SKU: HL.1525

ISBN 9781574242676. UPC: 884088575465. 8.5x11.0x0.655 inches.

Centerstrea m presents this detailed look at the inner workings of the famous musical instrument manufacturer of Kalamazoo, Michigan before World War II. For the first time, Gibson fans can learn about the employees who built the instruments, exactly where the raw materials came from, the identity of parts vendors, and how the production was carried out. The book explains Gibson's pre-World War II factory order number and serial number systems, and corrects longstanding chronological errors. Previously unknown information about every aspect of the operation is covered in-depth. Noted historian Joe Spann gathered firsthand info from pre-war employees, and had access to major Gibson document collections around the world. Long time Gibson experts, as well as casual collectors, will find this volume an indispensable addition to their reference shelf.

SKU: HL.1303103

UPC: 196288173021.

In this last and comprehensive coursebook in the Practice in Music Theory series, the author has skillfully put together the demandsof the syllabus in an enlightening style for both teachers and music students. The book isorganised into 5 sections - Advanced Harmonic Vocabulary, Trio Sonata Textures, Pianoforte Writing, Melodic Composition, Score Reading and Analysis. Each section contains topics which provide the indispensable background tounderstanding the concepts found in music itself. Theoretical considerations apart, specific works are analysis, illustrations are abundant, musical examples and interesting exercises are plentiful throughout the book.

SKU: HL.49045639

ISBN 9781540004796. UPC: 888680710774. 9.5x12.0x0.37 inches.

Chaconne (2016), for string quartet, was commissioned by the Daedalus Quartet to celebrate its 15th anniversary. The commission was supported by New Music USA, made possible by annual program support and/or endowment gifts from Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, Helen F. Whitaker Fund, and Aaron Copland Fund for Music.My music has a substantial history with Daedalus. I composed the Third String Quartet (2008) for them, and subsequently they performed my three string quartets on several occasions and recorded them brilliantly on Bridge Records (Bridge 9352: Music of Fred Lerdahl, vol. 3). Chaconne is in one movement lasting 19 minutes. It is effectively my fourth string quartet. Quartets 1-3 form a unified cycle lasting 70 minutes. When I finished the cycle, I thought I would never write again for the medium; yet I could not resist the opportunity of working again with Daedalus. The issue was how to compose another string quartet unrelated to the earlier cycle. The solution came from my solo cello piece There and Back Again (2010), which was based on a four-bar variation pattern from a 17th-century chaconne. Unlike the asymmetrical phrases and expanding variations of much of my music, the chaconne form requires symmetrical phrases and strictly periodic variations. I wished to work again with these symmetries but on a larger scale. Chaconne also differs in character and expression from the three-quartet cycle. The cycle is inward and intense, a kind of psychological excavation. Chaconne is, for the most part, transparent and playful. Many of its textures emerge from little canons, not completely unlike the rounds that children sing. Any composer who writes in chaconne form (one thinks above all of the last movement of Bach's D minor violin partita and the finale of Brahms's Fourth Symphony) is confronted with the challenge of how to create a larger form out of a constantly repeating pattern.My Chaconne grows from paired antecedent-consequent phrases, each variation lasting eight bars. The 50 variations group into three large rotations, forming three arcs of tension and relaxation, with subtle parallel connections across the rotations. Notwithstanding my attraction to chaconne form, I purposefully disguised its symmetries and periodicities in order to build an overall dramatic shape. Fred Lerdahl.

SKU: HL.14015279

ISBN 9780711995796.

This new Opera was first performed in 1998 in Huddersfield by Opera North. Designed for the modern stage, it utilises only a small cast and orchestra - albeit one with a good variety of percussion! The libretto is adapted by the composer from the play 'The Love of Don Pemperlin for Belisa in the Garden' by Feredico Garcia Lorca, translated into English by David Johnston. The plot revolves around the ill-fated marriage of Don Pemperlin, an ageing bachelor and his beautiful neighbour Belisa, which was suggested by Pemperlin's maid. Tricks and misunderstandings abound and because of them, Pemperlin ends by stabbing himself and dying even as Belisa proclaims her love for him.

