Fantasy. Lanen Kaelar has always dreamed of dragons. Now she sets out on a long, perilous, winding road to find them.

Collecting together numerous examples of Augustine's musical imagery in action, Laurence Wuidar reconstructs the linguistic laboratory and the hermeneutics in which he worked. Sensitive and poetical, this volume is a reminder that the metaphor of music can give access not only to human interiority, but allow the human mind to achieve proximity to the divine mind. Composed by one of Europe's leading musicologists now engaging an English-speaking audience for the first time, this book is a candid exploration of Wuidar's expertise. Drawing on her long knowledge of music and the occult, from antiquity to modernity, Wuidar particularly focuses upon Augustine's working methods while refusing to be distracted by questions of faith or morality. The result is an open and at times frightening vista on the powers that be, and our complex need to commune with them.

In the Sipsongpanna region of China, tourists watch festive displays of Tai Lüe folk song and dance. The Tai Lües are viewed by the Chinese government as a 'model minority'. Sara Davis describes how Tai Lües are reviving and reinventing their culture in ways that contest the official state version.

Time is of the essence in music because the ear can only perceive sequentially-one thing at a time-unlike the eye, which is capable of panoramic view. Silence and Slow Time proposes a way of thinking about music that is faithful to the experience of playing or listening during a real performance. Boykan argues against the common assumption that thematic relationships automatically insure musical coherence, because the repetition or the transformation of a theme is only meaningful if we consider when it occurs. This argument is developed through a close reading of passages from the full range of Western music. Analyses of dramatic narratives in Haydn, Beethoven, Schubert, and Chopin reveal a richness that can only be captured if thematic or voice-leading relationships are placed within a temporal context. Other kinds of narrative are explored in a Renaissance motet, and in the music of Wolf and Debussy at the end of the 19th Century. The book devotes several chapters to the great innovators of the 20th Century, and concludes with a detailed study of the Schoenberg Trio that traces its thematic and harmonic process to suggest a somewhat oblique relation to the apocalyptic moment when it was composed.

Hymns to the Silence is a thoroughly informed and enlightened study of the art of a pop music maverick that will delight fans the world over. In 1991, Van Morrison said, Music is spiritual, the music business isn't. Peter Mills' groundbreaking book investigates the oppositions and harmonies within the work of Van Morrison, proceeding from this identified starting point. Hymns to the Silence is a detailed investigative study of Morrison as singer, performer, lyricist, musician and writer with particular attention paid throughout to the contradictions and tensions that are central to any understanding of his work as a whole. The book takes several intriguing angles. It looks at Morrison as a writer, specifically as an Irish writer who has recorded musical settings of Yeats poems, collaborated with Seamus Heaney, Paul Durcan and Gerald Dawe, and who regularly drops quotes from James Joyce and Samuel Beckett into his live performances. It looks at him as a singer, at how he uses his voice as an interpretive instrument. And there are chapters on his use of mythology, on his stage performances, and on his continuing fascination with America and its musical forms.

This book points to modern science for the understanding of the ancient practise of silence, and shows how you can become an unshakeable island of calm amidst the storms, noise and challenges of life. With a collection of simple exercises in the latter part of the book, silence is an any-moment practise you can start right now.

A memoir about the loss of a friend through a vehicular accident and the healing power of love.

One of the first questions asked in examining the root causes of discontent should be:When did you stop singing?or: Why aren't we in touch with this vital part of our being? In such an inquiry lies a journey toward the essential qualities that give happiness to the way we lead our daily lives. ThroughoutSong and Silence,Susan Hale explores the meaning of song and the cultural estrangement from our own voices. She shows us how singing can restore a relationship with ourselves, the natural world, and the many human worlds around us. What belongs to each of us coming into life is an ability to express inner feelings through sound. Using this most basic part of human existence can connect us with our deepest spiritual joys. This insight is often forgotten, but still functions in tribal cultures around the planet. Reaching into our common global matrix, Susan Hale shares experiential truths and lessons of the healing power of sound, song, and silence learned in her own journey as a singer. This book offers a fresh point of view, which leads to simple, yet profound, personal growth.