The Muse that Sings
The Muse That Sings is a unique behind-the-scenes look at both twentieth-century music and the nuts and bolts of creative work. Here, twenty-five of America's leading composers--from Adams to Zorn, from Bolcom to Vierk--talk candidly about their craft, their motivations, their difficulties, and how they how proceed from musical idea to finished composition. While focusing on the process and the stories behind specific works, the composers also touch on topics that will interest anyone involved in creative work. They discuss teachers and mentors, the task of revision, relationships with performers, and the ongoing struggle for a balance between freedom and discipline. They reveal sources of inspiration, artistic goals, and the often unexpected ways their musical ideas develop. Some describe personal tonal systems; others discuss the impact of computers and other electronic tools on their work; still others reflect philosophically on the inner impulses and outer influences that continue to drive them. While serious music has a reputation for being difficult and inaccessible, The Muse That Sings provides a powerful antidote. The composers in this book speak clearly and thoughtfully in response to key questions of concern to all readers interested in contemporary music. Each interview has been edited to stand alone as a concise meditation on muse and technique, and the book includes selected discographies as well as brief biographical sketches. Anyone with an interest in twentieth-century music or in the creative process will find this lively collection a valuable source of inspiration and insight.
The Muse Sings
The Muse Sings and the poet sings songs of love and longing from states of joy, self-doubt, vexation, curiosity, affection, observation, mock-indignation The poems speak for themselves and sometimes they talk all at once. In seductive acts of language itself, they invoke and embrace the Muses as much as they do the writers who would become muses, from ancient Homer and Shakespeare to poets of contemporary time. These poems are the seasoned work of a trickster poet in his prime with a crows eye trained on the world. No silent words on the page, these: they are alert, thoughtful, at turns cheeky and saucy. The poems all but produce decibels despite the inked imprint on the page that would fix them silent in place, until a living voice sets them free.
The Muse is Music
This wide-ranging, ambitiously interdisciplinary study traces jazz's influence on African American poetry from the Harlem Renaissance to contemporary spoken word poetry. Examining established poets such as Langston Hughes, Ntozake Shange, and Nathaniel Mackey as well as a generation of up-and-coming contemporary writers and performers, Meta DuEwa Jones highlights the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality within the jazz tradition and its representation in poetry. Applying prosodic analysis to emphasize the musicality of African American poetic performance, she examines the gendered meanings evident in collaborative performances and in the criticism, images, and sounds circulating within jazz cultures. Jones also considers poets who participated in contemporary venues for black writing such as the Dark Room Collective and the Cave Canem Foundation, including Harryette Mullen, Elizabeth Alexander, and Carl Phillips. Incorporating a finely honed discussion of the Black Arts Movement, the poetry-jazz fusion of the late 1950s, and slam and spoken word performance milieus such as Def Poetry Jam, she focuses on jazz and hip hop-influenced performance artists including Tracie Morris, Saul Williams, and Jessica Care Moore. Through attention to cadence, rhythm, and structure, The Muse is Music fills a gap in literary scholarship by attending to issues of gender in jazz and poetry and by analyzing recordings of poets both with and without musical accompaniment. Applying the methodology of textual close reading to a critical "close listening" of American poetry's resonant soundscape, Jones's analyses include exploring the formal innovation and queer performance of Langston Hughes's recorded collaboration with jazz musicians, delineating the relationship between punctuation and performance in the post-soul John Coltrane poem, and closely examining jazz improvisation and hip-hop stylization. An elaborate articulation of the connections between jazz, poetry and spoken word, and gender, The Muse Is Music offers valuable criticism of specific texts and performances and a convincing argument about the shape of jazz and African-American poetic performance in the contemporary era.
Why the Amish Sing
An intimate portrait of the diverse music-making at the center of Amish faith and life. Singing occurs in nearly every setting of Amish life. It is a sanctioned pleasure that frames all Amish rituals and one that enlivens and sanctifies both routine and special events, from household chores, road trips by buggy, and family prayer to baptisms, youth group gatherings, weddings, and “single girl” sings. But because Amish worship is performed in private homes instead of public churches, few outsiders get the chance to hear Amish people sing. Amish music also remains largely unexplored in the field of ethnomusicology. In Why the Amish Sing, D. Rose Elder introduces readers to the ways that Amish music both reinforces and advances spiritual life, delving deep into the Ausbund, the oldest hymnal in continuous use. This illuminating ethnomusicological study demonstrates how Amish groups in Wayne and Holmes Counties, Ohio—the largest concentration of Amish in the world—sing to praise God and, at the same time, remind themselves of their 450-year history of devotion. Singing instructs Amish children in community ways and unites the group through common participation. As they sing in unison to the weighty words of their ancestors, the Amish confirm their love and support for the community. Their singing delineates their common journey—a journey that demands separation from the world and yielding to God's will. By making school visits, attending worship services and youth sings, and visiting private homes, Elder has been given the rare opportunity to listen to Amish singing in its natural social and familial context. She combines one-on-one interviews with detailed observations of how song provides a window into Amish cultural beliefs, values, and norms.
Homer and the Tradition of Political Philosophy
In this book, Peter Ahrensdorf explores an overlooked but crucial role that Homer played in the thought of Plato, Machiavelli, and Nietzsche concerning, notably, the relationship between politics, religion, and philosophy; and in their debates about human nature, morality, the proper education for human excellence, and the best way of life. By studying Homer in conjunction with these three political philosophers, Ahrensdorf demonstrates that Homer was himself a philosophical thinker and educator. He presents the full force of Plato's critique of Homer and the paramount significance of Plato's achievement in winning honor for philosophy. Ahrensdorf also makes possible an appreciation of the powerful concerns expressed by Machiavelli and Nietzsche regarding that achievement. By uncovering and bringing to life the rich philosophic conversation among these four foundational thinkers, Ahrensdorf shows that there are many ways of living a philosophic life. His book broadens and deepens our understanding of what a philosopher is.
