Music and esotericism /
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This collection of essays analyzes the relationships that exist between esotericism and music from Antiquity to the 20th century, investigating ways in which magic, astrology, alchemy, divination, and cabbala interact with music. The volume seeks to dissolve artificial barriers between the history of art, music, science, and intellectual history by establishing an interdisciplinary dialogue about music as viewed against a specific cultural background. The synthesis of scientific and historical contexts with respect to music, explored here on a large scale for the first time, opens up a wealth of new approaches to music historical research, music performance, and musical composition. Each chapter presents either a unique example of music functioning within esoteric and scientific traditions or a demonstration of the influence of those traditions upon selected musical works. L'ouvrage analyse les relations entre l'ésotérisme et la musique de l'Antiquité au 20ème siècle étudiant comment la magie, l'astrologie, l'alchimie, la divination et la cabale ont interagit avec la musique. Il vise à dépasser les frontières entre l'histoire de l'art, l'histoire de la musique et l'histoire des sciences et des idées afin de nouer un dialogue interdisciplinaire sur la musique autour de contextes historiques et scientifiques précis. L'ouvrage offre une première synthèse sur les rapports entre ésotérisme et musique ainsi que diverses pistes de recherche à poursuivre.
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"This volume developed out of the conference "Music and esotericism : art and science of sounds facing the occult knowledge", organized at the Academia Belgica in Rome (14-18 April 2008)"--Introd. :
1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004182790 :
1871-1405 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Why We Sing: Music, Word, and Liturgy in Early Christianity : Essays in Honour of Anders Ekenberg's 75th Birthday /
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This volume sheds new light on an array of late ancient Christian liturgical sources, practices, and traditions emerges from these multidisciplinary studies on the interplay of New Testament writings, ancient music, liturgical spaces, biblical interpretation, and reception history.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004522053
9789004522039
Latin and Music in the Early Modern Era : Education, Theory, Composition, Performance and Reception /
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Situating the close relationship between Latin and music within its historical context, this volume presents an overview of Latin and music in the educational system of the time - schools, choir schools and universities - and the development and pervasive influence of musical humanism. This influence is seen primarily in the writings of music theorists, the documents of dedication found in music publications and above all in the settings of classical and Neo-Latin texts as well as in some liturgical and extra-liturgical ones. Discussion of this repertoire forms the centre of the volume. The emphasis is on practical matters: the study of Latin and music, and the music's composition, performance and reception.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004463332
9789004463301
Wittgenstein as philosophical tone-poet : philosophy and music in dialogue /
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This book provides the first in-depth exploration of the importance of music for Ludwig Wittgenstein's life and work. Wittgenstein's remarks on music are essential for understanding his philosophy: they are on the nature of musical understanding, the relation of music to language, the concepts of representation and expression, on melody, irony and aspect-perception, and, on the great composers belonging to the Austrian-German tradition. Biography and philosophy, this work suggests that Wittgenstein was a composer of philosophy who used the musical form as a blueprint for his own writing and thought. For Wittgenstein music is not alone, but connects and resonates with our cultural forms of life. His relation to composers, especially to Richard Wagner and Gustav Mahler, enables Wittgenstein to address the question of how to do philosophy and compose music in the breakdown of tradition. Unlike his conservative musical sensibility, Wittgenstein's philosophy is open to musical experiments. Reflecting on his remarks on music makes it possible to compare the therapeutic aim of his philosophical activity with that of music, and thus notice affinities between Wittgenstein and John Cage.
