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Music – The Speech of Angels explores the fascinating variety of Western music through the thoughts of composers, philosophers, and psychologists. The history of thought about music, from classical times to the present, unfolds in these pages. Taking its title from the comment by Thomas Carlyle that “music is the speech of angels,” this book explores how we are moved by music. The author considers the ancient claim that the musical symbol is rooted in transcendence and that the material explanations of physics and psychology offer us only a partial view of the scope and power of music. Music listeners will find here a history of reflections on music from antiquity to the Renaissance and a discussion of ideas on music from rationalist, religious, and empirical perspectives. Topics covered include music and inspiration, formalism, the creative process, musical knowledge and emotion.

Music – The Speech of Angels explores the fascinating variety of Western music through the thoughts of composers, philosophers, and psychologists. The history of thought about music, from classical times to the present, unfolds in these pages. Taking its title from the comment by Thomas Carlyle that “music is the speech of angels,” this book explores how we are moved by music. The author considers the ancient claim that the musical symbol is rooted in transcendence and that the material explanations of physics and psychology offer us only a partial view of the scope and power of music. Music listeners will find here a history of reflections on music from antiquity to the Renaissance and a discussion of ideas on music from rationalist, religious, and empirical perspectives. Topics covered include music and inspiration, formalism, the creative process, musical knowledge and emotion.

Jimi Hendrix is primarily looked at as a Rock musician, which is fine, but he is much more. From his seminal beginnings on the R&B chitlin´ circuit to his whirlwind international fame, Jimi Hendrix took from all sources musically. The consummate musician, Jimi was looking for any and every opportunity to jam with like-minded musicians, who did not want to be caged by musical categories. Almost by chance, Jimi was involved in two pioneering performances that launched two genres, that would dominate the African-American music scene for multiple decades (1970´s—present). These genres are P-Funk and Hip-Hop! This is not a Jimi Hendrix biography, because that has already been done multiple times. Nobody Cages Me! is told from the perspective of a young African-American male, who had to discover Hendrix on his own. It took the popular wrestler Hulk Hogan to connect the author with Jimi Hendrix. The author´s journey to Hendrix is a unique story in of itself. About the Author Corey Washington is an Educator/Author/Blogger/Journalist from Augusta, Georgia. He is also the author of Plain Talk volumes 1 and 2 (a two part series designed to promote cultural diversity and awareness). He holds both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Middle Grades Education from Augusta State University. Born in New York City during the twilight of Disco and the dawn of Hip-Hop(1976), the author did not discover Jimi Hendrix until 1997. Since then, he has studied and listened to every Hendrix recording and book that he could get his hands on. He hopes Nobody Cages Me! will get some people to see beyond the parameters of traditional "White" and "Black" music.

Nobody Cages Me official website

Plain Talk Volume 1 official website

link to Plain Talk Volume 2

link to article on examiner.com

Jimi Hendrix is primarily looked at as a Rock musician, which is fine, but he is much more. From his seminal beginnings on the R&B chitlin´ circuit to his whirlwind international fame, Jimi Hendrix took from all sources musically. The consummate musician, Jimi was looking for any and every opportunity to jam with like-minded musicians, who did not want to be caged by musical categories. Almost by chance, Jimi was involved in two pioneering performances that launched two genres, that would dominate the African-American music scene for multiple decades (1970´s—present). These genres are P-Funk and Hip-Hop! This is not a Jimi Hendrix biography, because that has already been done multiple times. Nobody Cages Me! is told from the perspective of a young African-American male, who had to discover Hendrix on his own. It took the popular wrestler Hulk Hogan to connect the author with Jimi Hendrix. The author´s journey to Hendrix is a unique story in of itself. About the Author Corey Washington is an Educator/Author/Blogger/Journalist from Augusta, Georgia. He is also the author of Plain Talk volumes 1 and 2 (a two part series designed to promote cultural diversity and awareness). He holds both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Middle Grades Education from Augusta State University. Born in New York City during the twilight of Disco and the dawn of Hip-Hop(1976), the author did not discover Jimi Hendrix until 1997. Since then, he has studied and listened to every Hendrix recording and book that he could get his hands on. He hopes Nobody Cages Me! will get some people to see beyond the parameters of traditional "White" and "Black" music.

