The Whole Music Experience

Book review How to Listen to Great Music   A Guide to its History, Culture & Art Robert Greenberg   Plume Book/Penguin I’m a music appreciation junkie and when I find a music appreciation book with a flowing narrative, theory that’s explained in a way I can understand, and biographical details of composers tossed in, I climb on board.   I have taught music appreciation courses, but my focus was on world and folkloric music.   Robert Greenberg, a composer and music historian not only teaches through the pages of How to Listen to Great Music , but he also teaches a series through his teaching company, Great Courses. In this book, he gets us started with medieval and renaissance music and then we’re off into the baroque, classical, romantic and post modern eras--starting with Gregorian chant and landing in the terrain of Arnold Schoenberg.   We learn about fugues and musical structures from each of the musical/cultural eras as Greenber...

WM Conversation with American Composer/Conductor James DeMars James DeMars, composer/conductor of contemporary American classical music with a cultural exchange twist, also teaches composition at Arizona State University in Tempe.  His biography cites, "Composer/conductor James DeMars belongs to a generation of composers that is revealing a new integration of world music with the range, depth and stylistic variety of the classical tradition." He is the musical descendent of musicians such as Aaron Copland, George Gershwin (symphonic work), Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy and other classical composers that drew inspiration from traditional and folkloric music.  DeMars has produced work and recorded for Canyon Records several times.  His recordings with Canyon Records include, Spirit Horses (1991), Native Tapestry (1993), Two World Concerto (1997) and the opera Guadalupe, Our Lady of Roses (2009). I caught up with DeMars by e-mail.  And I want to thank...

James DeMars Guadalupe, Our Lady of The Roses (opera) Canyon Records Opera, oratorio and music for mass present a variety of challenges to composers and performers. American composer James DeMars, who is no stranger to Canyon Records or indigenous music has combined structure from opera, oratorio and mass with his opera, Guadalupe, Our Lady Of The Roses . He brings in R. Carlos Nakai (Native American flute) and Xavier Quijas Yxayotl (flutes, whistles of the Aztecs) to represent the indigenous people of Mexico at the time of of the Renaissance and conquistadors in the New World. The opera vocalists, chorus and orchestra represent the Spanish, the Indians, The Virgin of Guadalupe and the Catholic Church. The brief synopsis reads, "A story of the three apparitions of the Virgin of Guadalupe on the hills of Tepeyac above Tlatelolco in 1531, the appeals of Juan Diego-Cuatlatohuac to the Bishop Zumarraga for a temple at the site of the visions, the revelation of the mirac...