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1 online resource (225 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789401210997 :
0167-4102 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Ḥāwī l-Funūn wa-Salwat al-Maḥzūn, Encompasser of the Arts and Consoler of the Grief-Stricken by Ibn al-Ṭaḥḥān : Annotated Translation and Commentary /
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Ḥāwī l-Funūn (Encompasser of the Arts) of Ibn al-Ṭaḥḥān (d. ca. 1057) is a medieval Arabic music dictionary that complements other sources because of the practical knowledge of the author who was an accomplished singer, lutenist and composer. The first part in 80 chapters deals with compositions; voice production and characteristics, unison and duet singing, taking care of the voice; preludes, ornaments, ṭarab; the importance of tonality; approaches to teaching; musical and extra-musical behavior at the court; names of Syrian Fatimid and Ishshīdid singers. The second part in 22 chapters includes lute manufacturing, frets placement, stringing and tuning; 47 rhythmic ornaments, names and definitions of rhythmic and melodic modes; types of dances; descriptions of 12 instruments.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004465497
9789004465466
Shāh Esmā'il and his Three Wives : A Persian-Turkish Tale as Performed by the Bards of Khorasan /
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This book is the first full text and translation of a prosimetric tale from the rich repertoire of Central and West Asian bards to be published with ready access to recordings of both the prose narration and the sung verse. In Iranian Khorasan, bards known as bakhshi present tales that in other regions are performed wholly in a Turkic language with prose narration in Persian, Khorasani Turkish or Kurmanji Kurdish and most verses in Turkish. We compare portions of the full performance transcribed here with excerpts from two performances of Iranian bakhshis in the 1970s. Three introductory chapters and a commentary discuss musical and verbal dimensions of the bakhshi's art in relation to relevant social, historical, and literary contexts.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004471221
9789004471214
Harmonics /
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Ptolemy's comprehensive treatises on astronomy and geography were influential for nearly two millennia. Equally influential was his treatise on harmonics, the ancient science which combined and brought to completion the study of philosophy and science. This volume offers a comprehensive English translation and commentary of Ptolemy's Harmonics . The treatise begins with Ptolemy's study of pitches and intervals, for which he extracts both an idealized musical scale and a new acoustical tool. After discussing modulation, he expands his horizons by applying musical intervals to the human soul and celestial bodies, ultimately describing a cosmic harmony. The English translation faithfully reproduces Ptolemy's style and includes all the charts surviving in the manuscript tradition. The commentary offers a full exegesis of the text, loci paralleli, and citations of modern scholarly sources.
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1 online resource (xxxvii, 192 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 167-179) and indexes. :
9789004351165 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Henry George Farmer and the First International Congress of Arab Music (Cairo 1932) /
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Henry George Farmer (1882-1965) was a pioneering musicologist who specialized in Arab music. In 1932, he participated in the First International Congress of Arab Music in Cairo, during which he maintained a journal recording his daily activities, interactions with fellow delegates and dignitaries, and varied perambulations throughout the city. This journal, and the detailed minutes he kept for his chaired Commission on History and Manuscripts, were never published. They reveal aspects and inner-workings of the Congress that have hitherto remained unknown. The illustrations and photos contained therein, as well as additional photos that were never seen, provide visual documentation of the Congress's participants and musical ensembles.
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1 online resource (xxvi, 430 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004284142 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Folklore, religion and the songs of a Bengali madman : a journey between performance and the politics of cultural representation /
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This book explores historical and cultural aspects of modern and contemporary Bengal through the performance-centred study of a particular repertoire: the songs of the saint-composer Bhaba Pagla (1902-1984), who is particularly revered among Baul and Fakir singers. The author shows how songs, if examined as 'sacred scriptures', represent multi-dimensional texts for the study of South Asian religions. Revealing how previous studies about Bauls mirror the history of folkloristics in Bengal, this book presents sacred songs as a precious symbolic capital for a marginalized community of dislocated and unorthodox Hindus, who consider the practice of singing in itself an integral part of the path towards self-realization.
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1 online resource (xvi, 332 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 284-324) and indexes. :
9789004324718 :
1570-078x ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Arab music ; a survey of its history and its modern practice /
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Offering a comprehensive survey of the history and the development of Arab music and musical theory from its pre-Islamic roots until 1970, this book also offers a discussion of the major genres and forms practiced today, such as the Egyptian gil, the Algerian raï and Palestinian hip hop; it also touches upon musical instruments and folk music.
