The Jacobs Faculty Bookshelf
This page serves as a listing of publications by Jacobs School of Music faculty. Click on an item to view available purchasing options as well as its availability on the IU Library Catalog.
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Halina Goldberg , Jonathan Bellman
The works in this volume, chosen to reflect the breadth of narrative and characteristic piano music, illuminate certain largely forgotten musical histories. The highly popular genre of the descriptive piano fantasia, conceived and produced for the musical tastes and technical capabilities of amateur pianists, grew out of eighteenth-century narrative works such as Johann Kuhnau’s “Biblical Sonatas” (1700) and the anonymous Battle of Rosbach (ca. 1780). Starting with František Kocžwara’s Battle of Prague (ca. 1788) and continuing chronologically through the nineteenth and into the early twentieth centuries, these works help to contextualize nineteenth-century aesthetic debates of descriptive versus idealistic music (and later programmatic versus absolute music), and the partisanship they engendered, by demonstrating the ubiquity of this repertoire throughout Europe and the United States. Such fantasias reflected cultural preoccupations, based as they often were on historical or fictional events, and were particularly important in Poland, where national upheaval and political marginalization provided fertile ground for musical representation and catharsis. The descriptive fantasias cross generic boundaries and interact in unexpected ways with the canonic repertory, offering insights into compositional techniques and strategies used by such composers as Fryderyk Chopin, Franz Liszt, and Johannes Brahms, and illuminating modes of listening familiar to their audiences.
Dreaming with Open Eyes: Opera, Aesthetics, and Perception in Arcadian Rome
Dreaming with Open Eyes examines visual symbolism (iconography, ekphrasis, imagination) in late seventeenth-century Italian opera. Includes close musical and textual analysis of Alessandro Scarlatti's opera La Statira (Rome, 1690) and Carlo Francesco Pollarolo's opera La forza della virtu (Venice, 1693).
Dvorak: Quartet Op. 106 and Quintet Op. 97
Pacifica Quartet , Michael Tree
Dvorak composed his richly textured String Quintet in E-flat Major, Op. 97 (1893) during a sojourn in Iowa. It radiates Dvorak’s warmth and humanity while also echoing his encounters with the music of different Native American tribes. Poetic and expressive, the landmark String Quartet No. 13 in G Major, Op. 106 (1895) shows Dvorak in his creative prime. On this new Cedille recording, the Naumburg Award-winning Pacifica Quartet, a bold and dynamic young ensemble (“They all move on the same strong, supple band of time.” — New York Times), rises to the challenge, joined in the quintet by violist Michael Tree of the Guarneri Quartet.
String Quartets by Easley Blackwood
Blackwood’s First and Second quartets are products of the same creative period as his most celebrated early modernist masterpiece, his Symphony No. 1 (1955). In the CD booklet, Blackwood describes the quartets as “largely atonal, although not violently dissonant.” He says they “reveal the influence of Bartok, Berg, and Hindemith” (with whom Blackwood studied at Yale). The First Quartet received its premiere at the Berkshire Music Center in 1957 in a performance by the Kroll Quartet. The Second Quartet was premiered at the Library of Congress in 1960 by the Juilliard Quartet. “Blackwood’s [second] quartet is a work of immediate beauty,” the Washington Post’s Paul Hume wrote on Jan. 9, 1960. “One is conscious at every point of the quartet of the [composer’s] ease and personal affiliation with the medium.”
Eben: Velvet Revolution, Complete Organ Music Vol.1
Janette Fishell , D. James Tagg
Velvet Revolution is a multidimensional project that will ultimately include extended essays and a teaching video centering on the works and aesthetic of the 20th century Czech composer Petr Eben, one of the most important contributors to contemporary organ repertoire and a mentor to Janette Fishell. The first three of six recordings were issued by the Dutch label Brilliant Classics in October, 2022 as Volume 1 of Petr Eben Velvet Revolution: Complete Organ Music. When finished in late 2023, it will be the first complete recorded collection of this important composer's solo organ works.
Elliott Carter String Quartets Nos. 1 and 5
Released to celebrate the American master Elliott Carter’s centenary, this 2009 Grammy Award-winning recording is the first of two discs of the complete String Quartets. Carter himself has written: ‘I probably decided to write what was to be the First Quartet when I read about a composition prize in Liège, Belgium, because there were many ideas swarming around in my imagination about expression, rhythm, and harmony, mostly derived from my Cello Sonata ... Then my Second, Third, and Fourth Quartets developed my imaginings in different ways until I began to realize that soon I would exhaust this direction, and so my Fifth Quartet became a farewell to the previous four and an exploration of a new vision.’
Elliott Carter String Quartets Nos. 2, 3 and 4
To celebrate his 100th birthday, Elliott Carter’s Complete String Quartets have been newly recorded by the Pacifica Quartet, Musical America’s Ensemble of the Year for 2009. Volume 1 (8.559362) was critically acclaimed: “a knockout” (Limelight), “Music with heart as well as a brain” (4 STARS, The Times ), “the best possible introduction to Carter’s music” (5 STARS, The Guardian ). This disc presents the three remaining string quartets by the composer hailed by Aaron Copland as “one of America’s most distinguished creative artists in any field”.
Exploring Musical Spaces: A Synthesis of Mathematical Approaches
Exploring Musical Spaces is a comprehensive synthesis of mathematical techniques in music theory, written with the aim of making these techniques accessible to music scholars without extensive prior training in mathematics. The book adopts a visual orientation, introducing from the outset a number of simple geometric models―the first examples of the musical spaces of the book's title―depicting relationships among musical entities of various kinds such as notes, chords, scales, or rhythmic values.
An emotional and collaborative tour de force, Dominick DiOrio’s FETTER AND AIR presents the Mendelssohn Chorus of Philadelphia’s own words set to a haunting soundscape that explores each member’s innermost hopes, fears, dreams, and desires. The massive undertaking is a skillful combination of 562 audio files comprising spoken word and singing by 61 chorus members, combined into a single piece by DiOrio and sound designer Justin “JG” Geller. The personal thoughts and interweaving arrangements create a raw expressiveness and intimacy, ultimately rendering a reminder of how our own stories echo within us.
General Music: Dimensions of Practice
Brent Gault , Carlos Abril
General Music: Dimensions of Practice is a practical guide for music teachers and teaching artists who strive to teach music holistically. The book begins by framing general music as a holistic music education that is comprehensive, meaningful, and relevant to diverse learners in school and community settings. It is followed by chapters that are organized into one of four dimensions of music practice: performing, connecting, creating, and responding.