Nobody Cages Me official website

Plain Talk Volume 1 official website

link to Plain Talk Volume 2

link to article on examiner.com

Jimi Hendrix is primarily looked at as a Rock musician, which is fine, but he is much more. From his seminal beginnings on the R&B chitlin´ circuit to his whirlwind international fame, Jimi Hendrix took from all sources musically. The consummate musician, Jimi was looking for any and every opportunity to jam with like-minded musicians, who did not want to be caged by musical categories. Almost by chance, Jimi was involved in two pioneering performances that launched two genres, that would dominate the African-American music scene for multiple decades (1970´s—present). These genres are P-Funk and Hip-Hop! This is not a Jimi Hendrix biography, because that has already been done multiple times. Nobody Cages Me! is told from the perspective of a young African-American male, who had to discover Hendrix on his own. It took the popular wrestler Hulk Hogan to connect the author with Jimi Hendrix. The author´s journey to Hendrix is a unique story in of itself. About the Author Corey Washington is an Educator/Author/Blogger/Journalist from Augusta, Georgia. He is also the author of Plain Talk volumes 1 and 2 (a two part series designed to promote cultural diversity and awareness). He holds both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Middle Grades Education from Augusta State University. Born in New York City during the twilight of Disco and the dawn of Hip-Hop(1976), the author did not discover Jimi Hendrix until 1997. Since then, he has studied and listened to every Hendrix recording and book that he could get his hands on. He hopes Nobody Cages Me! will get some people to see beyond the parameters of traditional "White" and "Black" music.

Nobody Cages Me official website

Plain Talk Volume 1 official website

link to Plain Talk Volume 2

link to article on examiner.com

What did Richard Wagner know about ancient Greece?  More importantly, what did he think he knew?  How did Wagner’s attitudes towards the past shape his construction of the Ring cycle?

Classically Romantic attempts to answer these questions through an examination of Wagner’s intellectual background and the structure of the Ring itself.  The book explores the differences between Wagner’s “romantic classicism” and traditional “philological classicism.”  Anticipating the “Great Books” movement of the twentieth century, Wagner’s views were an interesting blend of classical formalism and romantic idealism.  Wagner believed, for instance, that classical literature was important, not because it shed light on the past, but because it had “continued relevance” to each succeeding generation.  The classics purified and redeemed ancient society, Wagner concluded, and only an equivalent type of work could purify and redeem the modern world.  It was out of a desire to create a “modern classic” that Wagner’s four-drama cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen, arose.

In Wagner’s romantic view of the past, Greek tragedy was the only perfectly unified form of art.  The composer believed that, in ancient tragedy, all the arts worked together harmoniously so as to guide the audience towards a single, significant purpose: a harmonious social order.  In this way, although Wagner saw himself as imitating classical models, his ultimate goal was identical to that of many Romantic Age social reformers.

Fundamental aspects of Wagnerian drama may thus ultimately be traced to the composer’s unusual combination of the classical and the romantic.  For example, Wagner’s central concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the “total work of art” in which every artistic element blended perfectly with every other artistic element, has a direct connection to the composer’s desire to recreate classical tragedy, the one form of art in which he believed those elements had been unified.  By examining each of Aristotle’s six constituent elements of tragedy (plot, music, speech, thought, character, and spectacle), Classically Romantic demonstrates what Wagner envisioned when he sought a perfect “union” of all the components of art.  Perhaps most important of the book’s contributions is its demonstration that the leitmotif, usually regarded solely as a musical phenomenon, was actually a thematic principle of construction employed on many levels of the drama.  Wagner introduced were repeated themes of plot, characterization, speech, and imagery, all endowed with meaning in a manner precisely parallel to that of the musical leitmotivs.  Moreover, since Wagner dictated nearly every aspect of how the original productions of his work were staged, even visual elements of the drama could be given a consistent, “thematic” role.  Colors, images of light and darkness, and mist all serve as “visual leitmotivs” in much the same way that one can also speak of musical leitmotivs, leitmotivs of plot, character leitmotivs, and so on.

Finally, Wagner’s desire to bring all social classes together in a festival similar to the Great Dionysia of ancient Athens helps explain why the composer created the Wagner Societies throughout Germany in his own lifetime and why the Festspielhaus of Bayreuth was established as it was, with annual festivals rather than continual performances...

What did Richard Wagner know about ancient Greece?  More importantly, what did he think he knew?  How did Wagner’s attitudes towards the past shape his construction of the Ring cycle?

Classically Romantic attempts to answer these questions through an examination of Wagner’s intellectual background and the structure of the Ring itself.  The book explores the differences between Wagner’s “romantic classicism” and traditional “philological classicism.”  Anticipating the “Great Books” movement of the twentieth century, Wagner’s views were an interesting blend of classical formalism and romantic idealism.  Wagner believed, for instance, that classical literature was important, not because it shed light on the past, but because it had “continued relevance” to each succeeding generation.  The classics purified and redeemed ancient society, Wagner concluded, and only an equivalent type of work could purify and redeem the modern world.  It was out of a desire to create a “modern classic” that Wagner’s four-drama cycle, Der Ring des Nibelungen, arose.

