Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
Here, we interviewed composer Hilary Tann. Praised for its lyricism and formal balance, Hilary Tann’s music is influenced by her love of Wales and a strong identification with the natural world. A deep interest in the traditional music of Japan has led to private study of the shakuhachi and guest visits to Japan, Korea, and China.
By Alyn Shipton
Singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson worked in the computer department of a California bank throughout the early 1960s. For much of that time, he managed the night shift, clocking on in the early evening and finishing around 1 a.m. Then, instead of going to sleep, he wrote songs all night. Being a man of considerable energy, he spent the daytime hawking his songs around publishers.
Women musicians push societal boundaries around the world, while hitting all the right notes. In honor of Women’s History Month, Oxford University Press is testing your knowledge about women musicians. Take the quiz and see if you’re a shower singer or an international composer!
In the battle for equal rights, many Americans who supported the civil rights movement did not march or publicly protest. They instead engaged with the debates of the day through art and culture. Ruth Feldstein, author of How it Feels to Be Free: Black Women Entertainers and the Civil Rights Movement, joined us in our New York offices to discuss the ways in which culture became a battleground and to share the stories of the female performers who played important but sometimes subtle roles in the civil rights movement.
Sunday, February 9, 2014 marked the 50th anniversary of the American television broadcast of the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. For many writers on pop music, the appearance on the Sullivan show not only marked the debut of the Beatles in the United States, but also launched their career as international pop music superstars.
by Eddie Shapiro
When I began work on my book, I knew I would be fortunate enough to experience a few moments of “Pinch me. This can’t really be happening.” There were, as it turned out, so many that I’d be black and blue if there was actual pinching going on. But of all of those moments, I think the highlight would have to be spending a day at Disneyland with Carol Channing and her late husband, Harry, who were then 90 and 91 respectively.
By Kathryn Kalinak
This year’s slate of contenders includes established pros (John Williams, Thomas Newman, Alexandre Desplat) along with some newcomers (William Butler and Owen Pallett, Steven Price). This used to be a category where you had to pay your dues, but no longer.
By Scott Huntington
Music therapy involves the use of clinical, evidence-supported musical interventions to meet a patient’s specific goals for healing (a useful fact sheet). The music therapist should have the proper credentials and be licensed in the field of music therapy.
Dirty South hip hop refers to a gritty rap culture first developed in the southern United States during the 1980s and the 1990s. Goodie Mob, an eccentric quartet from Atlanta, Georgia, titled a 1995 single “Dirty South” in order to shed light on myriad societal ills in the former Confederacy, where ethnic prejudice and racism seemed to be perennial sicknesses.
By The Very Revd Dr Andreas Loewe
It was the German reformer Martin Luther who famously said that ‘music was next to theology’. Why did Luther claim that music was ‘next’ to theology, and what did he mean? In the past, scholars have explained that music had a unique capacity to touch the human heart in a way that the spoken word, or other sounds may not do.
On Monday, 27 January 2014, the lobby of Oxford University Press’s New York City office was filled with Broadway fans, and a few stars, drinking champagne in celebration of the publication of Nothing Like a Dame: Conversations With the Great Women of Musical Theater by Eddie Shapiro.
By Barry S. Levy and Victor W. Sidel
“That song really sticks with you!” The speaker was the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1957, on his way to a speaking engagement in Kentucky. The song was “We Shall Overcome.” He had heard it the day before from Pete Seeger at the Highlander Center in Tennessee. There Seeger had, a decade before, learned the song – most likely derived from an old gospel song that became a labor-union song by the early 1900s.
Complied by Taylor Coe
Feeling angsty about Valentine’s Day? The OUP staff is here to help! We have pulled together a wide-ranging list of “anti-Valentine’s Day” music – exactly opposite the treacly, mincing pop that you may encounter otherwise on this most-exclusive of holidays.
By Gary Rosen
This February marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of ASCAP, the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers. Though little known outside the music industry today, its creation set in motion a series of events that still reverberates in the popular music of our time.
Humans seem to love attempting to understand the meaning of songs. Back in my college days, I spent many hours talking with friends about what this or that song must mean. Nowadays, numerous websites are devoted to providing space for fans to dissect and share their interpretations of their favorite songs (e.g. Song Meanings, Song Facts, and Lyric Interpretations). There is even a webpage with a six-step program for understanding a song’s meaning.
By Hugh Cobbe
The cantata Dona Nobis Pacem by Ralph Vaughan Williams was written at a time when the country was slowly awakening to the possibility of a second European conflict. When invited to provide a work for the centenary of the Huddersfield Choral Society in October 1936, Vaughan Williams remembered that he had in his drawer an unpublished setting of Walt Whitman’s ‘Dirge for Two Veterans’.