Faculty Books
Faculty in the Department of Music have published many books, showcased here. Purchasing information is included for books in print. This series does not provide copies of the books themselves.
-
Dueling Fundamentals: Advanced Fundamental Exercises for Alto and Tenor Trombones
Micah Everett and James Nova
Dueling Fundamentals: Advanced Fundamental Exercises for Alto and Tenor Trombones by Micah Everett is appropriate for college through professional trombone players.
Dueling Fundamentals for Alto and Tenor Trombones fosters improved reading, execution, and intonation in players cultivating alto trombone skills. This book consists of eight chapters: Long Tones; Flexibility; Range Extension; Stabilizers; Scales, Arpeggios, and Slide Technique; B-flat Attachment; Orchestral Excerpts; and Just for Fun. Dueling Fundamentals bridges the gap between developing basic proficiency on the alto trombone and being truly prepared for real-world performance demands on the instrument.
Includes a forward by James Nova, Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra; Adjunct Professor of Trombone, Duquesne University
-
String Methods for Beginners
Selim Giray
String Methods for Beginners is designed for students to receive the essential playing and teaching skills on all orchestral string instruments. The goal of this textbook is to be truly methodical in its approach, and to assist the instructor, completely eliminating the need to do additional research, or reorganization in preparation to teach this class. Students will gain the basic knowledge and experience to teach bowed stringed instruments in public schools. String Methods for Beginners covers the necessary topics to learn and teach the violin, viola, cello, and string bass. It explores the fundamentals of those instruments and teaching considerations, utilizing a heterogeneous approach. As the primary resource to any college- and university-level String Techniques, String Methods, or Instrumental Methods class, this course book fits into a standard semester, comprised of 25 lessons, which correspond with two hourly classes per week for the term. It provides the instructor with the tools to teach a classroom of non-majors or string education majors, or a mixed classroom of both.
-
Conducting Men's Choirs
Donald L. Trott
Inspired by Debra Spurgeon’s pioneering book Conducting Women’s Choirs, this companion resource, compiled and edited by Donald Trott, brings together the expertise of eighteen acknowledged authorities on men’s choirs. Conducting Men’s Choirs addresses the unique challenges, considerations, and joys of making music with male singers. The book is organized into three major sections, the first of which contains historical essays on male choirs in the United States. The chapters in this section span a range of relevant topics, including glee clubs in colleges and universities, an examination of some of the nation’s most esteemed and accomplished male choirs, and the role of male community choruses in America.
-
Hildegard von Bingen's Ordo Virtutum: A Musical and Metaphysical Analysis
Michael Gardiner
The Ordo Virtutum, Hildegard von Bingen’s twelfth-century music-drama, is one of the first known examples of a large-scale composition by a named composer in the Western canon. Not only does the Ordo’s expansive duration set it apart from its precursors, but also its complex imagery and non-biblical narrative have raised various questions concerning its context and genre. As a poetic meditation on the fall of a soul, the Ordo deploys an array of personified virtues and musical forces over the course of its eighty-seven chants. In this ambitious analysis of the work, Michael C. Gardiner examines how classical Neoplatonic hierarchies are established in the music-drama and considers how they are mediated and subverted through a series of concentric absorptions (absorptions related to medieval Platonism and its various theological developments) which lie at the core of the work’s musical design and text. This is achieved primarily through Gardiner’s musical network model, which implicates mode into a networked system of nodes, and draws upon parallels with the medieval interpretation of Platonic ontology and Hildegard’s correlative realization through sound, song, and voice.
-
English and German Diction for Singers: A Comparative Approach (2nd ed.)
Amanda Johnston
Lyric diction is a portal to powerful and meaningful vocal performance because diction enables singers to communicate the vision of both the poet and the composer. The study of diction involves learning to perceive speech patterns in different languages, practicing their precise articulation, recognizing this in speech and singing, and developing an awareness of the refined movements of the articulators and their effects on singing tone. In the second edition of English and German Diction for Singers, Amanda Johnston continues her comparative, modernized approach to lyric diction. This comprehensive resource offers a thorough analysis of the German and English languages and includes extensive oral drills, word lists, tables, charts, musical examples, and even tongue twisters. Unique to this publication is the illustration of the rhythmic timing and release of consonants within the International Phonetic Alphabet transcriptions in all musical examples. This book is designed for both undergraduate and graduate courses in German and English lyric diction and is an invaluable resource for classical singers, vocal coaches, and voice teachers alike.
-
The Violin
Robert Riggs
With a colorful history that spans 450 years, the violin has proven to be one of the world's most important and versatile instruments. Addressed to performing musicians, serious concertgoers, and collectors of recordings, The Violin offers insightful, up-to-date essays on a wide range of topics. Essays discuss beloved masterpieces from the violin's solo repertoire, with individual chapters on the Italian Baroque, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and the violin concerto in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as well as the evolution of performance styles and interpretation as documented in recordings. The volume also illustrates the broad cultural and geographic reach of the instrument, offering readers a taste of the traditional music of Argentina, Mexico, Norway, and India, in which the violin's participation is an essential and characteristic element. Other chapters are devoted to American fiddling and to the violin and violinists as metaphors in literature and the visual arts.
-
The Pride of the South 1928-2014: The Ole Miss Band, A History
Bill DeJournett and Anna McGahey Sayre
Founded in 1928, the University of Mississippi Marching Band, "The Pride of the South," has entertained audiences throughout the South for almost ninety years. This book recalls the history of the group throughout its various eras and eleven directors, including photographs.
-
West African Drumming and Dance in North American Universities: An Ethnomusicological Perspective
George W. Dor
More than twenty universities and twenty other colleges in North America (USA and Canada) offer performance courses on West African ethnic dance drumming. Since its inception in 1964 at both UCLA and Columbia, West African drumming and dance has gradually developed into a vibrant campus subculture in North America. The dances most practiced in the American academy come from the ethnic groups Ewe, Akan, Ga, Dagbamba, Mande, and Wolof, thereby privileging dances mostly from Ghana, Togo, Benin, Senegal, Mali, Guinea, and Burkina Faso. This strong presence and practice of a world music ensemble in the diaspora has captured and engaged the interest of scholars, musicians, dancers, and audiences. In the first-ever ethnographic study of West African drumming and dance in North American universities, the author documents and acknowledges ethnomusicologists, ensemble directors, students, administrators, and academic institutions for their key roles in the histories of their respective ensembles. Dor collates and shares perspectives including debates on pedagogical approaches that may be instructive as models for both current and future ensemble directors and reveals the multiple impacts that participation in an ensemble or class offers students. He also examines the interplay among historically situated structures and systems, discourse, and practice, and explores the multiple meanings that individuals and various groups of people construct from this campus activity. The study will be of value to students, directors, and scholars as an ethnographic study and as a text for teaching relevant courses in African music, African studies, ethnomusicology/world music, African diaspora studies, and other related disciplines.