Book Description
For nearly three decades, Sandra Bertman has been exploring the power of the arts and belief symbols, metaphors, stories to alleviate psychological and spiritual pain not only of patients, grieving family members, and affected communities but also of the nurses, clergy and physicians who minister to them.
Her training sessions and clinical interventions are based on the premise that bringing out the creative potential inherent in each of us is just as relevant perhaps more so as psychiatric theory and treatement models since grief and loss are an integral part of life. Thus, this work was compiled to illuminate the many facets that link grief, counseling, and creativity. The multiple strategies suggested in these essays will help practitioners enlarge their repertoire of hands-on skills and foster introspection and empathy in readers.
Among the contributing authors are physician and nurse writers (Aaron Lazare, Bill Lamers, Laurence Schneiderman, and Cortney Davis), psychologists, photographers, and art and music therapists skilled with adult and child populations (Barbara M. Sourkes, Nancy Fried, and Elsa Dorfman). Essays on the art and thoughts of Kaethe Kollwitz and Edvard Munch, on traditional religious practices and the latest internet interventions, on puppets, music and film all enrich the dialogue.
The four sections of this anthology are (1) The Arts, Personal Griefs, Professional Roles; (2) Some Ways Caregivers Use the Arts for Themselves and Those They Companion; (3) Lessons from Cultures Old and New; and (4) Basic Needs of Grieving People. This provocative array of insights and techniques is further punctuated with rich fiction, poetry, photography, and visual art meant to address the impasses the moments of disconnection encountered in the human acts of caring and is geared to refuel even the most seasoned therapist.
Customer Reviews:
This book reviews the role of expressive arts in grief work.......1999-08-01
"Grief and the Healing Arts: Creativity as Therapy" is one of the most significant books I have ever read as a creative arts therapist. Professionals who use the arts in their grief work with clients, and individuals who have used the arts to come to terms with their own grief are represented. Poignant photagraphs underscore the articles. The editor, Sandra Bertman, PhD,is an expert in thanatology. She is Professor of Humanities in Medicine at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center. Bertman brings both a strong theoretical base and a respect for the anecdotal to her choices of articles for this book. I strongly recommend it!
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- Musicking is Relational--Refutes idea of "absolute music"
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Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Music/Culture)
Christopher Small
Manufacturer: Wesleyan University Press
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ASIN: 0819522570 |
Book Description
Extending the inquiry of his early groundbreaking books, Christopher Small strikes at the heart of traditional studies of Western music by asserting that music is not a thing, but rather an activity. In this new book, Small outlines a theory of what he terms "musicking," a verb that encompasses all musical activity from composing to performing to listening to a Walkman to singing in the shower.
Using Gregory Bateson's philosophy of mind and a Geertzian thick description of a typical concert in a typical symphony hall, Small demonstrates how musicking forms a ritual through which all the participants explore and celebrate the relationships that constitute their social identity. This engaging and deftly written trip through the concert hall will have readers rethinking every aspect of their musical worlds.
Customer Reviews:
Musicking is Relational--Refutes idea of "absolute music".......2004-10-08
According to Small, there is no such thing as "music." "Music" is a abstract reification of what is fundamentally of a process--'musicking.' Moreover, the term "music" is not held in hegemonic circles to be just *any* product of a process, but rather the product of the process of producing what is known as Western classical music. This music is today commonly perceived as being absolute or autonomous--self-contained, and when performed is performed only in the sense that the performance is judged against an abstract perfected Platonic-like form of the work in question. All performances, are therefore, approximations only of some ur-essence of the piece. The essence of the work (if such can be said to exist) in this paradigm lies in the notated score, which has assumed an inviolate sacredness since the 19th century unknown to previous paradigms (or other current ones) of musicking.
But Small, as I said, wishes to challenge this. What we need, instead, says Small--is to resort to the verb -"to music." To music is to take part, in any capacity, in a musical performance, whether by performing, listening, by rehearsing, or practicing, by providing material for performance (what is commonly called composition), or by dancing. This is true for active participation or passive participation, and Small means it in a descriptive, not prescriptive sense. To take part, is for Small, the important aspect over all--for it refers to the forging of relationships.
