Piano Pedagogy

The scandal over modern music has not died down. While paintings by Pablo Picasso and Jackson Pollock sell for a hundred million dollars or more, shocking musical works from Stravinsky'sRite of Springonward still send ripples of unease through audiences. At the same time, the influence of modern music can be felt everywhere. Avant-garde sounds populate the soundtracks of Hollywood thrillers. Minimalist music has had a huge effect on rock, pop, and dance music from the Velvet Underground onward. Alex Ross, the brilliant music critic forThe New Yorker, shines a bright light on this secret world, and shows how it has pervaded every corner of twentieth century life.   The Rest Is Noisetakes the reader inside the labyrinth of modern sound. It tells of maverick personalities who have resisted the cult of the classical past, struggled against the indifference of a wide public, and defied the will of dictators. Whether they have charmed audiences with the purest beauty or battered them with the purest noise, composers have always been exuberantly of the present, defying the stereotype of classical music as a dying art.   Ross, in this sweeping and dramatic narrative, takes us from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties, from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies. We follow the rise of mass culture and mass politics, of dramatic new technologies, of hot and cold wars, of experiments, revolutions, riots, and friendships forged and broken. In the tradition of Simon Schama'sThe Embarrassment of Richesand Louis Menand'sThe Metaphysical Club, the end result is not so much a history of twentieth-century music as a history of the twentieth century through its music.

A snakeful of critical venom aimed at the composers and the classics of nineteenth- and twentieth-century music. Who wrote advanced cat music? What commonplace theme is very much like Yankee Doodle? Which composer is a scoundrel and a giftless bastard? What opera would His Satanic Majesty turn out? Whose name suggests fierce whiskers stained with vodka? And finally, what third movement begins with a dog howling at midnight, then imitates the regurgitations of the less-refined or lower-middle-class type of water-closet cistern, and ends with the cello reproducing the screech of an ungreased wheelbarrow? For the answers to these and other questions, readers need only consult the "Invecticon" at the back of this inspired book and then turn to the full passage, in all its vituperation. Among the eminent reviewers are George Bernard Shaw, Virgil Thomson, Hans von B'ow, Friedrich Nietzsche, Eduard Hanslick, Olin Downes, Deems Taylor, Paul Rosenfeld, and Oscar Wilde. Itself a classic, this collection of nasty barbs about composers and their works, culled mostly from contemporaneous newspapers and magazines, makes for hilarious reading and belongs on the shelf of everyone who loves'r hates ?lassical music. With a new foreword by Peter Schickele ("P.D.Q. Bach").

Music performance anxiety has long frustrated the artistic community and, while tricks and folk remedies abound, a comprehensive plan to solve this problem has remained. Divided by area of therapeutic interest, Performance Anxiety Strategies presents relevant and noteworthy research and insight into some of the most popular and many lesser-known therapies--including holistic, exposure, cognitive, behavioral, and medicinal treatments.

In this volume, Parncutt and McPherson propose to improve the situation by describing new approaches, informed by recent psychological research, to teaching music, learning music, and making music at all educational levels.

In this book, the author, through his own experiences playing the piano, aims to understand what exactly causes humans to feel nervous before public performances.

This accessible guide for students, teachers and performers at all levels unravels the complexities of musical performance and focuses on key aspects of learning, playing and responding to music. A survey of performance through the ages leads to a presentation of basic historical, analytical and psychological concepts.

In The Musician's Way, veteran performer and educator Gerald Klickstein draws on the latest research and his 30 years of professional experience to provide aspiring musicians with a roadmap to artistic excellence. Written in a conversational style, the text articulates landmark strategies that equip readers to advance their musical abilities and succeed as performing artists