Something to Live For: The Music of Billy Strayhorn
by Walter van de Leur
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Book Summary Information
Author: Walter van de LeurEdition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2002-01-31
ISBN: 0195124480
Number of pages: 352
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Book Reviews of Something to Live For: The Music of Billy Strayhorn
Book Review: Now you will know why Billy Strayhorn's music sounds so good
Summary: 5 Stars
After reading this book you will have a technical understanding of why Billy Strayhorn's music sounds so good and why Strayhorn needs to be recognized as one of the giants of American popular music. After having spent over 10 years performing in depth research and examining over 3,000 manuscripts Walter Van De Leur seperates Billy Strayhorn from Duke Ellington and analyzes how their musical styles differ. The book provides the reader with a technical dissection of a number of Strayhorn's and Ellington's music and gives, from a musicologist's point of view, the uniqueness of Strayhorn's music. Anecdotes about Strayhorn and Ellington are infrequent and instead Van De Leur provides a scholarly examination of one of the most important of American composers. However, Van De Leur can be eloquent in his examination of Strayhorn's work and this belies the love he has for his subject. Analyzing Strayhorn's Day Dream Van De Leur writes " The introspective Day Dream is less radical in its harmonic and melodic design, although chromatic chord relations again play an important role...On beat three this flat supertonic for the target proper, which now functions as the delay for the dominant E7, for A. Turning this pattern into a sequence, Strayhorn again liberates the music from its tonal gravity..." That last sentence says it all, Billy Strayhorn liberated music from its tonal gravity!
Summary of Something to Live For: The Music of Billy Strayhorn
Duke Ellington was one of jazz's greatest figures, a composer and bandleader of unparalleled importance and influence. But little attention has been given to his chief musical collaborator, Billy Strayhorn, who created hundreds of compositions and arrangements for his musical partner, and without whom the sound of Ellington's orchestra would have been very different.Now, in Walter van de Leur's provocative new book, Something To Live For, Billy Strayhorn steps out from Ellington's shadow and into the spotlight. Van de Leur argues that far from being merely a follower of Ellington or his alter ego, Strayhorn brought a radically new and visionary way of writing to the Ellington orchestra. Making extensive use, for the first time, of over 3,000 autograph scores, Van de Leur separates Strayhorn from Ellington, establishes who wrote what, and clearly distinguishes between their distinctive musical styles. "Both Strayhorn's and Ellington's oeuvres," writes Van de Leur, "though historically intertwined, nevertheless form coherent, separate musical entities, especially in terms of harmonic, melodic, and structural design." Indeed, Something to Live For allows us to see the characteristic features of Strayhorn's compositions and arrangements, his "musical fingerprints," and to analyze and evaluate his music on its own terms. The book also makes clear that Strayhorn's contribution to the band was much larger, and more original, than has been previously acknowledged.
Based on a decade of research and offering detailed analyses of over 70 musical examples, Something to Live For casts new light--and will surely arouse intense debate--on two of the most important composers in the history of jazz.
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