For use by choirs and music ensembles. Prayer warm-ups for weekly, seasonal and holy days, as well as many occasions for music ministers.

Ask an old-timer what life was like in rural upstate New York during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and you will hear about the dances and bees that brought villagers and farmers together. You will hear of favorite fiddlers who held center stage with dance tunes taken from early British and American sources. You will hear of old-time music and its significance to a people making the transition from a rural, agricultural life to an urban, industrial one. Old-Time Music Makers of New York State is the first book published on this rich legacy of traditional Anglo-American music and dance. It traces the development of old-time music beginning with its movement into New York State from New England in the early nineteenth century and to its combination with commercial country music in the twentieth century. Exploring the regional character of the music and its meaning co the people who enjoy it, Bronner introduces memorable figures from the major periods in the development of old-time music, and he places their stories, their lives, and their music in the context of the region's cultural and historical changes. This is much more than a regional study, however. Bronner brings to the fore issues of national scope and interest. He discusses the relationship of old-time music to the commercial country music with which it has been closely aligned, and he challenges the prevailing wisdom that the origins of country music are in the South. Musician, fan, folklorist, and historian alike will benefit from and enjoy this book. The many musical transcriptions, annotations, photographs, and appendixes provide a valuable reference to be used again and again.

America tells its stories through song. Consolation to the lovelorn, courage to the oppressed, warning to the naive, or a ticket to the Promised Land, a great song can deliver the wisdom of ages directly to our souls. We Are the Music Makers! presents black-and-white portraits of artists who carry these songs from past to present: fathers and mothers, uncles and aunts, daughters and sons, grandparents and neighbors, who continue to lovingly stir the South's musical stew and feed American culture outside the realm of conventional fame and fortune. Newly available in paperback, this book features intimate photographs that will make you look more closely at the unrecognized greatness that surrounds us all.

THe MUSIC MAKERS by Shirley Russak Wachtel, author of the acclaimed memoir, MY MOTHER'S SHOES, is the story of five individuals living in upstate New York: Virginia, a divorcee embarking on a new career as she worries over the demands of her grown daughters; Joshua, a widower haunted by the memories of his lost wife as he faces a rebellious son; Christine, an artist who struggles with a terrible secret; Adam who finds himself in the first throes of love with the wrong person; and David, a Holocaust survivor facing his last days frightened by memory loss as he clings to the tattered images of his past. Their different lives and concerns are suddenly drawn together by the appearance of a mysterious young boy. Ordinary people with life issues from which none of us can escape, they each ultimately overcome struggles, finding a sense of "harmony" as they are inspired by something which none of them ever anticipated. Heartrending and beautiful, THE MUSIC MAKERS is an unforgettable tale of characters full of life and passion so that coming to the last page, the reader will find not only the end of the book but the end of a friendship as well.

Thirty-two composers, conductors, performers, scholars, patrons, critics and others integrally involved in the American classical music milieu offer perceptions, criticisms and praise in assessing the music world and their experiences.

Winner of the Nicholas Bessaraboff Prize Musical repertory of great importance and quality was performed on viols in sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century England. This is reported by Thomas Mace (1676) who says that ’Your Best Provision’ for playing such music is a chest of old English viols, and he names five early English viol makers than which ’there are no Better in the World’. Enlightened scholars and performers (both professional and amateur) who aim to understand and play this music require reliable historical information and need suitable viols, but so little is known about the instruments and their makers that we cannot specify appropriate instruments with much precision. Our ignorance cannot be remedied exclusively by the scrutiny or use of surviving antique viols because they are extremely rare, they are not accessible to performers and the information they embody is crucially compromised by degradation and alteration. Drawing on a wide variety of evidence including the surviving instruments, music composed for those instruments, and the documentary evidence surrounding the trade of instrument making, Fleming and Bryan draw significant conclusions about the changing nature and varieties of viol in early modern England.

This unique reference book is a compendium of makers and manufacturers of every variety of musical instrument made in the United States today. It provides names and addresses of instrument makers indexed alphabetically. Each entry gives all known information on the total and annual number of instruments the maker has produced, the number of workers in the shop, the year the individual or firm began manufacturing instruments, whether the instruments are available on demand or made to order, and whether a brochure is available from the maker. Complete cross-references are provided for companies known by more than one name, for partnerships, and for parent and subsidiary firms. Instruments are also indexed, and makers are listed by state for the convenience of the reader. Lists of schools of instrument making and relevant organizations and publications are included as appendixes. The directory will serve two major purposes. First, it will be an invaluable source of information for historians and for the rapidly growing number of collectors of musical instruments, who will be able to use the data gathered here in appraising instruments and tracing their history. The second purpose is simply to increase communication among instrument makers and to make their names available to retail and wholesale outlets for their products.