Music Reviews & Criticism

Many people know the tale: In 1814 Francis Scott Key witnessed the British bombardment of Fort McHenry and the heroism of Americas defenders; seein...

Liszt in Context explores the political, social, philosophical and professional currents that surrounded Franz Liszt and illuminates the competing...

Benjamin Britten, pianist, conductor, educator, composer of  a wide range of music from large-scale operas and choral works to string quartets and ...

 A fascinating journey into global politics that made classical music a proxy for power, inadvertently creating the sound of Hollywood, and excludi...

What if our existence is a product of its interruptions? What if the words that structure our lives are themselves governed by the periods and comm...

From classic films like Carmen Jones to contemporary works like The Diary of Sally Hemings and U-Carmen eKhayelitsa, American and South African art...

Wind bands are common around the world, and the small Mediterranean island of Malta is no exception. Their abundance in Malta testifies to the p...

Licia Fiol-Matta traces the careers of four iconic Puerto Rican singersMyrta Silva, Ruth Fernández, Ernestina Reyes, and Lucecita Benítezto explore...

Written by a fan, about the fans, and for the fans, this book is about Beatles fandom and excitement for the band as it continues, undiminished,...

Cuban Music Counterpoints maps the intellectual and artistic networks Cuban composers forged between 1940 and 1991 by exploring moments--concerts, ...

Postgraduate Research in Music: A Step-by-Step Guide to Writing a Thesis is an essential text for music students who are undertaking postgraduate r...

Robert de Reims, also known as La Chievre de Rains, was among the earliest trouvèrespoet-composers who were contemporaries of the troubadours but w...

PROSE Award- Music and Performing Arts Category Winner A framework for understanding the deep archive of Black performance in the digital era In an...

In Acoustic Profiles, author Randolph Jordan proposes a new model for image-sound analysis that incorporates the vocabulary and methods of environm...

In the whole body of Christmas carols sung in English, among the most famous and beloved is a song universally called The Twelve Days of Christm...

Warren Zevon and Philosophy is a collection of chapters on Zevons life and music, authored by philosophers who are also Zevon fans, providing new a...

Beginning with a comparison of the American acoustic guitar world in the early 1960s with that of today, then describing iconic performances at sto...

Long before the world discovered grunge, the Pacific Northwest was already home to a singular music culture. In the late 1950s, locals had codified...

This collection provides an in-depth look at musical criticism between the mid-nineteenth and the mid-twentieth century. British music between the...

In this celebration of Milton Babbitt's art, Andrew Mead explores the development of a central figure in contemporary American music. As a teacher ...

The familiar story of Delta blues musician Robert Johnson, who sold his soul to the devil at a Mississippi crossroads in exchange for guitar virtuo...

The familiar story of Delta blues musician Robert Johnson, who sold his soul to the devil at a Mississippi crossroads in exchange for guitar virtuo...

Addicted to Noise collects the best interviews, profiles, and essays Michael Goldberg has written during his forty-plus years as a journalist. From...

The organ is one of the oldest instruments in Western music, and its sound has inspired many of the greatest composers from the past half a millenn...

ReSounding Poverty: Romani Music and Development Aid engages with global scholarship on development, poverty, and applied research. It addresses th...

A revisionist history of minimalism's transformative rise, through the voices of the musicians who created it. When composers like Philip Glass and...