SKU: BT.FORFSE01

English.

An outstandingly simple and practical introduction to music theory. Recently modernised, this ever popular series remains the ideal companion to teaching in classes or instrumental lessons. Book 1 and Book 2 are designed to be used alongside each other, enabling the pupil to complete the exercises in one book whilst the other is being marked.

SKU: LO.10-5819MD

ISBN 9780787789633.

The beloved and longstanding Christmas classic recorded and made popular by Amy Grant has been given a creative twist by incorporating a duet between Mary and Joseph. The choir beautifully accompanies and supports. This tender anthem beautifully highlights the emotions of Mary and Joseph as the prepared for the birth of Jesus.

SKU: CA.9002000

Language: German/Italian.

Fra nz Sales Kandler (1792-1831), an enthusiastic Viennese music scholar, wrote the essay Cenni storico-critici in memory and in honor of the composer Johann Adolf Hasse (1699-1783). In this, he recommended Hasse - who was outstandingly successful in his day - to younger generations of composers as a role model, despite the social and stylistic changes which had taken place in the intervening years. The original Italian text is published here for the first time with a German translation.

SKU: PE.EP73479

ISBN 9790577019888. 297 x 210mm inches. English.

At First Light was commissioned by Eric Bruskin, a resident of Philadelphia, USA, in memory of his mother. Eric had a longstanding enthusiasm for my work, and I was touched to be the person he approached for a task which is both a privilege and a daunting responsibility. In a sense, no music can ever measure up to the weight of love or the hope of consolation vested in it under such circumstances - but in memory I carry the deaths of both my own parents, and I was able to draw upon that. Eric's fondness for my Cello Sonata (itself written in memoriam) led him to ask that I include a solo 'cello part in the new work - but his attachment also to my polyphonic sacred choral writing meant that he wanted a centrepiece which would be both a showcase of that approach and the celebration of a life well lived. Therefore, the seven movements of At First Light arrange themselves as a series of slow meditations surrounding an exuberant 9-minute motet in which the lamenting cello falls temporarily silent.

Eric's Jewish faith meant that approaching an agnostic humanist brought up within the Anglican tradition was hardly free of problems! Gradually, though, I was able to win his approval for a collated mosaic of texts. This embraces some liturgical Latin (necessary for the motet) as the shared preserve of broad western culture in general, but balances it with a secular approach to loss, celebration, remembrance and the many shades of our mourning those whom we see no longer. Eric was adamant that he did not want the title Requiem; but what has emerged is still a form of semi-secular Requiem in all but name, taking its title instead from a phrase in the poem by Thomas Blackburn set as the third movement. This seemed to suggest succinctly how the loss of one very close to us is an awakening into an unfamiliar world where everything is changed. Following the exuberant central movement, the texts by the Lebanese-born Kahlil Gibran and the US, Kentuckian poet Wendell Berry first address the departed loved one directly, then place us within an imaginary funeral cortege, where the perennial and universal in human experience become personal without subscribing explicitly to any particular faith (or lack of it). The final text of all is a translation of a Hebraic prayer, requested and provided by Eric Bruskin, which serves to mirror its Latin counterpart heard at the outset.

Throughout , the lamenting cello represents a commentary on the experience articulated in the text. It evokes and, in a sense, tries to embrace and sanctify the individual existential journeys of the bereft, as they in turn seek to make their own sense of what the short-lived Second World War poet Alun Lewis called 'the unbearable beauty of the dead' (movement 5).

In a modern world hostage to ever greater menace, displacement, bloodshed and anguish, I hope fervently that this music not only brings a measure of solace to the person who commissioned it, but also makes its own small contribution to bailing out the sinking ship of humanity.