Stewart Gordon – författare

The thirty-two Piano Sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven form one of the most important segments of piano literature. In this accessible, compact, and comprehensive guidebook, renowned performer and pedagogue Stewart Gordon presents the pianist with historical insights and practical instructional tools for interpreting the pieces.In the opening chapters of Beethoven's 32 Piano Sonatas, Gordon illuminates the essential historical context behind common performance problems, discussing Beethoven's own pianos and how they relate to compositional style and demands in the pieces, and addressing textual issues, performance practices, and nuances of the composer's manuscript inscriptions. In outlining patterns of structure, sonority, keyboard technique, and emotional meaning evident across Beethoven's compositional development, Gordon provides important background and technical information key to understanding his works in context. Part II of the book presents each sonata in an outline-chart format, giving the student and teacher ready access to essential information, interpretive choices, and technical challenges in the individual works, measure by measure, all in one handy reference source. In consideration of the broad diversity of today's Beethoven interpreters, Gordon avoids one-size-fits-all solutions or giving undue weight to his own tastes and preferences. Instead, he puts the choices in the hands of the performers, enabling them to create their own personal relationship with the music and a more powerful performance.

The thirty-two Piano Sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven form one of the most important segments of piano literature. In this accessible, compact, and comprehensive guidebook, renowned performer and pedagogue Stewart Gordon presents the pianist with historical insights and practical instructional tools for interpreting the pieces.In the opening chapters of Beethoven's 32 Piano Sonatas, Gordon illuminates the essential historical context behind common performance problems, discussing Beethoven's own pianos and how they relate to compositional style and demands in the pieces, and addressing textual issues, performance practices, and nuances of the composer's manuscript inscriptions. In outlining patterns of structure, sonority, keyboard technique, and emotional meaning evident across Beethoven's compositional development, Gordon provides important background and technical information key to understanding his works in context. Part II of the book presents each sonata in an outline-chart format, giving the student and teacher ready access to essential information, interpretive choices, and technical challenges in the individual works, measure by measure, all in one handy reference source. In consideration of the broad diversity of today's Beethoven interpreters, Gordon avoids one-size-fits-all solutions or giving undue weight to his own tastes and preferences. Instead, he puts the choices in the hands of the performers, enabling them to create their own personal relationship with the music and a more powerful performance.

This is a collection of essays reflecting on the piano teacher's art and the many challenges involved in piano teaching and performance. The topics range from the role of the piano teacher in contemporary society to basic skills such as inner hearing, improvisation, and sight-reading. Filled with useful practical advice as well as more philosophical artistic guidance, these essays are designed to provoke thoughtful reaction and act as catalysts for creative thinking.

Just as musical etudes focus on the development of skills and address the technical problems encountered in keyboard literature, the "etudes" in this volume also focus on ideas which prepare piano teachers for meeting the problems encountered in piano performing and teaching. This collection of essays on the piano teacher's art opens with an assessment of the role of the piano teacher, and goes on to explore various types of students and the challenge each presents: the moderately talented, but ambitious, student; the late beginner; the unusually gifted.

In Mastering the Art of Performance: A Primer for Musicians, Stewart Gordon offers seasoned advice to musicians intent on meeting the challenges of performance. Through real-life examples and pre-performance exercises, this accessible manual gives musicians and other performers practical insights into every aspect of performance. While other books merely identify and describe the problems associated with performance, this book offers detailed suggestionsfor solving them.First, Gordon tackles the critical planning and preparatory stages, helping performers to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. The book's easy-to-follow exercises address theself-doubt and anxiety many musicians contend with, helping them to analyze why they perform, set goals and assess the level of energy needed to achieve them, and develop a performance philosophy. The book also offers techniques that will help musicians deal with some of the classic pitfalls of performance preparation, including repetition and drill, changing bad habits, and developing memory.For the performance itself, Gordon's insights help musicians with pacing and managingstage fright. For the aftermath, Gordon arms performers with strategies for dealing with criticism and conducting a constructive self-evaluation, equipping them to face the challenges of a lifetimeof performances, including career plateaus and burnout.Gordon draws from more than forty years of experience in front of audiences to offer readers invaluable tips and personal reflections. While aimed primarily at musicians, the book will be useful to anyone facing the pressures of performance, such as actors, dancers, and even public speakers.

