In A Musician's Paradox author and lifelong working musician Ty Kiernan explores the intersection of music and philosophy with a series of philosophical discussions on life, human behavior, music, faith, relationships, and the connection between musician and instrument. Being torn between two worlds-with the frustration, the insecurity, and the dearth of understanding about why musicians play music, all the while loving and not being able to give up an obsession with music itself-he focuses on the particular psyche of the musician but appeals to all who contemplate this almost inherent duality of their own existence. Music is life and life is music, and music can ultimately transmute into wisdom-that is, it can raise our consciousness to help wisdom flow within us. For the musician-and perhaps for everyone-thinking about these connections and the relationship between cause and effect in general may offer us a clue into the possibility of something more in our lives.

In A Musician's Paradox author and lifelong working musician Ty Kiernan explores the intersection of music and philosophy with a series of philosophical discussions on life, human behavior, music, faith, relationships, and the connection between musician and instrument. Being torn between two worlds-with the frustration, the insecurity, and the dearth of understanding about why musicians play music, all the while loving and not being able to give up an obsession with music itself-he focuses on the particular psyche of the musician but appeals to all who contemplate this almost inherent duality of their own existence. Music is life and life is music, and music can ultimately transmute into wisdom-that is, it can raise our consciousness to help wisdom flow within us. For the musician-and perhaps for everyone-thinking about these connections and the relationship between cause and effect in general may offer us a clue into the possibility of something more in our lives.

Musician, composer, producer: Brian Eno is unique in contemporary music. Best known in recent years for producing U2's sensational albums, Eno began his career as a synthesizer player for Roxy Music. He has since released many solo albums, both rock and ambient, written music for film and television soundtracks, and collaborated with David Bowie, David Byrne, Robert Fripp, and classical and experimental composers. His pioneering ambient sound has been enormously influential, and without him today's rock would have a decidedly different sound. Drawing on Eno's own words to examine his influences and ideas, this book—featuring a new afterword and an updated discography and bibliography—will long remain provocative and definitive.

In Music as Cultural Practice, Lawrence Kramer adapts the resources of contemporary literary theory to forge a genuinely new discourse about music. Rethinking fundamental questions of meaning and expression, he demonstrates how European music of the nineteenth century collaborates on equal terms with textual and sociocultural practices in the constitution of self and society. In Kramer's analysis, compositional processes usually understood in formal or emotive terms reappear as active forces in the work of cultural formation. Thus Beethoven's last piano sonata, Op. 111, forms both a realization and a critique of Romantic utopianism; Liszt's Faust Symphony takes bourgeois gender ideology into a troubled embrace; Wagner's Tristan und Isolde articulates a basic change in the cultural construction of sexuality. Through such readings, Kramer works toward the larger conclusion that nineteenth-century European music is concerned as much to challenge as to exemplify an ideology of organic unity and subjective wholeness. Anyone interested in music, literary criticism, or nineteenth-century culture will find this book pertinent and provocative.

The second volume in the collected works of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi covers about thirty years of Csikszentmihalyi‘s work on three main and interconnected areas of study: attention, flow and positive psychology. Describing attention as psychic energy and in the footsteps of William James, Csikszentmihalyi explores the allocation of attention, the when and where and the amount of attention humans pay to tasks and the role of attention in creating ‘experiences’, or ordered patterns of information. Taking into account information processing theories and attempts at quantifying people’s investment, the chapters deal with such topics as time budgets and the development and use of the Experience Sampling Method of collecting data on attention in everyday life. Following the chapters on attention and reflecting Csikszentmihalyi’s branching out into sociology and anthropology, there are chapters on the topic of adult play and leisure and connected to that, on flow, a concept formulated and developed by Csikszentmihalyi. Flow has become a popular concept in business and management around the world and research on the concept continues to flourish. Finally, this volume contains articles that stem from Csikszentmihalyi’s connection with Martin Seligman; they deal with concepts and theories, as well as with the development and short history, of the field and the “movement” of positive psychology.

Resonances: Engaging Music in Its Cultural Context offers a fresh curriculum for the college-level music appreciation course. The musical examples are drawn from classical, popular, and folk traditions from around the globe. These examples are organized into thematic chapters, each of which explores a particular way in which human beings use music. Topics include storytelling, political expression, spirituality, dance, domestic entertainment, and more. The chapters and examples can be taught in any order, making Resonances a flexible resource that can be adapted to your teaching or learning needs. This textbook is accompanied by a complete set of PowerPoint slides, a test bank, and learning objectives.

The brilliant, controversial, bestselling critique of American culture that “hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy” (The New York Times)—now featuring a new afterword by Andrew Ferguson in a twenty-fifth anniversary edition. In 1987, eminent political philosopher Allan Bloom published The Closing of the American Mind, an appraisal of contemporary America that “hits with the approximate force and effect of electroshock therapy” (The New York Times) and has not only been vindicated, but has also become more urgent today. In clear, spirited prose, Bloom argues that the social and political crises of contemporary America are part of a larger intellectual crisis: the result of a dangerous narrowing of curiosity and exploration by the university elites. Now, in this twenty-fifth anniversary edition, acclaimed author and journalist Andrew Ferguson contributes a new essay that describes why Bloom’s argument caused such a furor at publication and why our culture so deeply resists its truths today.

This title documents the burgeoning eco art movement from A to Z, presenting a panorama of artistic responses to environmental concerns, from Ant Farms anti-consumer antics in the 1970s to Marina Zurkows 2007 animation that anticipates the havoc wreaked upon the planet by global warming.