New Music for Old Rituals


Book Description

New Music For Old Rituals brings together a selection of stories that illustrate the pervasive power of the past in the present. Together they present a strange yet familiar country where cautionary tales still serve a purpose; where sacred sites of sea, forest, valley and forts hold power, where old legends live, and where new myths are born. Within the pages of New Music for Old Rituals, bog bodies sleep, contagion rages, ancient rituals are enacted, battles are fought, ghosts linger, and time stutters, fails and turns back on itself.By the author of The Unheimlich Manoeuvre (2016) and The Girl In The Fort (2017)







Myth, Music and Ritual


Book Description

Divided into two parts, this volume includes contributions focused on both myth and some of its contemporary reflections (Part I) and the connection between myth, music and ritual (Part II). The fifteen contributions gathered here are authored by academics and researchers from Brazil, France, Poland, Mexico, South Africa and Romania. They focus on a variety of subjects, including folklore, literature, classical and traditional music, science-fiction, philosophy, and religion, among others. The volume operates with an awareness of the capital role the study of the imaginary, with all its implications, is playing in the contemporary world.




Ancient Wisdom for Modern Needs


Book Description

Ancient Wisdom for Modern Needs: Discovering Taoist Wicca is a unique seasonal self-coaching and ritual system, time-tested by real people—with real results! This book takes you on a cross-cultural journey, through a calendar year, to discover a spiritual approach to stress management, self-healing, and personal growth. Taoist Wicca combines Taoist principles, Chakra wisdom, and applied introspection with the ancient hypnotic power of ritual. This system is a practical guide to exploring the seasons as thematic and energetic connections between the body, mind, and spirit: the Unseen, ourselves, and our planet. Endorsements As a psychotherapist who has been in practice for over three decades, who is also Wiccan, I am profoundly excited by Suzy Peltier’s work. She manages to speak to the heart while also being intellectually challenging. I look forward to being able to give her book to colleagues and clients alike. She has taken different systems of healing and integrated them into something not only new but incredibly powerful and potent. This book is an important contribution to the healing arts, addressing the healing of mind, body, and spirit. —Deborah Oak Cooper, MFT In this unique exploration, Suzy Peltier expertly applies the wisdom of Taoism and Wicca to modern-day struggles. Deeply insightful, this book seamlessly interweaves the complementary themes of Wicca, Taoism, Chinese medicine, the Hindu Chakra system, and Western science to provide a beneficial guide to restoring balance and vitality as we navigate our lives in the twenty-first century. —Dr. Daniel Geren, DAOM, L.Ac. Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental medicine The magick works—if you work it! I have practiced Taoist Wicca since 2005. I have realized my dreams of a second-degree priestess initiation and a successful career with continual growth. I have co-written and published a children’s book, and am now married to the love of my life. All this, I created through practicing Taoist Wicca and the love and kinship of the Circle. —Lady Pele of the Phoenix, author, realtor, and second-degree Taoist Wiccan high priestess, and practitioner since 2005




Source


Book Description

This work is a seminal source for materials on the heyday of experimental music and arts. The book documents crucial changes in performance practice and live electronics, computer music, notation and event scores, theatre and installations, and much more.




Ritual and Music of North China


Book Description

The rich local traditions of musical life in rural China are still little known. Music-making in village society is largely ceremonial, and shawm bands account for a significant part of such music. This is the first major ethnographic study of Chinese shawm bands in their ceremonial and social context. Based in a poor county in Shanxi province in northwestern China, Stephen Jones describes the painful maintenance of ceremonial and its music there under Maoism, its revival with the market reforms of the 1980s and its modification under the assault of pop music since the 1990s. Part One of the text explains the social and historical background by outlining the lives of shawm band musicians in modern times. Part Two looks at the main performing contexts of funerals and temple fairs, whilst Part Three discusses musical features such as instruments, scales, and repertories. The downloadable resources consist of a 47-minute film in two parts, showing excerpts from funerals and temple fairs (complementing Part Two of the text), while a separate section contains a magnificent 1992 funerary performance of a complete shawm-band suite. As a package, the book and downloadable resources illuminate the whole ceremonial context of music-making in rural China, illustrating the ritual-music experience of villagers, with lay Daoist priests, opera troupes, and beggars also making cameo appearances. While the modern stage repertories of urban professionals remain our main exposure to Chinese music, this publication is all the more valuable in showing the daily musical experiences of the majority of people in China. It will appeal to ethnomusicologists, anthropologists and all those interested in modern Chinese history and society.




