The splendour of classical enlightenment Edinburgh supported a vibrant and musical and concert culture. Music, and particularly singing, spilt out of the concert halls and assembly rooms into gentleme
He died at only 37 but his fans are legion. INXS singer/songwriter Michael Hutchence was the celebrated frontman of a band that was the biggest in the world.Michael's big sister, Tina, adored him from
A chronicle of a lifetime's passion for gig-going, by one of British television's most respected writers. "Foreground Music is an absolute gem. Charming, very funny and often achingly melancholy, Gr
In the early eighteenth century, the benefit performance became an essential component of commercial music-making in Britain. Benefits, adapted from the spoken theatre, provided a new model from which instrumentalists, singers, and composers could reap financial and professional rewards. Benefits could be given as theatre pieces, concerts, or opera performances for the benefit of individual performers; or in aid of specific organizations. The benefit changed Britain's musico-theatrical landscape during this time and these special performances became a prototype for similar types of events in other European and American cities. Indeed, the charity benefit became a musical phenomenon in its own right, leading, for example, to the lasting success of Handel's Messiah. By examining benefits from a musical perspective - including performers, audiences, and institutions - the twelve chapters in this collection present the first study of the various ways in which music became associated with t
The correspondence between composer John Cage and Peter Yates represents the third and final part of Cage's most significant exchanges of letters, following those with Pierre Boulez and with David Tudor. Martin Iddon's book is the first volume to collect the complete extant correspondence with his critical friend, thus completing the 'trilogy' of Cage correspondence published by Cambridge. By bringing together more than 100 letters, beginning in 1940 and continuing until 1971, Iddon reveals the dialogue within which many of Cage's ideas were first forged and informed, with particular focus on his developing attitudes to music criticism and aesthetics. The correspondence with Yates represents precisely, in alignment with Cage's fastidious neatness, the part of his letter writing in which he engages most directly with the last part of his famous tricolon, 'composing's one thing, performing's another, listening's a third'.