Small discusses at length the structure and evolution of modern spaces in which Western classical music is musicked. As the repertory has fossilized, modern orchestras have doubled since WWII. These spaces are built, especially in developing countries and growing metropolitian areas, as signals that these communities have reached a certain threshold of intellectual and cultural "development." Not only do these buildings rise as a sign of certain attitudes and assumptions about the world, they enforce those codes for others in the community---that classical music is a sui generis cultural form in its own right. Also, these halls typically enforce a kind of continuity with European past, particularly Renaissance or Ancient past. Not too many Gothic music halls.
Typically the space has a portion devoted to purchasing tickets (permission to enter this space) and to pick up tickets already purchased--which is the preferred entrance method culturally. There are at least two spaces inside--one smaller one designed for standing and talking, seeing and being seen. The other is very large, opulent, and designed for individual ceremonial seating--to inspire a sense of grandeur. Concert hall seating is designed to inscribe a one-way enclosed directional flow of value, rather than a reciprocal or multivalent direction, as in other forms of musicking. There are no outside windows in a Concert Hall. This is certainly different than in previous centuries, where this music would be played as part of a lively social scene which included many other facets.
Here in this new Concert space, the past is visited always in terms of the present. Rather than the historical past, we visit a mythical, idealized past through concert ritual---Small refers to it as a "theme park" made safe through canonization of works, bits and pieces of biography, and smug, safe distance.
One of the most significant contributions Small brings to the musicking table is his discussion of the anthropologist Gregory Bateson's philosophy of mind. In a refutation of Cartesian dualism, Bateson postulates that in their ability to respond and adjust to information received from their environment, all organisms have the property of mind. Thus, wherever there are patterns of matter called life, there is mind. In giving and responding to information, organisms shape their environments and each other, just as they are shaped by their environment and each other. These exchanges of information and respsonse creates a network of relationships that all activties of life and its environment are embedded in. Knowledge constitutes a relationship between knower and known--certainly interwoven with both context and content in these relationships. Thus, to try to gain knowledge of all things would to try to forge a priviledged position with respect to all things--domination.
These relationships are mediated by language, according to Small and Bateson--but it usually a language of gesture, rather than of words. Gestures are multivalent, complex, and often contradictory forms of communication, all at once. But in communicating gestures, the end parties of the relationship (relata) are not named--they are taken for granted. Thus what is gestured is the relation itself--an "affirmative" and "here-and-now" form of communication. Gestures are iconic, and yet still reflect a choice of representations. Drawing on the work of American philosopher Mark Johnson--Small elucidates Bateson's gestural language in terms of what Johnson calls 'metaphorical thinking."----and what Small winds up with ultimately is a somatic theory of knowledge--a bodily epistemology, if you will.
Thus, music we like makes us feel good in that it enacts relationships we belong in. We may also feel bad if we sense the illusory nature of those relationships. We may feel distant or upset if the relationships evoked are not what's "really going on" or are not ones we fit or belong in. But the experience of the relationship belongs more to the world of gestural paralanguage, rather then discursive verbalness. So words cannot fully express it. But nor is it simply emotive.
According to Small, there is no such thing as "absolute music"--musical works that exist solely to be contemplated aesthetically and abstractly. To take part is a musical work, either as performer, listerner, or janitor, is to take part in a dramatic representation of personal relationships, which is no less real for having numbers for a title or not having a written libretto. The distinction between music and that evoked by the music -"extra-musical" is thus collapsed--dramatic meanings taken from the piece are part of the musical meaning of the musicking.
The brilliance of this book lies in its use of the philosophy of somatic and ritual knowledge as productivity, and an willingness to untangle the sociocultural threads that enmesh any musical performance. This rightly deemphasizes musical emotivism and formalism, and allows us instead to examine the cultural phenomenology that is at work in any act(s) of musicking. However, the connections between emotion and gesture in the book are less than fully elaborated, and without that it is difficult to know precisely how to handle the emotions that are evoked in musicking, and so attempting to structure the relationships between emotions and bodily knowledge becomes confusing.
