The Dolby Era: Film Sound in Contemporary Hollywood (Inside Popular Film)

Book Description

Since the 1970s Hollywood cinema has been the site of remarkable developments in film sound. New revolutionary sound technologies have been developed, a new generation of filmmakers have learned to use them as powerful storytelling tools, and audiences have enjoyed a different way of experiencing films, both theatrically and at home. For the first time, through historical analysis and interviews with key players, such as Ray Dolby (founder and creator of Dolby Laboratories), Ioan Allen (the initiator of the Dolby Stereo program), sound designer Gary Rydstrom (Titanic, Terminator 2, Toy Story, Saving Private Ryan, Finding Nemo), and supervising sound editor Bruce Stambler (The Fugitive, Batman Forever, Clear and Present Danger, The Fast and the Furious, XXX) this book aims at providing a substantial account of sound in contemporary Hollywood cinema since the early 1970s.

Book Description

This important new biographical dictionary is the most comprehensive single-volume work on Russian and Soviet composers published outside of the Soviet Union to date. Incorporating contributions by a distinguished group of performers, musicologists, and other scholars, including many specialists in Russian music, it provides detailed, up-to-date information on over 2,000 composers, the majority of whom are not represented in other English-language references. Entries vary from brief profiles of lesser-known figures to lengthy articles on major Russian and Soviet composers. Each of the longer essays summarizes current scholarship on the composer, offers new insights, and complements or corrects coverage available in standard music references. Commentary on musical style is presented in most entries, and musical influences are clarified through careful documentation of teacher-student relationships. The biographical section is followed by a selective list of compositions arranged according to media and genre. The accompanying bibliography lists works consulted as well as sources of additional information on the individual composer, and an international discography documents the breadth of the repertory committed to phonodisc, tape, and compact disc. Thorough cross-referencing facilitates the location of materials. Reflecting meticulous research and including first-hand information supplied by living Soviet composers, this work makes a significant contribution to music scholarship. This book is recommended for library reference shelves and courses in Russian music.

A History of Russian Music: From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar

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Non-technical; Perhaps useful to a dilettante
Used for Russian Music class

A History of Russian Music: From Kamarinskaya to Babi Yar
Francis Maes
Manufacturer: University of California Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0520248252

Book Description

Francis Maes's comprehensive and imaginative book introduces the general public to the scholarly debate that has revolutionized Russian music history over the past two decades. Based on the most recent critical literature, A History of Russian Music summarizes the new view of Russian music and provides a solid overview of the relationships between artistic movements and political ideas.
The revision of Russian music history may count as one of the most significant achievements of recent musicology. The Western view used to be largely based on the ideas of Vladimir Stasov, a friend and confidant of leading nineteenth-century Russian composers who was more a propagandist than a historian. With the deconstruction of Stasov's interpretation, stereotyped views have been replaced by a fuller understanding of the conditions and the context in which composers such as Tchaikovsky, Mussorgsky, and Stravinsky created their oeuvres. Even the more recent history of Soviet music, in particular the achievement of Dmitry Shostakovich, is being assessed on new documentary grounds.
A more complex conception of Russian music develops as Maes explores the cultural and historical milieu from which great works have emerged. Questioning and re-examining traditional views, the author considers the personal development of composers, the relationship of art to social and political ideals in Russia, and the ideologies behind musical research.

Customer Reviews:

Non-technical; Perhaps useful to a dilettante.......2005-11-25

"A History of Russian Music," by Francis Maes, could have been better titled: "Music's Place in the History of Russia and the Soviet Union." Though there are some basic definitions given (scattered on pages throughout), there is not one musical example of any of the folk song types listed. For example, no one will, after reading this book alone, understand what a "protyazhyana" is, other than a "drawn-out song." One could say the same about any of Kenny G's music. Analysis of the music is limited. The author obviously assumes the reader has no knowledge of music theory. For example, in a particularly pedantic passage, he acknowledges that his explanation of the octatonic scale "sounds complicated." If you are interested in "play by play" examination of opera plots, etc., then this is the book for you. For an actual understanding of Russian musical style, there are better sources. This book appeared to be a dumbed-down version of Richard Taruskin's scholarship - one will note Taruskin is the most cited author in the book. All in all, not bad for the musical novice, and a great look at how music fit in with the history of Russia and the Soviet Union, but lacks clarity and detail in its definitions, and is without the technical analysis required for scholarly research. More frustrating than helpful. Great cover art though.

