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Times a-changin' : flexible meter as self-expression in singer-songwriter music

Title: Times a-changin' : flexible meter as self-expression in singer-songwriter music / Nancy Murphy.
Author: Murphy, Nancy (Nancy Elizabeth)
Publication: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2023]

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Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request Scan Available - Can be used on site. Please visit New York Public Library - Performing Arts Research Collections to submit a request in person.	Text	Use in library	JME 23-416	Performing Arts Research Collections - Music

Details

Description

xii, 203 pages : illustrations, music; 25 cm.

Summary

"It is 1969 and Joni Mitchell is on television, standing empty-handed in the middle of a circular stage that is adorned with psychedelic colors. She is wearing a long, hunter-green dress, surrounded by an audience sitting cross-legged on the floor. She waits for television host Dick Cavett to introduce her next performance. The show is filming on the day after the 1969 Woodstock music festival, an event that Mitchell was initially scheduled to attend but from which she was held back by her management to ensure she could perform on The Dick Cavett Show the next day. The host introduces Mitchell and jokes with her about singing a capella, wondering aloud if someone stole her guitar. The singer laughs politely in response, denies any theft, and then proceeds to her performance, explaining to the audience that she will be singing a "song for America" that she wrote "as a Canadian living in this country." With her hands clasped behind her back, she performs "The Fiddle and the Drum" with no accompaniment, channeling the folk performance tradition on which the song is based. This song about military participation is a rare political statement from Mitchell who, unlike her peers Bob Dylan and Buffy Sainte-Marie, had only released this one "protest song" by 1969. But the song's message was not a particularly risky proclamation. Her anti-war narrative echoed the opinions of the young Cavett Show audience that night, aligning with an established trend of resistance against the war in Vietnam. Similar to the way that Mitchell's song "Woodstock" would eventually capture the spirit of an event she did not attend, "The Fiddle and the Drum" characterizes a popular anti-war sentiment in the public consciousness of the late 1960s"--

Series Statement

Oxford studies in music theory

Uniform Title

Oxford studies in music theory.

Subject

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references (pages [183]-193), discography (pages 193-195) and index.

Contents

The Self Expressive Rhetoric of Flexible Meter -- The Theory of Flexible Meter -- Regular and Reinterpreted Meter -- Self-Expressive Innovations : Lost Meter -- Intensifying "Imperfection" : Ambiguous Meter.

Call Number

JME 23-416

ISBN

9780197635216
0197635210
9780197635230 (canceled/invalid)
9780197635247 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

2023006287

OCLC

1369675909

Author

Murphy, Nancy (Nancy Elizabeth), author.

Title

Times a-changin' : flexible meter as self-expression in singer-songwriter music / Nancy Murphy.

Publisher

New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2023]

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Series

Oxford studies in music theory

Oxford studies in music theory.

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references (pages [183]-193), discography (pages 193-195) and index.

Chronological Term

1961-1980

Other Form:

Online version: Murphy, Nancy (Nancy Elizabeth) Times a-changin' [1.] New York : Oxford University Press, 2023 9780197635230 (DLC) 2023006288

Research Call Number

JME 23-416

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