Book Description
"Altogether it is a book that should be required reading for any student of music, be he composer, performer, or theorist. It clears the air of many confused notions . . . and lays the groundwork for exhaustive study of the basic problem of music theory and aesthetics, the relationship between pattern and meaning."—David Kraehenbuehl, Journal of Music Theory
"This is the best study of its kind to have come to the attention of this reviewer."—Jules Wolffers, The Christian Science Monitor
"It is not too much to say that his approach provides a basis for the meaningful discussion of emotion and meaning in all art."—David P. McAllester, American Anthropologist
"A book which should be read by all who want deeper insights into music listening, performing, and composing."—Marcus G. Raskin, Chicago Review
Customer Reviews:
excellent smooth reading.......2007-04-02
I have yet to finish up with the book but it's a very clear thorough book. Meyer explains details that you thought couldn't be explained. I have intuited a lot of the material but it is so darn gratifying to see it written, to see I haven't made it up out of thin air!
Really a must read!!!
A true classic.......2007-01-20
What can I say? This book is essential reading for anybody who loves music. Period.
A masterpiece in its own right.......2005-11-16
How many music theory books written over 45 years ago are still taken seriously, never mind still in print?
It was my great pleasure to study with Leonard Meyer at the University of Pennsylvania from '86 through '89. Even though I am a composer and not really a theorist any more, I consider him one of my most influential teachers. His writings and lectures deeply affected me as a composer in that his understanding of music -- how it works, how it affects us, how our individual cognitive processes come to bear on what we are hearing -- found its way into my aesthetic. Even though Dr. Meyer in later years came to argue with himself (this was tremendous fun, by the way: sitting in his lectures, listening to him tell himself why his earlier writings were so wrong), this is great stuff, written by a great man.
Be forewarned that in spite of the title, this is musically technical stuff: don't expect vague, poetic philosophizing. The analyses are intense and detailed and require a strong background in music theory and form.
a truly innovative work.......2004-04-24
I see that the other reviewers here either hate this book or love it. I fall in the latter category. Having studied music theory extensively, this is the one book that actually deals with music as a communicating art, not as a bunch of symbols on paper. I think that any composer of music (pop, Classical, rock, etc.) could learn valuable pointers on how to write music that is interesting and moving to the listener. One of the problems with much 20th Century music is that it exists on paper as something interesting, but does not reach the ear as such. It appears that Leonard Meyer has been daring enough to admit that music can affect people's emotions and maintain their interest intellectually, rather than just existing as an exercise in note placement (alla Schenker or Forte).
Very good.......2004-01-31
I found this book quite enlightening, as well as pleasant to read. Like Professor Tolkien's hobbitts, I enjoy books that tell me things I already intuited but had no terms for.
The book explains concepts by illustrations from several fields. If you are familiar with even one of the fields, it gives you immediate insights to the others.
Book Description
This is a new, thoroughly revised edition of Paul Oliver's classic study of the blues. First published in 1960, this remarkable book has not been superseded and its reappearance will be welcomed by all who wish to understand the complexity of meaning in the blues and the experiences which they expressed.
Book Description
Daria Halprin presents a comprehensive approach to healing through movement and art that has been practiced at the Tampala Institute in California for over twenty years. Interweaving art and psychology, she offers a philosophy and methodology to deal with life's challenges. She suggests that through the integration of the physical, the emotional and the mental realms, real change is possible. In this essential resource for anyone interested in expressive arts therapy, Halprin also presents case studies and a selection of the exercises in movement, drawing and poetry that she has developed during her career.
