figures.

Originally published during the early part of the twentieth century, the Cambridge Manuals of Science and Literature were designed to provide concise introductions to a broad range of topics. They were written by experts for the general reader and combined a comprehensive approach to knowledge with an emphasis on accessibility. H. J. Chaytor's volume The Troubadours was published in 1912. It introduces the reader to the concept of courtly love and to the role of the troubadour poets, tracing their influence across medieval Europe.