"This is an immensely valuable book and one which is clearly designed to appeal to all musicians--not just string players...Mr. Blum has captured in great detail the little things that so often make a great teacher. I would strongly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the Art of Interpretation."--Music Teacher "The volume belongs to an exceptional class of literature: it is to be welcomed as a significant contribution. In his Forward, Antony Hopkins in a most eloquent way makes us fully aware of our possible great loss had the subject material forming this book not been preserved for posterity...throughout the book one remains not only an absorbed reader, but very much an active participant."--Violoncello Society Newsletter "Now we have an authoritative guide to this great artist's approach to interpretation...a book which should be compulsory reading for every player, conductor and teacher."--Music Journal of the Incorporated Society of Musicians "Blum has elegantly combined precise music terminology with meticulous music examples to present lucid and revealing details of interpretation that can be quickly and easily grasped. Only superlatives apply to this book, and all serious musicians would find immense pleasure and musical profit from reading this work. Highly recommended at all levels."--Choice

The past ten years have seen a rapidly growing interest in performing and recording Classical and Romantic music with period instruments; yet the relationship of composers' notation to performing practices during that period has received only sporadic attention from scholars, and many aspects of composers' intentions have remained uncertain. Brown here identifies areas in which musical notation conveyed rather different messages to the musicians for whom it was written than it does to modern performers, and seeks to look beyond the notation to understand how composers might have expected to hear their music realized in performance. There is ample evidence to demonstrate that, in many respects, the sound worlds in which Mozart, Beethoven, Wagner, and Brahms created their music were more radically different from ours than is generally assumed.

A musician's guide to developing an individual jazz style through variations in melody, harmony, and rhythm

This bite-size, informative overview of the orchestra is the ideal introduction to the subject This fun and enlightening look at the orchestra explores the make-up and functions of the different sections, from string to percussion, and highlights some of the greatest orchestras that have ever performed.

A fascinating history of singing styles from the ancient world to the present.

A fascinating history of singing styles from the ancient world to the present.