For Denise Von Glahn, listening is that special quality afforded women who have been fettered for generations by the maxim "be seen and not heard." In Music and the Skillful Listener, Von Glahn explores the relationship between listening and musical composition focusing on nine American women composers inspired by the sounds of the natural world: Amy Beach, Marion Bauer, Louise Talma, Pauline Oliveros, Joan Tower, Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Victoria Bond, Libby Larsen, and Emily Doolittle. Von Glahn situates "nature composing" among the larger tradition of nature writing and argues that, like their literary sisters, works of these women express deeply held spiritual and aesthetic beliefs about nature. Drawing on a wealth of archival and original source material, Von Glahn skillfully employs literary and gender studies, ecocriticism and ecomusicology, and the larger world of contemporary musicological thought to tell the stories of nine women composers who seek to understand nature through music.

Explores the relationship between listening and musical composition focusing on nine American women composers inspired by the sounds of the natural world

Composers like Charles Ives, Duke Ellington, Aaron Copland, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich created works that indelibly commemorated American places. Denise Von Glahn analyzes the soundscapes of fourteen figures whose "place pieces" tell us much about the nation's search for its own voice and about its ever-changing sense of self. She connects each composer's feelings about the United States and their reasons for creating a piece to the music, while analyzing their compositional techniques, tunes, and styles. Approaching the compositions in chronological order, Von Glahn reveals how works that celebrated the wilderness gave way to music engaged with humanity's influence--benign and otherwise--on the landscape, before environmentalism inspired a return to nature themes in the late twentieth century. Wide-ranging and astute, The Sounds of Place explores high art music's role in the making of national myth and memory.

Here is a book written for all who derive real pleasure from listening to music and want to learn more about it. Its aim is to increase enjoyment through intelligent appreciation. Without presupposing any technical knowledge on the part of the reader, Douglas Moore explains what happens in a piece of music, analyzing familiar compositions as examples.First he discusses music as a language--how it conveys definite thoughts and feelings. Then he takes up in turn the various elements found in all music--tone, rhythm, melody, harmony; finally, he shows why music must have form and traces its development from the simplest folk-song to the complex modern symphony.Douglas Moore's skillful interpretation of musical expression makes this an ideal handbook for those who wish to develop their own taste through a fuller understanding of how music speaks to the listener.

With Music: The Art of Listening, students practice engaging with music critically, and with an appreciative ear. Presenting music within a broadened cultural and historical context, The Art of Listening encourages students to draw on the relationships between: music and the other arts; musical characteristics of different periods; as well as Western music and various non-Western musics and concepts. Learning to appreciate music is a skill. Together with McGraw-Hill's Connect Music, The Art of Listening helps students develop that skill by encouraging them to be active and thoughtful participants in their own listening experience. Whether listening through headphones or at a live performance, The Art of Listening will develop students' ability to hone the skills required to listen to, reflect upon, and write about music.

Every student needs top class listening and speaking skills to succeed at an academic level. Skillful focuses on these two skills to give presentation, instant practice and complete immersion in those language skills. It offers students the opportunity to develop language skills by presenting them with ideas from today's world, while bruilding critical thinking skills that are vital for academic success. This is taken even further with a focus on study skills, providing students with rpactical guidance and support, and building confidence for independent learning throughout their university career.