Used for Russian Music class.......2005-09-17

This book was required for my Russian Music History class, and so to save money, I bought it off Amazon. However, the great thing about this being our textbook is that it reads like a novel. It's very descriptive, gives all the information you might need on any particular major Russian composer, along with a lot of interesting background insight that helps the understanding of the music and composers even more. The history of Russia at the time of the composers is also included within and so this really is a great all around Russian Music History book. I'd recommend it to anyone needing information the topic.

Retuning Culture: Musical Changes in Central and Eastern Europe

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Retuning Culture: Musical Changes in Central and Eastern Europe
Mark Slobin
Manufacturer: Duke University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

As a measure of individual and collective identity, music offers both striking metaphors and tangible data for understanding societies in transition—and nowhere is this clearer than in the recent case of the Eastern Bloc. Retuning Culture presents an extraordinary picture of this phenomenon. This pioneering set of studies traces the tumultuous and momentous shifts in the music cultures of Central and Eastern Europe from the first harbingers of change in the 1970s through the revolutionary period of 1989–90 to more recent developments.
During the period of state socialism, both the reinterpretation of the folk music heritage and the domestication of Western forms of music offered ways to resist and redefine imposed identities. With the removal of state control and support, music was free to channel and to shape emerging forms of cultural identity. Stressing both continuity and disjuncture in a period of enormous social and cultural change, this volume focuses on the importance and evolution of traditional and popular musics in peasant communities and urban environments in Hungary, Poland, Romania, Russia, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, the former Yugoslavia, Macedonia, and Bulgaria. Written by longtime specialists in the region and considering both religious and secular trends, these essays examine music as a means of expressing diverse aesthetics and ideologies, participating in the formation of national identities, and strengthening ethnic affiliation.
Retuning Culture provides a rich understanding of music’s role at a particular cultural and historical moment. Its broad range of perspectives will attract readers with interests in cultural studies, music, and Central and Eastern Europe.

Contributors. Michael Beckerman, Donna Buchanan, Anna Czekanowska, Judit Frigyesi, Barbara Rose Lange, Mirjana Lausevic, Theodore Levin, Margarita Mazo, Steluta Popa, Ljerka Vidic Rasmussen, Timothy Rice, Carol Silverman, Catherine Wanner

Rock Around the Bloc: A History of Rock Music in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, 1954-1988

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Rock Around the Bloc: A History of Rock Music in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, 1954-1988
Timothy W. Ryback
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0195056337

Book Description

In February 1987, Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev personally received Yoko Ono in Moscow. In a surprising revelation, Raisa declared that she and her husband were fans of John Lennon. While Raisa sang lyrics from a Lennon song, the Soviet leader observed solemnly, "John should have been here." It was a stunning declaration. After three decades of virulent anti-rock rhetoric, a Soviet leader had allied himself with the forces of rock and roll. In the era of glasnost and perestroika, rock and roll has provided, in a very real sense, the soundtrack to the Gorbachev revolution. This stunning policy shift has fueled the already burgeoning Soviet rock scene and has commanded intense media attention in the West. But as Timothy W. Ryback demonstrates in this lively and revealing book, Western music, particularly rock and roll, is not new to the Soviet bloc. Indeed, as Mr. Ryback shows, rock music has effected one of the most significant transformations ever in Soviet bloc society. He traces the emergence of rock culture in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union from 1954 to the present day, where it has become unquestionably the most pervasive form of mass cultural activity in Communist society. Charting this process, Rock Around the Bloc looks at both sides of the thirty-year war between rock fans and Soviet bloc governments. It takes the reader into the Kremlin for special Central Committee meetings devoted to the "evil" of rock music; into the streets of beleaguered 1968 Prague and 1981 Poland where rock bands and their fans helped spearhead social and political reforms; and into the bedrooms of young people secretly tuning into rock broadcasts from the BBC and Radio Free Europe. The reader comes to realize that in some ways, life in the Soviet bloc was surprisingly similar to life in the West. There was the Elvis craze in the late 1950s, Beatlemania in 1964, and the disturbing appearance of punks and skinheads on urban streets in the early 1980s. At the same time, these similarities make the differences all the more striking. Prague's mid-1960s drug cult relied on analgesics mixed with alcohol to ape western drugs. In 1969 young Moscow musicians seeking to convert their acoustic guitars into electric ones dismantled every public phone in Moscow to pilfer the electronic parts. And Dean Reed, an expatriate American who became a genuine Soviet bloc superstar selling millions of records, died mysteriously shortly after expressing his desire to return to the United States. Informed throughout by a deep knowledge and love for the music as well as an understanding of the Soviet bloc's political and social realities, Rock Around the Bloc tells a fascinating story on many levels: the liberalization of communist society, the traumas and triumphs of Soviet bloc youth culture, the spread of rock's influence in unlikely places, and the surprisingly rich variety of rock and roll in Eastern Europe that keeps its kinship to western music while forging a unique identity all its own. Engagingly written and full of compelling detail, Ryback's definitive account will delight all rock fans and will fascinate people interested in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and modern social history.

