History & Criticism

Andrew Gant's compelling account traces English church music from Anglo-Saxon origins to the present. It is a history of the music and of the people who made, sang and listened to it. It shows the role church music has played in ordinary lives and how...

A progressive rock supergroup? In the 1980s? Who would want such a thing critics asked, as they immediately went on the attack. But music fans disagreed. John Wetton, Geoff Downes, Steve Howe and Carl Palmer had played with the likes of King Crimson,...

The story of two outsiders and obsessives whose collision prompted an evangelistic alliance on the furthest frontiers of underground music.Steve Davis first met Kavus Torabi - guitarist with Gong, Guapo, Cardiacs and Knifeworld - in the mid-2000's at a...

Includes a new chapter on John Cage. Alex Ross's award-winning international best-seller, 'The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century', has become a contemporary classic, establishing him as one of our most popular and acclaimed...

'Fascinating ... Composer Andrew Gant is a masterful guide, introducing readers to the major players and key themes of an entrancing topic.' BBC History Magazine Whether you prefer Baroque or pop, Theremins or violins, the music you love and listen to...

This is the story of the Cavern Club - the most famous club in the world. The Cavern saw the birth of the Beatles and Merseybeat, and more. Respected author, music journalist and Merseybeat historian Spencer Leigh - with a little help from Sir Paul...

Let legendary impresario Simon Napier-Bell take you inside the world of popular music: not just a cradle for talent and expression, but a business that has made people rich beyond their wildest dreams. He balances seductive anecdotes - pulling back the...

'The Stone Roses have become folk heroes, frozen in time. And their story, with roots in punk through post-punk, scooter boys, skinheads, Northern Soul, psychedelia, acid house and Madchester, is everything that is great about British street culture...

Afrobeats is a fast-growing genre, one that has carved out a distinct and powerful Black identity rooted within the African continent.The first book of its kind, A Quick Ting On: Afrobeats chronicles the social and cultural development of the eponymous...

For better or worse, The Bee Gees' music and image has long been synonymous with the 1970s, and the career trajectory of brothers Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb in that ten-year span meanders between dizzying highs and devastating lows. The Bee Gees...

Extravagantly opaque, willfully vaporous - Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works Volume II, released by the estimable British label Warp Records in 1994, rejuvenated ambient music for the Internet Age that was just dawning. In the United States, it was...

This definitive guide includes a unique chapter-by-chapter playlist for the reader. Jazz: A Beginner's Guide is a lively and highly accessible introduction to a global musical phenomenon. Award-winning music journalist and author Stuart Nicholson...

From their humble beginnings as friends in high school, to playing strip clubs in nothing but well-placed socks, through a struggle to find the right guitarist, to the present day, Red Hot Chili Peppers FAQ chronicles the adventures of the best-selling...

Without Beethoven, music as we know it wouldn't exist. Who was this titan of world culture? 'You want to build a Beethoven library? There can be no better starting point... Brilliant.' John Suchet, Classic FM presenter Through 100 recordings,...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780374533427Author Jace ClaytonFormat PaperbackPage Count 288Imprint Fsg OriginalsPublisher Fsg OriginalsWeight(grams) 204g

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9780312304270Author Brett MilanoFormat PaperbackPage Count 230Imprint St. Martins Press-3PLPublisher St. Martins Press-3PLWeight(grams) 318gDimensions(mm)...

33 1/3 is a new series of short books about critically acclaimed and much-loved albums of the last 40 years. Focusing on one album rather than an artist's entire output, the books dispense with the standard biographical background that fans know already,...

Linda Ronstadt is one of the most important women and people in the history of popular music. Starting her solo career in 1969, she redefined what a music superstar could be by expanding her repertoire from her country rock roots, crossing over to...

The Damned are a great British rock n' roll institution. They have helped to plot the course of guitar music over the last 45 years, putting UK punk on record for the first time in 1976, and going on to lay the groundwork for the hardcore, Goth,...

Without Beethoven, music as we know it wouldn't exist. Who was this titan of world culture? 'You want to build a Beethoven library? There can be no better starting point... Brilliant.' John Suchet, Classic FM presenter Through 100 recordings,...