Book Description
Approaches to Meaning in Music presents a survey of the problems and issues inherent in pursuing meaning and signification in music, and attempts to rectify the conundrums that have plagued philosophers, artists, and theorists since the time of Pythagoras. This collection brings together essays that reflect a variety of diverse perspectives on approaches to musical meaning. Established music theorists and musicologists cover topics including musical aspect and temporality, collage, borrowing and association, musical symbols and creative mythopoesis, the articulation of silence, the mutual interaction of cultural and music-artistic phenomena, and the analysis of gesture.
Contributors are Byron Almén, J. Peter Burkholder, Nicholas Cook, Robert S. Hatten, Patrick McCreless, Jann Pasler, and Edward Pearsall.
Book Description
This book offers new interpretations of many of Bach's late compositions which include complex musical techniques such as canon. These techniques held great significance for Bach and his contemporaries not only on account of the great skill they demanded but because of the meanings attached to them. Intricate musical devices were crucial to the Lutheran rituals of death and dying, to alchemy, to Enlightenment philosophies of stylistic change and musical progress, to musical representations of political power, and to the legacy of Bach into our own time.
Customer Reviews:
Finally someone who fully understands counterpoint!.......2007-09-26
Truly an excellent study of the meaning behind Bach's use of counterpoint in his treatises on Harmony, Counterpoint, and Fugue. David Yarsley's insightful understanding of tonal counterpoint and how it functions, in conjunction with his great historical perspective, allows him to draw some very interesting and useful conclusions on Bach's works. For example his explanation of Crab Cannon is about as good as it gets and clearly shows his mastery of the material at hand. This book is a must read for any serious composer or lover of Bach.
Book Description
Follow the Sacred Journey to Create One of the Lasting Musical Masterpieces of Our Time
Bob Marley is one of our most important and influential artists. Recorded in London after an assassination attempt on his life sent Marley into exile from Jamaica, Exodus is the most lasting testament to his social conscience. Named by Time magazine as “Album of the Century,” Exodus is reggae superstar Bob Marley’s masterpiece of spiritual exploration.
Vivien Goldman was the first journalist to introduce mass white audiences to the Rasta sounds of Bob Marley. Throughout the late 1970s, Goldman was a fly on the wall as she watched reggae grow and evolve, and charted the careers of many of its superstars, especially Bob Marley. So close was Vivien to Bob and the Wailers that she was a guest at his Kingston home just days before gunmen came in a rush to kill “The Skip.” Now, in The Book of Exodus, Goldman chronicles the making of this album, from its conception in Jamaica to the raucous but intense all-night studio sessions in London.
But The Book of Exodus is so much more than a making-of-a-record story. This remarkable book takes us through the history of Jamaican music, Marley’s own personal journey from the Trench Town ghetto to his status as global superstar, as well as Marley’s deep spiritual practice of Rastafari and the roots of this religion. Goldman also traces the biblical themes of the Exodus story, and its practical relevance to us today, through various other art forms, leading up to and culminating with Exodus.
Never before has there been such an intimate, first-hand portrait of Marley’s spirituality, his political involvement, and his life in exile in London, leading up to histriumphant return to the stage in Jamaica at the Peace Concert of 1978.
Here is an unforgettable portrait of Bob Marley and an acutely perceptive appreciation of his musical and spiritual legacy.
Customer Reviews:
The Book of Exodus:The Making and Meaning of Bob Marley and the Wailers' Album of the Century.......2007-01-16
Our daughter was very happy to receive the book. It was what she wanted for Christmas.
Present for my Marley-afficiando husband.......2006-12-23
He loves it. Said it had enough fresh-take or new info that it kept him interested and reading all the way through.
My added comment is he read it through a time of having to work 80-hr weeks, so it must be good.
Accurate Coverage of Mid 70s Kingston.......2006-08-22
Having spent much time in Kingston in the mid 1970s, this book accurately reflects the politics and gestalt of the time . Ms. Goldman's attention to geographical detail is one of the strong points of the book. The book is right on in terms of its intellectual context, as well as its more anecdotal style.Relly, this is one of the better books on Marley, Reggae, and Jamaica.
