ANFSCD: Earth’s Coolest Concept Albums

Yes, it's not user experience design, unless you consider that Pink Floyd's most popular album has provided a unique musical (and often mind-altering) experience for over 35 years. This Wired article asks readers what albums they think could compete with Pink Floyd's trippy masterpiece.

As someone who owns every album Pink Floyd released, I'm also partial to Animals and Wish You Were Here, but Dark Side of the Moon is a masterwork.

But why argue? Can't we all just get along? Don't think of this list as 24 contenders, but rather as a great list of classic concept albums. Some will argue that albums like Pet Sounds were at least as if not more musically influential, but for sheer popularity it's hard to argue with DSoTM's over 700 weeks on the charts and almost instant universal recognition.

Earth’s Coolest Concept Albums, Decided By You | Underwire | Wired.com

Grammy Awards Music

Yeah, ok, so a lot of the top awards finalists were kinda, eh. But, if you use iTunes, check out this link to all of the finalists in all categories and music genres. There is a ton of great music to be discovered, even if you're not so Gaga over the Lady:


Grammy Finalists and Winners

CWL---An Era When All Music Was Live Music, Part Two

Old Times There Are Not Forgotten: An Overview of Music of the Civil War Era, Bruce C. Kelly, pp. 1-36 in Bugle Resounding: Music And Musicians Of The Civil War Era, Bruce C. Kelley and Mark A. Snell, editors, University of Missouri Press, 260 pp., illustrations, index, notes, 2004, $44.00.

Music was an essential element of American culture during the Civil War era. The impact of the war upon public, social music, theatre, concerts, and church music was felt dramatically in the South as the battlefront neared major cities. New Orleans and Nashville fell to the North in April 1862, Vicksburg and Chattanooga in 1863, Atlanta and Mobile in 1864. In these urban centers, theatre and concerts were curtailed during the attacks and afterward for a variety of reasons. Federal military music and concerts by military bands were generally the only notes struck after the occupation. Cities that passed through the war without suffering damage, Houston and Kansas City, received refugees and a surge in musical activities. Women composers on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line garnered success with patriotic songs and polkas. Both Sanitary Commission and Christian Commission fairs held dances which required event specific compositions that were either sung by choruses or performed by bands and orchestras.

African-American music and musicians continued to thrive in workplaces and churches. The first publication of slave songs appeared in 1861. By 1867 collections of these songs began to appear. The war and emancipation provided great opportunities for black musicians who continued their traditional roles as repositories of work, faith and folk culture. In the camp life of Black soldiers slave plantation music met Northern urban music. Kelley cites several scholarly works that focus on sinful and spiritual tunes in Black folk music. White transcriptionists attempted to faithfully notate traditional black music but were stymied by the vocal techniques used by slaves with a variety of Dixie-Afro dialects. At times white transcribers transferred into the music their own attitudes about life, work, faith and black identity.

Military bands were organized by regiment early in the war but quickly migrated into brigade and division bands. Some regimental bands, such as the 14th Connecticut, were so good, were called upon to play as the units advanced or retreated. Kelley cites the work of this Connecticut band during the retreat in the face of Jackson's assault at Chancellorsville. The band's performance was such that the 14th Connecticut's brigade rallied on the band as it played. R.E. Lee stated in 1864 that he did not believe an army could exist without music. Several histories of Civil War military music have been written and several histories of regimental and brigade bands now exist. Accounts of bands surrendering at Appomattox, passing through four years of war, and continuing as they return to their local communities are in the literature. Technical innovations in instrument construction and instruction marked the war. Kelly cites the 1860 census as reporting that 21,000 pianofortes were manufactured and probably 30 a day were sold through the Union before secession. The banjo moved from artisan workshops to industrial production. There was a surge in amateur education through book instruction for stringed instruments and drums.

Sheet music production existed in most major cities before the war and only slowed in the South as paper became expensive and scarce. The collection of wartime sheet music, songsters, and song books by wealthy families became a trend and many of these collections now reside in academic libraries. Kelly agrees with other researchers that the Civil War was a laboratory for musicians, composers and entertainment promoters, not unlike it was a laboratory for medicine, communication, railroads, manufacturing and banking.

Top Image Source: Getty Images

Second Image Source: 3rd Michigan band, Corbis Images

Resounding Bugles, Resounding Voices: Music and Musicians of the Civil War Era

Bugle Resounding: Music And Musicians Of The Civil War Era, Bruce C. Kelley and Mark A. Snell, editors, University of Missouri Press, 260 pp., illustrations, index, notes, 2004, $44.00.

