Mervyn Cooke Livres

The book explores how Eastern music shaped the works of composer Benjamin Britten. It delves into the specific elements of Eastern musical traditions that inspired his compositions, examining their impact on his creative process and overall musical style. Through detailed analysis, the text highlights the cross-cultural exchanges that enriched Britten's artistry, revealing the significance of these influences in the context of 20th-century music.

Tells the story of jazz music and its personalities. This title presents the developments in the world of jazz, from the rise of modern big bands and the renaissance of the piano trio to the popular appeal of Jamie Cullum and HBO's television series Treme, set in New Orleans.

Focusing on Britten's War Requiem, this study delves into how the composer interprets Wilfred Owen's poignant anti-war poetry. It explores the interplay between music and literature, highlighting Britten’s innovative approach to conveying the emotional depth and themes of loss and sacrifice inherent in Owen's work. Through this analysis, readers gain insight into the historical context and artistic choices that shape the Requiem's powerful message against the horrors of war.

An excitingly designed, lively, year-by-year history of people and events, covering the whole history of jazz music and its personalities for over 100 years. The book features many rare images, an accessible, wide-ranging text and an extensive reference section including biographies (from Ammons to Zorn), a list of international Jazz Festivals and events and a carefully selected discography.

An introduction to jazz covers its history and seminal figures in both the United States and Europe.

This book provides a comprehensive and lively introduction to the major trends in film scoring from the silent era to the present day, focussing not only on dominant Hollywood practices but also offering an international perspective by including case studies of the national cinemas of the UK, France, India, Italy, Japan and the early Soviet Union. The book balances wide-ranging overviews of film genres, modes of production and critical reception with detailed non-technical descriptions of the interaction between image track and soundtrack in representative individual films. In addition to the central focus on narrative cinema, separate sections are also devoted to music in documentary and animated films, film musicals and the uses of popular and classical music in the cinema. The author analyses the varying technological and aesthetic issues that have shaped the history of film music, and concludes with an account of the modern film composer's working practices.

A detailed synopsis guides the reader through the musical and dramatic action of the opera, Billy Budd.

This wide-ranging and thought-provoking collection of specially-commissioned essays provides a uniquely comprehensive overview of the many and various ways in which music functions in film soundtracks. Citing examples from a variety of historical periods, genres and film industries - including those of the USA, UK, France, Italy, India and Japan - the book's contributors are all leading scholars and practitioners in the field. They engage, sometimes provocatively, with numerous stimulating aspects of the history, theory and practice of film music in a series of lively discussions which will appeal as much to newcomers to this fascinating subject as to seasoned film music aficionados. Innovative research and fresh interpretative perspectives are offered alongside practice-based accounts of the film composer's distinctive art, with examples cited from genres as contrasting as animation, the screen musical, film noir, Hollywood melodrama, the pop music and jazz film, documentary, period drama, horror, science fiction and the Western.

Pat Metheny: The ECM Years, 1977-1984 offers a vivid account of jazz guitarist Pat Metheny's first creative period, during which he recorded eleven albums for the European label ECM. This unique music reflects his passionate belief in the need to refashion jazz in ways which allow it to speak powerfully to a new generation, and the book provides a portrait of a fascinating but often overlooked period in jazz history.

Eine chronologische Geschichte des Jazz, die die Entwicklung des Genres von seinen Anfängen in Afrika und den USA bis hin zu den zahlreichen weltweit neu entfalteten Stilen bis heute darstellt: vom Aufkommen moderner Big Bands und dem Wiederaufleben des Pianotrios bis hin zur populären Wirkung von Künstlern wie Jamie Cullum. Mit hunderten seltener Abbildungen, Plattencovern, Bildern von Live-Auftritten und umfassenden Texten. Die Geschichte des Jazz ist eine Geschichte voller Innovationen, Experimente, Kontroversen und Emotionen. „Die Chronik des Jazz“ ist eine Hommage an eines der ideenreichsten und beständigsten Musikgenres und eine unverzichtbare umfassende Zusammenstellung aller Entwicklungen für Jazz- und Musikliebhaber.