In Wagner’s romantic view of the past, Greek tragedy was the only perfectly unified form of art.  The composer believed that, in ancient tragedy, all the arts worked together harmoniously so as to guide the audience towards a single, significant purpose: a harmonious social order.  In this way, although Wagner saw himself as imitating classical models, his ultimate goal was identical to that of many Romantic Age social reformers.

Fundamental aspects of Wagnerian drama may thus ultimately be traced to the composer’s unusual combination of the classical and the romantic.  For example, Wagner’s central concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the “total work of art” in which every artistic element blended perfectly with every other artistic element, has a direct connection to the composer’s desire to recreate classical tragedy, the one form of art in which he believed those elements had been unified.  By examining each of Aristotle’s six constituent elements of tragedy (plot, music, speech, thought, character, and spectacle), Classically Romantic demonstrates what Wagner envisioned when he sought a perfect “union” of all the components of art.  Perhaps most important of the book’s contributions is its demonstration that the leitmotif, usually regarded solely as a musical phenomenon, was actually a thematic principle of construction employed on many levels of the drama.  Wagner introduced were repeated themes of plot, characterization, speech, and imagery, all endowed with meaning in a manner precisely parallel to that of the musical leitmotivs.  Moreover, since Wagner dictated nearly every aspect of how the original productions of his work were staged, even visual elements of the drama could be given a consistent, “thematic” role.  Colors, images of light and darkness, and mist all serve as “visual leitmotivs” in much the same way that one can also speak of musical leitmotivs, leitmotivs of plot, character leitmotivs, and so on.

Finally, Wagner’s desire to bring all social classes together in a festival similar to the Great Dionysia of ancient Athens helps explain why the composer created the Wagner Societies throughout Germany in his own lifetime and why the Festspielhaus of Bayreuth was established as it was, with annual festivals rather than continual performances...

CLASSICAL COOKS: A GASTROHISTORY OF WESTERN MUSIC by Ira Braus

The expression, "Classical music is an acquired taste" takes on new meaning in Ira Braus's Classical Cooks: A Gastrohistory of Western Music. Unlike most classical music guides, Classical Cooks links music and food synaesthetically. Synaesthesia means experiencing one sense modality by stimulating another, such as "hearing" colors. Music and food, as my book shows, are close enough aesthetically, so that we can enjoy them synaesthetically. The book correlates the respective musical and culinary talents of composers living between 1350 and 2000; it also suggests ways for listeners to distinguish composers' styles by way of gastro-musical association.

Classical Cooks complements a recent line of books dealing with food and culture, e.g., The Toulouse Lautrec Cookbook, Keats's Porridge, and Jazz Cooks. To be sure, American orchestras, like the Boston Symphony and New York Philharmonic, have published recipes contributed by their players. But no substantial anthology of composer recipes has thus far appeared.

Classical Cooks has Three Courses, plus Dessert.

Course 1, "Why Musicians Love to Talk Shop in the Kitchen," matches food categories with musical ones. Take fat. Musicians associate fat with lush, full-bodied orchestration as we hear in, say, Hollywood scores of the 1950s. These composers learned their craft from lipid composers like Puccini and Debussy. Puccini's "fat," mellifluous as it is, may be compared to olive oil – clear, fruity, digestible, while Debussy's is voluptuous, like butter – filmy, artery-clogging, and delectable.

Course 2, "A Gastrohistory of Music in Documents" offers accounts of composers as gastro- nomes. Beethoven's culinary disasters are juxtaposed with Rossini's haute cuisine, so haute in fact, that one of his recipes ("Tournedos Rossini") appears in Larousse Gastronomique. One also reads stories of Liszt's food-fights with his pupils and of his chiding the American pianist, Amy Fay, for "making an omelette" when playing wrist-bending passages in his piano music.

Course 3, "You Eat What you Compose, or, Will the Real Mozart Please Stand Up?" addresses riddles of music history: how knowledge of Mozart's favorite foods -- liver dumplings and sauerkraut -- might revise his popular image as a composer of "sweet" music, e.g. Eine kleine Nachtmusik; how a gastronomic kinship between J.S. Bach and Brahms -- their love of herring -- might reflect their dense musical expression, as well as Brahms's composing minuets and sarabandes during the mid-1800s; and how knowing Ravel's preference for "hot" food helpsus to distinguish the sound of his music from the more understated style of Debussy.

Dessert comprises "The Well-Tempered Cuisinier: Twenty-four Pastries and Foods from the Classical Cooks." Readers will find here a combination of recipes and menus suitable for diverse musical occasions (concert receptions, composer birthdays, opera café entreés). The author is available for lecture-demos on his book. E-mail: braus@hartford.edu