Back in the USSR: The True Story of Rock in Russia

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Back in the USSR: The True Story of Rock in Russia
Artemy Troitsky
Manufacturer: Faber & Faber
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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A Carnival of Revolution: Central Europe 1989

ASIN: 0571129978

Estrada: Grand Narratives and the Philosophy of the Russian Popular Song Since Perestroika

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Estrada: Grand Narratives and the Philosophy of the Russian Popular Song Since Perestroika
David MacFadyen
Manufacturer: McGill-Queen's University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Red Stars: Personality and the Soviet Popular Song, 1955-1991

ASIN: 0773523715

Five Operas and a Symphony: Word and Music in Russian Culture (Russian Literature and Thought Series)

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Five Operas and a Symphony: Word and Music in Russian Culture (Russian Literature and Thought Series)
Boris Gasparov
Manufacturer: Yale University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0300106505

Book Description

In this eagerly anticipated book, Boris Gasparov gazes through the lens of music to find an unusual perspective on Russian cultural and literary history. He discusses six major works of Russian music from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, showing the interplay of musical texts with their literary and historical sources within the ideological and cultural contexts of their times. Each musical work becomes a tableau representing a moment in Russian history, and together the works form a coherent story of ideological and aesthetic trends as they evolved in Russia from the time of Pushkin to the rise of totalitarianism in the 1930s.
Gasparov discusses Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmilla (1842), Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov (1871) and Khovanshchina (1881), Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin (1878) and The Queen of Spades (1890), and Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony (1934). Offering new interpretations to enhance our understanding and appreciation of these important works, Gasparov also demonstrates how Russian music and cultural history illuminate one another.

Music of the Repressed Russian Avant-Garde, 1900-1929: (Contributions to the Study of Music and Dance)

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Music of the Repressed Russian Avant-Garde, 1900-1929: (Contributions to the Study of Music and Dance)
Larry Sitsky
Manufacturer: Greenwood Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 031326709X

Book Description

Soviet and Russian music of the first third of the 20th century--with the exception of the music of a few high-profile composers who were officially sponsored by the State--is still largely unexplored territory, known only to a few specialists. Nevertheless, the music has considerable intrinsic value well beyond its curiosity appeal, and includes many pieces unaccountably forgotten and certainly worth reviving, to the ultimate enhancement of our concert repertoire. The study of this music also explains much about the foundations of Soviet culture and its subsequent suppression and decline under the Stalinist yoke. The purpose of this volume is to stimulate interest in this little-known area of Soviet/Russian music. The works charted here constitute a great flowering of avant-garde music which was then savagely dealt with for Stalin's political purposes.

Wagner and Russia (Cambridge Studies in Russian Literature)

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Wagner and Russia (Cambridge Studies in Russian Literature)
Rosamund Bartlett
Manufacturer: Cambridge University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0521035821

Book Description

This book explores the immense influence of the composer Richard Wagner on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Russian writers, musicians and artists. It contains a history of the production of Wagner's works in Russia and the Soviet Union (by directors including Meyerhold and Eisenstein), an account of Wagner's visit to Russia in 1863, and a detailed investigation of the impact of his music and ideas on the Russian Modernist movement. The last two chapters explore the fate of Wagner's works after the 1917 Revolution, when he was first hailed but then reviled, and finally rehabilitated during the years of glasnost.

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Cabaret russe (Memoire pour le present)
Konstantin Kazansky
Manufacturer: O. Orban
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Unknown Binding

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Average customer rating:

need to have

The Problem Solving Memory Jogger: Seven Steps to Improved Processes (Memory Jogger)

Manufacturer: Goal/QPC
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Spiral-bound

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The Memory Jogger II

The Project Management Memory Jogger: A Pocket Guide for Project Teams (Growth Opportunity Alliance of Lawrence)

The Creativity Tools Memory Jogger

The Team Memory Jogger

The Lean Enterprise Memory Jogger: Create Value and Eliminate Waste Throughout Your Company

ASIN: 1576810313

Customer Reviews:

need to have.......2006-12-27

Absolute great book!

The size allows it to carry around, and the tools and techniques described can be applied on the workfloor.

A great asset and should be on any project teamleader desk!

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