Few music lovers realize that the arrangement of notes ontoday’s pianos was once regarded as a crime against God and nature,or that such legendary thinkers as Pythagoras, Plato, da Vinci,Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Newton and Rousseau played a role inthe controversy. Indeed, from the time of the Ancient Greeksthrough the eras of Renaissance scientists and Enlightenmentphilosophers, the relationship between the notes of the musicalscale was seen as a key to the very nature of the universe. In this engaging and accessible account, Stuart Isacoff leads usthrough the battles over that scale, placing them in the context ofquarrels in the worlds of art, philosophy, religion, politics andscience. The contentious adoption of the modern tuning system knownas equal temperament called into question beliefs that hadlasted nearly two millenia–and also made possible the music ofBeethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Debussy, and all who followed. Filledwith original insights, fascinating anecdotes, and portraits ofsome of th

Tattoos and tattoo artwork have become part of mainstream culture, and more so over the last few years with popular TV shows taking the viewer inside the tattoo studio for the first time. Many tattooists are also highly skilled artists in their own right, and have moved beyond the artwork they tattoo onto skin to creating bodies of personal artwork more likely to be viewed in a gallery than a tattoo studio. Art by Tattooists is the first book to showcase this art. The book features twenty-six international artists who use a variety of media, from ink, watercolour, acrylic paint and oil to lino printing, painting on wood and board, and even examples of tattoo-style skateboard graphics. Many of the artists are heavily influenced by the imagery they use as tattooists roses, hearts, skulls, scrolls, birds, pin-ups, etc. and carry this into their personal work. Other work features colours, themes or subject matter that is more subtly related to tattooing.

Antonio Stradivari (1644—1737) was a perfectionist whosesingle-minded pursuit of excellence changed the world of music. Inthe course of his long career in the northern Italian city ofCremona, he created more than a thousand stringed instruments;approximately six hundred survive, their quality unequalled by anysubsequent violin-maker. In this fascinating book, Toby Fabertraces the rich, multilayered stories of six of these peerlesscreations–five violins and a cello–and the one towering artist whobrought them into being. Blending history, biography, meticulousdetective work, and an abiding passion for music, Faber takes usfrom the salons of Vienna to the concert halls of New York, andfrom the breakthroughs of Beethoven’s last quartets to the firstphonographic recordings. This magnificent narrative invites us toshare the life, the intrigue, and the incomparable beauty of theworld’s most marvelous stringed instruments.

In this compulsively readable, fascinating, and provocativeguide to classical music, Norman Lebrecht, one of the world's mostwidely read cultural commentators tells the story of the rise ofthe classical recording industry from Caruso's first notes to theheyday of Bernstein, Glenn Gould, Callas, and von Karajan. Lebrechtcompellingly demonstrates that classical recording has reached itsend point-but this is not simply an expos? of decline and fall. Itis, for the first time, the full story of a minor art form,analyzing the cultural revolution wrought by Schnabel, Toscanini,Callas, Rattle, the Three Tenors, and Charlotte Church. It is thestory of how stars were made and broken by the record business; howa war criminal conspired with a concentration-camp victim to createa record empire; and how advancing technology, boardroom wars,public credulity and unscrupulous exploitation shaped the musicalbackdrop to our modern lives. The book ends with a suitable shrineto classical recording: the author's critical selectio

《不朽的小提琴家》再现了历史上不朽小提琴家的魅力，简要而有趣地叙述其生活、个性与事业。作者就他们对作曲者、公众品味的影响以及演奏技巧的贡献等各个方面，讲述了这些小提琴家的特殊成就。作者玛格丽特·坎贝尔参阅了大量的书信和私人文件，并且访问许多著名音乐家，很多人为《不朽的小提琴家》提供了从未发表过的回忆录和珍贵照片。《不朽的小提琴家》是一本献给音乐会听众、唱片收藏者（有“唱片目录”）、弦乐演奏者和学生等所有爱好小提琴演奏艺术者的书。

The Renaissance holds an undying place in our imagination, itsgreat heroes still our own, from Michelangelo and Leonardo to Danteand Chaucer. This period of profound evolution in European thoughtis credited with transforming the West from medieval to modern andproducing the most astonishing outpouring of artistic creation theworld has ever known. But what was it? In this masterly work, theincomparable Paul Johnson tells us. He explains the economic,technological, and social developments that provide a backdrop tothe age’s achievements and focuses closely on the lives and worksof its most important figures. A commanding short narrative of thisvital period, The Renaissance is also a universally profoundmeditation on the wellsprings of innovation.