Rites and Ritual


Book Description




Music and Traditions of the Arabian Peninsula


Book Description

Music and Traditions of the Arabian Peninsula provides a pioneering overview of folk and traditional urban music, along with dance and rituals, of Saudi Arabia and the Upper Gulf States of Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar. The nineteen chapters introduce variegated regions and subcultures and their rich and dynamic musical arts, many of which heretofore have been unknown beyond local communities. The book contains insightful descriptions of genres, instruments, poetry, and performance practices of the desert heartland (Najd), the Arabian/Persian Gulf shores, the great western cities including Makkah and Medinah, the southwestern mountains, and the hot Red Sea coast. Musical customs of distinctive groups such as Bedouin, seafarers, and regional women are explored. The book is packaged with downloadable resources and almost 200 images including a full color photo essay, numerous music transcriptions, a glossary with over 400 specialized terms, and original Arabic script alongside key words to assist with further research. This book provides a much-needed introduction and organizational structure for the diverse and complex musical arts of the region.




Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions, Volume One


Book Description

This book undoes 50 years of mythmaking about Stravinsky's life in music. During his spectacular career, Igor Stravinsky underplayed his Russian past in favor of a European cosmopolitanism. Richard Taruskin has refused to take the composer at his word. In this long-awaited study, he defines Stravinsky's relationship to the musical and artistic traditions of his native land and gives us a dramatically new picture of one of the major figures in the history of music. Taruskin draws directly on newly accessible archives and on a wealth of Russian documents. In Volume One, he sets the historical scene: the St. Petersburg musical press, the arts journals, and the writings of anthropologists, folklorists, philosophers, and poets. Volume Two addresses the masterpieces of Stravinsky's early maturityÑPetrushka, The Rite of Spring, and Les Noces. Taruskin investigates the composer's collaborations with Diaghilev to illuminate the relationship between folklore and modernity. He elucidates the Silver Age ideal of "neonationalism"Ñthe professional appropriation of motifs and style characteristics from folk artÑand how Stravinsky realized this ideal in his music. Taruskin demonstrates how Stravinsky achieved his modernist technique by combining what was most characteristically Russian in his musical training with stylistic elements abstracted from Russian folklore. The stylistic synthesis thus achieved formed Stravinsky as a composer for life, whatever the aesthetic allegiances he later professed. Written with Taruskin's characteristic mixture of in-depth research and stylistic verve, this book will be mandatory reading for all those seriously interested in the life and work of Stravinsky.




Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions, Volume Two


Book Description

This book undoes 50 years of mythmaking about Stravinsky's life in music. During his spectacular career, Igor Stravinsky underplayed his Russian past in favor of a European cosmopolitanism. Richard Taruskin has refused to take the composer at his word. In this long-awaited study, he defines Stravinsky's relationship to the musical and artistic traditions of his native land and gives us a dramatically new picture of one of the major figures in the history of music. Taruskin draws directly on newly accessible archives and on a wealth of Russian documents. In Volume One, he sets the historical scene: the St. Petersburg musical press, the arts journals, and the writings of anthropologists, folklorists, philosophers, and poets. Volume Two addresses the masterpieces of Stravinsky's early maturity—Petrushka, The Rite of Spring, and Les Noces. Taruskin investigates the composer's collaborations with Diaghilev to illuminate the relationship between folklore and modernity. He elucidates the Silver Age ideal of "neonationalism"—the professional appropriation of motifs and style characteristics from folk art—and how Stravinsky realized this ideal in his music. Taruskin demonstrates how Stravinsky achieved his modernist technique by combining what was most characteristically Russian in his musical training with stylistic elements abstracted from Russian folklore. The stylistic synthesis thus achieved formed Stravinsky as a composer for life, whatever the aesthetic allegiances he later professed. Written with Taruskin's characteristic mixture of in-depth research and stylistic verve, this book will be mandatory reading for all those seriously interested in the life and work of Stravinsky.