A MUST HAVE!.......2006-06-08
Simply put, this is a book full of indispensable knowledge. Vivien Goldman again (Soul Rebel-Natural Mystic)has put out a truly remarkable book about the great Bob Marley. This era in Bob's life has not been written about too much and Vivian recounts it with such fine details and first hand accounts that the reader can't help but to be extrememly thankful that she finally put it all on paper. The cover price alone is well worth it for the rare rare RARE picture of Bob with Claudie Massop, Tony Welch and Earl Wadley as they talked to Bob about the One Love Peace Concert.
Of all the books out there about Bob (and I have read just about every single one of them) this is without a doubt a true must have. Of the 50+ books written about Bob there are 7 must haves and this is one of them.
Music Writing At Its Best.......2006-06-05
It is convincingly argued that the pop album has become an effectively arcane form. But even in a digital age, certain albums continue to both define and transcend their creators. Sgt. Pepper, What's Going On, Astral Weeks, Blood On the Tracks... the list invites nerdish debate. But one title can never be excluded; Bob Marley and The Wailers' Exodus was the product of a specific time and place and remains the most extraordinary single work of the Third World's most extraordinary musical voice.
Vivien Goldman was one of the key writers during the Golden Age of British music journalism when the punk explosion inspired the intense gut-intellectual talents of the first post-sixties generation. Unlike many of her colleagues her love and understanding of black music has continually defined her work and The Book Of Exodus is perhaps the best thing she has done.
This is at once memoir, critical analysis and history. Vivien Goldman takes the reader into the studio as Exodus was created. A palpable sense of the immediacy of that process, the atmosphere (well fumigated with the herbsman's wares) and personalities involved come vividly to life through the eyes of the young fan-reporter. Most movingly, Goldman's own ability to connect her life as the North London-raised daughter of German-Jewish refugees from the Holocaust with the Trench Town experience that formed Bob Marley is at the heart of the book. This is no falsely crafted analogy. It is above all a spiritual link, the "Flash Of The Spirit" which has made the core African musical experience one of the world's most unifying cultural forces.
For anyone who wants to understand something of Marley's greatness and gentle charisma, Vivien Goldman shares her privileged experience of hanging with the man and his colleagues in both Jamaica and London. This was an artist whose words and music have inspired more people worldwide than maybe any other pop musician and yet the man who emerges here is a very real person living in a very real time. Goldman gives us a vivid sense of both.
Everyone with more than a passing interest in Marley and The Wailers should read this book. It will send you back to the music, reggae's shining hour, with renewed love and understanding.
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Music for a Mixed Taste: Style, Genre, and Meaning in Telemann's Instrumental Works
Steven, Zohn
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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ASIN: 0195169778 |
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Georg Philipp Telemann gave us one of the richest legacies of instrumental music from the eighteenth century. Though considered a definitive contribution to the genre during his lifetime, his concertos, sonatas, and suites were then virtually ignored for nearly two centuries following his death. Yet these works are now among the most popular in the baroque repertory. In Music for a Mixed Taste , Steven Zohn considers Telemann's music from stylistic, generic, and cultural perspectives. He investigates the composer's cosmopolitan "mixed taste"-a blending of the French, Italian, English, and Polish national styles-and his imaginative expansion of this concept to embrace mixtures of the old (late baroque) and new (galant ) styles. Telemann had an equally remarkable penchant for generic amalgamation, exemplified by his pioneering role in developing hybrid types such as the sonata in concerto style ("Sonate auf Concertenart") and overture-suite with solo instrument ("Concert en ouverture"). Zohn examines the extramusical meanings of Telemann's "characteristic" overture-suites, which bear descriptive texts associating them with literature, medicine, politics, religion, and the natural world, and which acted as vehicles for the composer's keen sense of musical humor. Zohn then explores Telemann's unprecedented self-publishing enterprise at Hamburg, and sheds light on the previously unrecognized borrowing by J.S. Bach from a Telemann concerto. Music for a Mixed Taste further reveals how Telemann's style polonaise generates musical and social meanings through the timeless oppositions of Orient-Occident, urban-rural, and serious-comic.
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