Formed as shambolic art-punk four-piece Seymour whilst attending London's Goldsmiths University, the rechristened Blur released their debut album Leisure in 1991, marking them as promising indie upstarts in thrall to the voguish sub-genres of baggy and...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9781905128105Author Paul StumpFormat PaperbackPage Count 410Imprint Harbour Books LtdPublisher Harbour Books (East) Ltd

Ian Bradley's Complete Annotated Gilbert and Sullivan has established itself across the world as the authorized and definitive 'Bible' for all those interested in the Savoy operas. Originally published in two Penguin paperbacks in the 1980's, a...

For most people in Britain in the 1970s and 1980s, Radio 1 provided the soundtrack to their lives. Commanding up to 24 million listeners a week, it was the most popular radio station in the world. An iconic institution and one of the UK's most...

No progressive rock band could ever be said to be a household name, but Van der Graaf Generator, who celebrated their fiftieth anniversary in 2018, rarely enjoyed that distinction even in the households of many prog fans. VdGG, and the band's main...

The initial volume in a series of American Bach Society Guides, Bach's Art of Fugue and Musical Offering is a comprehensive study of two closely related masterworks of the late Baroque fugal style. This compact guide, intended for practitioners, music...

In this book, Wilson Neate gets beneath the surface of a punk band with a difference. In contrast with many of their punk peers, Wire were enigmatic and cerebral, always keeping a distance from the crowd. Although Pink Flag appeared before the end of...

No artist's achievement connects more directly with early experience than that of Berlioz. David Cairns draws on a wealth of family papers to recreate in authentic and intimate detail the provincial milieu of Berlioz's boyhood, showing how the son of a...

A stirring and eye-opening celebration of the enduring legacy of one of the most acclaimed and influential albums of the 90s-The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.Released in 1998, Lauryn Hill's first solo album is often cited by music critics as one of the...

Shattering longstanding myths, this new biography reveals the robust and positive life of one of the nineteenth century's greatest composers This candid, intimate, and compellingly written new biography offers a fresh account of Robert Schumann's life...

'In the beginning,' Billy Joel entertained Long Island locals, with The Hassles and Attila, prior to forging a solo career in 1971. One year later, the singer-songwriter-pianist captivated college students when 'Captain Jack' dominated the Philadelphia...

for upper-voice choir, SATB choir, piano, and optional timpani Setting a newly written text by Charles Bennett, this fifteen-minute choral work takes singers on a journey through five historical events: the invention of printing, the abolition of...

Just like Memphis and Rock'n'Roll, Dusseldorf is regarded as the Mecca for electronic music. The capital of North Rhine-Westphalia became the centre of an analog electronic movement from the early 1970s to the mid-1980s. This is the oral account of the...

Drew Daniel explores the album's multiple agendas: a series of close readings of each song, with key concepts, strategies, and contexts.Previous writings about Throbbing Gristle have tended to dissolve into lurid half-truths about deviance on and...

No change has had a more profound influence on the development of music-making over the last two decades than the growth of the historical performance movement. The notion that we can - and indeed should - perform music in the manner its composers...

Copeland Forbes is one of the most consequential figures in the history of modern Jamaican music. Through his roles as personal and tour manager for some of the most iconic personalities in music, Forbes has been a witness to and a participant in some of...

Today, Metallica are known as consummate musicians, but it wasn t always that way. Their early career is marked by a gradual evolution from garage thrash to sophisticated, progressive heights an evolution driven by their bass player, Cliff Burton, who...

The most wide-ranging and provocative look at punk rock as a social change movement told through firsthand accounts.Punk rock has been on the frontlines of activism since exploding on the scene in the 1970's. Punk Revolution! is the most wide-ranging and...

Published in the run-up to the 200th anniversary of the composer's birth in 2013, and written by one of the most distinguished Wagner scholars in the world, this will be the Wagner book of the bicentenary. Richard Wagner (1813-1883) is one of the most...

This book is intended as an introduction to the principal forms and orders of Western liturgy between about 900 and 1700, to explain their nature and basic historical origin, and to present in detail the contents and orders of principal services as well...