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Also issued in print: 2021. :
1 online resource (viii, 200 pages) : illustrations :
Specialized. :
Includes bibliographical references, discography and index. :
9781789699333 (PDF ebook) :
Retellings : the Bible in literature, music, art and film /
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In recent years biblical scholars and students have become increasingly interested in studying retellings of biblical stories in the arts, not only for their relation to the biblical text but also for the 'story' they have to tell (or, if they are not strictly 'retellings', for the light they might shed on the biblical text). The eight lively contributions to this volume illustrate a range of exciting approaches to retellings of the Bible in literature, music, art and film and reveal something of the scope of this fascinating and rapidly expanding area of inquiry. The present collection of essays appears concurrently in a special issue of the journal Biblical Interpretation. Since it was founded in 1993, Biblical Interpretation has played a key role in fostering the publication of articles in the newly developing area of the reception history of the Bible in the arts. (Originally published as issue 4-5 of Volume 15 (2007) of Brill's journal Biblical Interpretation )
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references. :
9789047440123 :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Singing Alexandria : music between practice and textual transmission /
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This volume investigates the transmission and ancient reception of ancient Greek texts with musical notation. It provides a reconstruction of the dynamics of reception orienting the re-use and re-shaping of musical and poetic tradition in the entertainment culture of the post-classical Greek world. The study makes full use of literary, papyrological and epigraphic evidence, and in particular includes a detailed philological analysis of surviving musical papyri and of their relationship to the editorial activity of Alexandrian scholarship. The study helps to relocate musical documents in the world of their production and reception.
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Revision of the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--Scuola normale superiore, Pisa, 2003. :
1 online resource (xiv, 241 pages) : facsimiles. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 215-230) and indexes. :
9789047408970 :
0169-8958 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Canadian Pentecostals, the Trinity, and contemporary worship music : the things we sing /
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This volume offers a landmark analysis of the trinitarian impulses in contemporary worship music used by the Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada (PAOC). It considers whether the lyrics from the most commonly used PAOC songs are consistent with this Evangelical group's trinitarian statement of faith. Colin Gunton's trinitarian theology provides the theological rationale for eight original and qualitative content analyses of these songs. Three major areas are considered-the doctrine of God, human personhood, and cosmology. Making use of Gunton's notions of relationality, particularity, and perichoresis, along with several key Pentecostal scholars, this book serves as a helpful descriptive and prescriptive theological resource for the dynamic practice of a trinitarian faith.
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1 online resource (xi, 418 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004343320 :
1876-2247 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
The Ottoman tanbūr : the long-necked lute of Ottoman art music /
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Tanbūrs are long-necked lute-like instruments played in the art, Sufi, and folk musical traditions along the Silk Road and beyond. This book provides a detailed study of the history of the tanbūr, its role in Ottoman music, construction and playing technique.
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Also issued in print: 2022. :
1 online resource (168 pages) : illustrations :
Specialized. :
Includes bibliographical references, discography and index. :
9781803271071 (PDF ebook) :
Kitāb al-adwār fi ʼl-mūsīqī : Tarjuma-yi Fārsī bih inḍimām-i matn-i ʿArabi-yi ān /
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In his younger years, the famous musician and theorist of music Ṣafī al-Dīn al-Urmawī (d. 683/1294) seemed destined for an administrative career. Having moved to Baghdad as an adolescent, he had received a first-class education, excelling in Arabic, calligraphy, and Shāfīʿī and comparative law especially. For a time he was a copyist in the library of the caliph al-Mustaʿṣim (reg. 640-56/1242-58) and a teacher of calligraphy. His talents as a lute-player and musician then led to a brilliant career at al-Mustaʿṣim's court. Under al-Mustaʿṣim he also held juridical office, while under the Mongols he was head of the chancery of Baghdad and supervisor of the religious endowments of Iraq. Administrative talents notwithstanding, it was in musical theory that Urmawī secured himself eternal fame. Innovative and concise, yet complete, his Kitāb al-adwār fi ʼl-mūsīqī became the most popular textbook in music for centuries. An undated, anonymous Persian translation is published here, together with the Arabic original.
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1 online resource. :
9789004402782
9789646781627
An Arabic musical and socio-cultural glossary of Kitab al-aghani /
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George Dimitri Sawa's Arabic Musical and Socio-Cultural Glossary of Kitāb al-Aghānī is the first comprehensive lexicographical study of Umayyad and early Abbāsid-era music theory and practices. It defines melodic and rhythmic modes, musical forms, instruments, technical terms and metaphors used in evaluating compositions and performances, and the emotional effects of ṭarab. It explains the processes of composition and learning, performance practice, musical change and aesthetics, and addresses the behavior of court musicians to help understand societal views of music. Medieval dictionaries, reference works on Arabic literature, theoretical treatises as well as full quotations from the Aghānī are used. This glossary will be of interest to scholars and students of the music and socio-cultural history of the early Islamic era.