In the mid-nineteenth century the United States was musically vibrant. Rising industrialization, a growing middle class, and increasing concern for the founding of American centers of art created a culture that was rich in musical capital. Beyond its importance to the people who created and played it is the fact that this music still influences our culture today.

Although numerous academic resources examine the music and musicians of the Civil War era, the research is spread across a variety of disciplines and is found in a wide array of scholarly journals, books, and papers. It is difficult to assimilate this diverse body of research, and few sources are dedicated solely to a rigorous and comprehensive investigation of the music and the musicians of this era. This anthology, which grew out of the first two National Conferences on Music of the Civil War Era, is an initial attempt to address that need.

Those conferences established the first academic setting solely devoted to exploring the effects of the Civil War on music and musicians. Bridging musicology and history, these essays represent the forefront of scholarship in music of the Civil War era. Each one makes a significant contribution to research in the music of this era and will ultimately encourage more interdisciplinary research on a subject that has relevance both for its own time and for ours. The result is a readable, understandable volume on one of the few understudied--yet fascinating--aspects of the Civil War era.

Contents
Old Times There Are Not Forgotten: An Overview of Music of the Civil War Era, Bruce C. Kelley

Music and Community in the Civil War Era, Deane L. Root

They Weren't All Like Lorena: Musical Portraits of Women in the Civil War Era, Lenora Cuccia

An Inspiration to All: New Hampshire's Third Regiment and Hilton Head Post Bands in Civil War South Carolina, Richard C. Spicer

Confederates at the Keyboard: Southern Piano Music during the Civil War, David B. Thompson

Henry Clay Work: "The Silver Horn" as Civil War Elegy, Walter L. Powell

The Production and Consumption of Confederate Songsters, Kirsten M. Schultz

Across a Great Divide: Irish American Music and Musicians of the Civil War Era, Michael Saffle

Civil War Music and the Common Soldier: The Experiences of Charles Wellington Reed, Eric A. Campbell

Music Inspired by the Battle of Gettysburg, 1863-1913, Mark A. Snell

Bruce C. Kelley is Associate Professor of Music at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia. Mark A. Snell is Research Professor of History and Director of the George Tyler Moore Center for the Study of the Civil War at Shepherd University in Shepherdstown, West Virginia.

Source: University of Missouri Press

Visualizing Music Discovery

This site was listed as a 2009 top 50 website by Time Magazine, although it's been around since 2006; I stumbled onto it at VisualComplexity.com. It has a fun interface that encourages interaction and play.

Musicovery : interactive webRadio

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Can a computer compose music?

Can a computer program really generate musical compositions that are good enough to have been written by humans? Professor David Cope thinks so, and has dedicated decades of research to the topic of artificial intelligence in music, which has resulted in not one, but two controversial composing engines.

Virtual composer makes beautiful music and stirs controversy - Ars Technica

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News---Appomattox, The Opera: Is it over when the fat generals sing?

World Premier of Work by Philip Glass is a Sure-Fire American Classic, Seán Martinfield, Fine Arts Critic, San Francisco Sentinel, October 14, 2007.

APPOMATTOX is the perfect American Opera. Its story of the surrender of the Confederacy to the Union Army is a cornerstone of American history and an artery of the human experience. The look and feel of our Civil War – its imagery, poetry, politics, rhetoric and music – hovers bright and clear in the currency of campaign speeches, street marches, Supreme Court arguments, week-end sermons, sports and entertainment commentary, sometimes whipping in the breeze from an available flagpole. Composer Philip Glass has produced an amazingly persuasive vocal score that sits comfortably in the operatic column – inviting and compelling to all. The musical structures and vocal lines are all at once familiar in the ear, strident in the heart, close and intimate in the collective memory.
APPOMATTOX, the Opera is a series of iconic tableaux. Mr. Glass has teamed with librettist Christopher Hampton (Oscar Winner, DANGEROUS LIAISONS; Tony Winner, SUNSET BOULEVARD) to create both psychic tension for unseen battles and reports of thousands of soldiers suddenly slaughtered to the disturbing on-stage realities of dead horses strung-up for food and a child shot during an evacuation. A scene with blood-red lighting by designer Christopher Akerlind evokes the horror of blood-soaked earth, another approaching dawn – and memories of the famous crossroads scene in “Gone With The Wind”. Likewise, fashions created by Gabriel Berry are as rich and smooth as those of MGM period designer Walter Plunkett.

Story's Link--http://www.sanfranciscosentinel.com/?p=6003



CWL Reflects: I saw my first reenactment in the summer of 1993 in Gettysburg and I saw the film Gettysburg about six times in the course of six months during 1993 and 1994. I became a Civil War reenactor in late 1993. Will the next generation of CW reenactors say, "I saw Philip Glass' Appomattox and after that I started wearing wool in July" ?