Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Reading is good; rereading is better. I can’t say with certainty how many times—forty? fifty?—I’ve read James Baldwin’s “Sonny’s Blues,” only that for more than thirty-five years I’ve been reading and teaching the story, each time with an undiminished sense of awe and appreciation for how Baldwin issues a prophetic warning about the outcome of racism while making deeply felt gestures of hope and reconciliation.
It’s an eventful time in the OUP Music office, as we’ve just sent to press the latest editions of the Piano Time method books by Pauline Hall. It’s always exciting to see the publication of a new title, but these books feel extra special.
The music has been hidden—unseen and unheard—for centuries. Listen to the playlist and hear a historic soundscape unfold—songs of compassion and hope, created to accompany the final breaths of life.
Since Bette Midler first entered a recording studio, she’s tackled just about every genre of music. This tour through her recorded output reveals not just the familiar best-selling hits but five decades of deep cuts and delightful discoveries.
Many families imagine summer as a time of endless fun and warmth. But summer is full of parenting challenges, including disrupted schedules and kids having more free time while parents have less. Such parenting challenges make this a great moment to consider how to weave music into activities and routines of family life to make things a little easier and a little more fun—an approach I call “parenting musically.”
Breaking out of the chains had emerged as a central leitmotif and call for activism at the Eurovision Song Contest long before Swiss non-binary singer, Nemo, performed it as the winning song, “The Code,” at the Grand Finale on May 11 2024 in Malmö, Sweden.
The British composer Sir William Walton (1902-1983), writer of operas, symphonies, concertos, and instrumental music, enjoyed an exclusive publishing relationship with Oxford University Press from the mid-1920s until his death.
New York-based talk shows in the 1970s offered plentiful opportunities for quirky young talents like Bette Midler to sing a song or two and maybe kibitz with the host, regardless of whether they had a Broadway show or film or new record to promote. Midler had none of these when her manager Budd Friedman got her booked on The Tonight Show starring Johnny Carson not long after she began her legendary run at the Continental Baths.
Music publishing is an exciting and fast-paced industry touching all our lives, whether as performers, composers, or music lovers listening in the car or in our favorite movies.
Until recently, women were regularly dismissed as unable to compose music. In 1894, the French physician Havelock Ellis said ‘There is certainly no art in which they have shown themselves more helpless’.
Today, our college and university music students are facing a rapidly changing global market place. There are new technologies, career options, virtual education, and so forth. As educators, we continue to focus on the highest standards of pedagogy. Nevertheless, we need to also expand our curricula to include the necessary preparatory training for skills that will transcend a dizzying rate of change.
I’ve heard the phrase “It’s the instrument most like the human voice and that’s why it’s so expressive” countless times over the years. As a cellist myself I’m probably biased to some degree, but I truly believe that the cello has a unique voice which wonderfully synergises with the human voice.
Chick Webb’s drumbeats resonate through much of James McBride’s fast-paced new novel “The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store.” McBride, one of America’s most beloved authors today, weaves Webb into this story early on.
Jonathan Wikeley explores Vaughan Williams’s “Four Last Songs”, looking at the textual meaning, the process of arranging for choir, and composer’s philosophy of “letting go” of the music.
What songs would revolutionaries in the 1970s have listened to and identified with? Listen to the playlist and trace the political history behind seven iconic protest songs from the 1970s.
“There is an irresistible appeal to playing with another musician.” In this blog post, Kathy Blackwell discusses the history of duet playing in classical music, and the benefits it can have for musicians.