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1 online resource (9, 556, 6 pages) : illustrations. :
Includes bibliographical references (p. 3-6 ). :
9789004279094 :
0929-2403 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Theology as improvisation : a study in the musical nature of theological thinking /
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In Theology as Improvisation , Nathan Crawford reimagines the possibilities for how theology thinks God within a postmodern world. He argues that theology is improvisation by analyzing the nature of attunement within theological thinking and how this opens certain possibilities for theology. He does so by engaging a number of thinkers, including Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, David Tracy, and Saint Augustine. He navigates the nature of thinking God in a postmodern world by using these thinkers to offer critiques of onto-theological thinking and totalizing systems while also following their embrace of the fragment and focus upon the nature of thinking as attunement. The result is a unique way of approaching theological thinking in our contemporary context.
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1 online resource (ix, 235 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004245983 :
1876-1518 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Gurdjieff and music : the Gurdjieff/de Hartmann piano music and its esoteric significance /
: 1 online resource (xvi, 279 pages) : illustrations, music. : Includes bibliographical references (p. 257-274) and index. : 9789004284449 : 1871-1405 ; : Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Höfische Musikkultur im klassischen Islam : Ibn Faḍlallāh al-'Umarī (gest. 749/1349) über die dichterische und musikalische Kunst der Sängersklavinne /
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"In Der Ṭarab der Sängersklavinnen gibt Yasemin Gökpinar einen Einblick in Ibn Faḍl-Allāh al-'Umarī's Masālik al-abṣār fīmamālik al-amṣār (vol. 10) über Hofmusik von den Abbasiden bis zu den Mamluken mit Schwerpunkt auf den Sängersklavinnen (qiyān). Die interdisziplinäre Studie stellt Autor und Werk vor und etabliert das Liederbuch als historische Quelle. Zudem werden unterschiedliche strukturelle und inhaltliche Aspekte kombiniert: eine Untersuchung der Liedtextüberlieferer und des soziokulturellen Kontextes des Hoflebens im Lichte von Thomas Bauer's Ambiguitätstheorie, eine musikwissenschaftliche Analyse des Verhältnisses zwischen poetischem Metrum der Lieder und ihren musikalischen Rhythmen, schliesslich eine Betrachtung des Handlungsspielraumes der Sängerinnen und ihrer (relativen) Macht über ihre Besitzer durch ihre hervorragende Ausbildung und natürlichen Anlagen. In this volume Yasemin Gökpinar provides insight into Ibn Faḍl-Allāh al-'Umarī's Masālik al-abṣār fīmamālik al-amṣār (vol. 10) about court music from the Abbasids to the Mamluks, with special emphasis on the subject of high ranking singing slave-girls (qiyān). Her interdisciplinary study focuses on the author and his work, and presents the songbook as a historical source. Different aspects concerning structure and contents are combined: an investigation of the song transmitters, a study into the socio-cultural context of courtly life with an application of Thomas Bauer's theory of ambiguity, a musicological analysis of the relation between metre of song texts and rhythmic modes in music, and finally an exploration of the singing-girls' leeway and even power over their owners, through education".
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004417649
Musical and socio-cultural anecdotes from Kitab al-aghani al-kabir
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The present volume consists of translated anecdotes, on musicological and socio-cultural topics, from al-Iṣbahānī's Kitāb al-Aghānī al-Kabīr ( The Grand Book of Songs ) with annotations and commentaries. It deals with musical rhythmic and melodic modes, technical terms and treatises; music instruments; composition techniques and processes; education and oral/written transmissions; vocal and instrumental performances and their aesthetics; solo and ensemble music; change and its inevitability; musical and textual improvisations; ṭarab and the acute emotions of joy or grief; medieval dances; social status. Though extracts from The Grand Book of Songs have been translated in European languages since 1816, this work presents a much larger and more comprehensive scope that will benefit musicologists, medievalist and Middle Eastern scholars as well as the general reader.
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1 online resource. :
Includes bibliographical references and index. :
9789004383654 :
0929-2403 ;