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Books

 

Essays on Music

Musicologist Joseph Kerman, professor emeritus of music, is the author of "Write All These Down: Essays on Music," published by University of California Press.

The volume includes 20 of Kerman's essays on music from the 1960s to the present &emdash; of interest both to general readers and to musicologists &emdash; including several appearing in print for the first time.

In writing about music, Kerman says he prefers "to ground criticism in historical knowlege...and to leaven scholarship with criticism."

The four sections of the book cover music criticism; Byrd, Tallis and Ferrabosco; Beethoven; and opera and concerto. Kerman's subjects range from an analysis of Beethoven's obsession with the key of C minor to an account of William Byrd, the premier figure of Elizabethan and Jacobean music, as a spokesman for the beleaguered Elizabethan Catholic minority.

Kerman is a founding editor of the journal 19th-Century Music.

 

Sacred Mountains

Staff research associate Edwin Bernbaum combined exquisite photography with years of mountaineering and scholarly research to produce "Sacred Mountains of the World." Published originally in 1991, a paperback version &emdash; including a new preface and more than 100 full-color photos &emdash; is being published this month by University of California Press.

In "Sacred Mountains" Bernbaum explores the significance of such mountains as Sinai and Zion in the Middle East, Olympus in Greece, T'ai Shan in China, Fuji in Japan, Kailas in Tibet and the San Francisco Peaks in Arizona, placing them in historical, religious and cultural context.

The second half of the book explores traditional views of sacred mountains &emdash; as centers of the cosmos, abodes of the gods and divine sources of life. Bernbaum also looks at well-known works of literature and art, noting how mountains are integral to ancient myths and religious traditions.

"Sacred Mountains" received the Commonwealth Club Gold Medal for Best Work of Nonfiction in 1991 and the Giu-seppe Mazotti Special Jury Prize for Literature on Mountains, Exploration and Ecology in 1992.


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