The world of the fashionista is brought to vivid life with 101introductory lessons on such topics as how a designer anticipatescultural trends and "sees" the fashion consumer, the workings ofthe fashion calendar, the ways a designer collection is conceived,the manufacture of fabric, fashion illustration, and more. Illustrated in the distinctly unique packaged style of thebestselling101 THINGS I LEARNED IN ARCHITECTURE SCHOOL, this newbook on fashion design will be a perfect book for any fashionschool wannabe, a recent graduate, or even a seasonedprofessional.

The moral of this book is that behind every great engineeringsuccess is a trail of often ignored (but frequently spectacular)engineering failures. Petroski covers many of the best knownexamples of well-intentioned but ultimately failed design in action-- the galloping Tacoma Narrows Bridge (which you've probably seentossing cars willy-nilly in the famous black-and-white footage),the collapse of the Kansas City Hyatt Regency Hotel walkways -- andmany lesser known but equally informative examples. The line ofreasoning Petroski develops in this book were later formalized intohis quasi-Darwinian model of technological evolution in TheEvolution of Useful Things , but this book is arguably the moreilluminating -- and defintely the more enjoyable -- of these twotitles. Highly recommended.

These free-wheeling, often exhilarating dialogues—which grewout of the acclaimed Carnegie Hall Talks—are an exchange betweentwo of the most prominent figures in contemporary culture: DanielBarenboim, internationally renowned conductor and pianist, andEdward W. Said, eminent literary critic and impassioned commentatoron the Middle East. Barenboim is an Argentinian-Israeli and Said aPalestinian-American; they are also close friends. As they range across music, literature, and society, they openup many fields of inquiry: the importance of a sense of place;music as a defiance of silence; the legacies of artists from Mozartand Beethoven to Dickens and Adorno; Wagner’s anti-Semitism; andthe need for “artistic solutions” to the predicament of the MiddleEast—something they both witnessed when they brought young Arab andIsraeli musicians together. Erudite, intimate, thoughtful andspontaneous, Parallels and Paradoxes is a virtuosiccollaboration.

Andrew Pitcairn-Knowles is one of the pioneers in Britishphotography. Compiled by his grandson from previously unpublishedglass negatives, this collection is a beautiful portrayal ofEdwardian life in England in the early 1900s.

Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) emerged from humble circumstances - reflected in his nickname, "the customs official". An employee in the Paris customs bureau, Rousseau was an autodidact who incrementally worked his way into a position among the artists who were renewing the art world at the turn of the century. It was a difficult journey - for years the art world laughed at the layman's flat, icon-like figures, simple landscapes and, in his late phase, exotic jungle scenes. However his "naive" compositions in fact became an emblem that piqued the interest of the avant-garde. Rousseau's jungle paintings consisted of ornamental variations of plant leaves, among which he set brilliantly coloured predators, natives and naked beauties. In so doing, the artist evinced intuitive principles of design and compositions, which subsequent avant-garde artists had to work out for themselves with great effort. Ultimately winning recognition as an uncompromising modernist, Rousseau inspired comparison with Derain, Cezanne, Matis

"The Listening Book " is about rediscovering the power oflistening as an instrument of self-discovery and personaltransformation. By exploring our capacity for listening to soundsand for making music, we can awaken and release our full creativepowers. Mathieu offers suggestions and encouragement on manyaspects of music-making, and provides playful exercises to helpreaders appreciate the connection between sound, music, andeveryday life.