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"Everything is Choreography: The Musical Theater of Tommy Tune is the first full-scale analysis of the work of Tommy Tune, and his place in a lineage of Broadway's great director-choreographers. The decade of the 1980s was considered a low point for the American musical. Tune's predecessors in the art of complete musical staging like Jerome Robbins, Bob Fosse, Gower Champion, and Michael Bennett were either dead or withdrawn from the Broadway arena. Yet it was the period of Tune's greatest success. The book examines how he adapted to an increasingly corporatized, high-stakes producing and funding environment. It considers how Tune kept the American musical a thriving, creative enterprise at a time when Broadway was dominated by British imports. It investigates Tune's work of the last twenty-five years, when he shifted his attentions to touring and regional productions, far from the glare of Broadway. Unlike his fellow director-choreographers, Tune also maintained a successful performing career, and the book details the deft balancing act that kept him working as a popular singer-dancer-actor while directing a series of striking and influential Broadway musicals"--
There are many books on counterpoint and harmony, but few indeed on the theory of rhythm. Those few approach it through its graphic notation, or in terms of metrical feet, as if it were poetry. Maury Yeston treats rhythm instead in the context of sounded music, with a view to clarifying its ambiguous and little studied, but crucial, relationship with pitch. Although his work is strongly influenced by the methods of the German theorist Heinrich Schenker, it is a strikingly original contribution to musical theory in its own right. Maury Yeston begins by developing analytic procedures for understanding the rhythm of tonal music in terms of pitch levels. He then focuses on certain structures that arise from the interaction of these levels, thereby discovering some fundamental aspects of logical form in the system of musical rhythm. In the course of the inquiry, Mr. Yeston redefines traditional notions of meter, syncopation, and accent. In addition, his study provides a basis for understanding the relationships by which unique rhythmic designs are integrated aesthetically in a cohesive musical composition.
"In Death Takes a Holiday, it's just after World War I and the loneliest of souls arrives at an Italian villa disguised as a handsome young Prince, and for the first time experiences the joys and heartbreaks of life. The show began as an Alberto Casella play from the 1920s that was made into a much-loved 1934 film. The original film was remade in 1998 as Meet Joe Black."--Page 4 of cover.
Recent American Art Song: A Guide is a reference source devoted to songs with English texts by American composers, written for solo voice and piano. The book focuses exclusively on art song since 1980, a substantial period largely ignored by scholars. This is the first study to examine this repertory in detail, and many of the songs and composers are discussed in print for the first time. Keith E. Clifton has examined approximately 1000 songs by nearly 200 composers. Many songs employ musical idioms well beyond traditional classical styles, including references to jazz, musical theater, rap, and rock & roll, and several songs blur the boundaries between recital and stage works. Organized alphabetically by composer, entries contain complete biographical and bibliographical information, with major works and links to print resources and composer websites when available. In addition, Clifton provides detailed information on the vocal range, musical style, and appropriate voice type for individual songs. The book concludes with a full discography and bibliography, as well as indexes listing the works by poet, song cycle, title, voice type, and level of difficulty.
This book consists of over 1,500 citations to both primary sources and the burgeoning secondary literature of Heinrich Schenker, annotated and subdivided by category. The citations are supplemented with indices cross-referencing entries according to individual works and analytical topic.
In early-1960s Venice, film director Guido Contini is savoring his most recent (and greatest) success but, facing his fortieth birthday,a midlife crisis is blocking his creative impulses and entangling him in a web of romantic difficulties.
Classic American Popular Song: The Second Half-Century, 1950-2000 addresses the question: What happened to American popular song after 1950? There are numerous books available on the so-called Golden Age of popular song, but none that follow the development of popular song styles in the second half of the 20th century. While 1950 is seen as the end of an era, the tap of popular song creation hardly ran dry after that date. Many of the classic songwriters continued to work through the following decades: Porter was active until 1958; Rodgers until the later 1970s; Arlen until 1976. Some of the greatest lyricists of the classic era continued to do outstanding and successful work: Johnny Mercer ...
Allan Carr was Hollywood's premier party-thrower during the town's most hedonistic era -- the cocaine-addled, sexually indulgent 1970s. Hosting outrageous soirees with names like the Mick Jagger/Cycle Sluts Party and masterminding such lavishly themed opening nights as the Tommy/New York City subway premiere, it was Carr, an obese, caftan-wearing producer -- the ultimate outsider -- who first brought movie stars and rock stars, gays and straights, Old and New Hollywood together. From the stunning success of Grease and La Cage aux Folles to the spectacular failure of the Village People's Can't Stop the Music, as a producer Carr's was a rollercoaster of a career punctuated by major hits and phenomenal flops -- none more disastrous than the Academy Awards show he produced featuring a tone-deaf Rob Lowe serenading Snow White, a fiasco that made Carr an outcast, and is still widely considered to be the worst Oscars ever. Tracing Carr's excess-laden rise and tragic fall -- and sparing no one along the way -- Party Animals provides a sizzling, candid, behind-the-scenes look at Hollywood's most infamous period.
30m, 7f, plus ensemble (doubling possible.) / Ints./exts. This mesmerizing Phantom is traditional musical theatre in the finest sense. The Tony award winning authors of Nine have transformed Gaston Leroux' The Phantom of the Opera into a sensation that enraptures audiences and critics with beautiful songs and an expertly crafted book. It is constructed around characters more richly developed than in any other version, including the original novel. "Everything is first rate." - N.Y. Daily News
Musical Theater: An Appreciation, Second Edition offers a history of musical theater from its operating origins to the Broadway shows of today, combined with an in-depth study of the musical styles that paralleled changes on stage. Alyson McLamore teaches readers how to listen to both the words and the music of the stage musical, enabling them to understand how all the components of a show interact to create a compelling experience for audiences. This second edition has been updated with new chapters covering recent developments in the twenty-first century, while insights from recent scholarship on musical theater have been incorporated throughout the text. The musical examples discussed in the text now include detailed listening guides, while a new companion website includes plot summaries and links to audio of the musical examples. From Don Giovanni to Hamilton, Musical Theater: An Appreciation both explores the history of musical theater and develops a deep appreciation of the musical elements at the heart of this unique art form.