In Mastering the Art of Performance: A Primer for Musicians, Stewart Gordon offers seasoned advice to musicians intent on meeting the challenges of performance. Through real-life examples and pre-performance exercises, this accessible manual gives musicians and other performers practical insights into every aspect of performance. While other books merely identify and describe the problems associated with performance, this book offers detailed suggestions for solving them.First, Gordon tackles the critical planning and preparatory stages, helping performers to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. The book's easy-to-follow exercises address the self-doubt and anxiety many musicians contend with, helping them to analyze why they perform, set goals and assess the level of energy needed to achieve them, and develop a performance philosophy. The book also offers techniques that will help musicians deal with some of the classic pitfalls of performance preparation, including repetition and drill, changing bad habits, and developing memory.For the performance itself, Gordon's insights help musicians with pacing and managing stage fright. For the aftermath, Gordon arms performers with strategies for dealing with criticism and conducting a constructive self-evaluation, equipping them to face the challenges of a lifetime of performances, including career plateaus and burnout.Gordon draws from more than forty years of experience in front of audiences to offer readers invaluable tips and personal reflections. While aimed primarily at musicians, the book will be useful to anyone facing the pressures of performance, such as actors, dancers, and even public speakers.

Young pianists pursuing a professional career face a barrage of questions, choices, and challenges. In this book, experienced teacher and performer Stewart Gordon offers a new and practical way to approach them by helping readers to plan strategically and build a secure and successful career from the ground up. For decades, Gordon has guided young pianists through the details of how to prepare musically, navigate their college years, and forge a career that will provide a livelihood. In this guide to beginning that musical career, Gordon has assembled the wisdom of decades of teaching: a fundamental body of information emerging pianists will rely on as they work toward their goals. His advice, focused on both mental and practical work, will enhance both motivation and security. Carefully balancing aspiration with reality and inspiration with organization, Gordon creates a blueprint for transforming dreams into achievement, and illustrates his points with examples drawn from the lives of famous musicians. The book also addresses many practical matters, such as developing keyboard technique, acquiring reading and memorizing skills, building repertoire, and balancing the demands of being a musician with living a full life. This volume is a valuable resource for both young pianists and their parents.

Young pianists pursuing a professional career face a barrage of questions, choices, and challenges. In this book, experienced teacher and performer Stewart Gordon offers a new and practical way to approach them by helping readers to plan strategically and build a secure and successful career from the ground up. For decades, Gordon has guided young pianists through the details of how to prepare musically, navigate their college years, and forge a career that will provide a livelihood. In this guide to beginning that musical career, Gordon has assembled the wisdom of decades of teaching: a fundamental body of information emerging pianists will rely on as they work toward their goals. His advice, focused on both mental and practical work, will enhance both motivation and security. Carefully balancing aspiration with reality and inspiration with organization, Gordon creates a blueprint for transforming dreams into achievement, and illustrates his points with examples drawn from the lives of famous musicians. The book also addresses many practical matters, such as developing keyboard technique, acquiring reading and memorizing skills, building repertoire, and balancing the demands of being a musician with living a full life. This volume is a valuable resource for both young pianists and their parents.

While European intellectual, cultural, and commercial life stagnated during the early medieval period, Asia flourished as the wellspring of science, philosophy, and religion. Linked together by a web of religious, commercial, and intellectual connections, the different regions of Asia's vast civilization, from Arabia to China, hummed with commerce, international diplomacy and the brisk exchange of ideas. Stewart Gordon has fashioned a fascinating and unique look at Asia from 700 to 1500 AD, a time when Asia was the world, by describing the personal journeys of Asia's many travellers - the merchants who traded spices along the Silk Road, the apothecaries who exchanged medicine and knowledge from China to the Middle East, and the philosophers and holy men who crossed continents to explore and exchange ideas, books, science and culture. Arranged chronologically, each chapter focuses on an actual memoir from a traveller of the time - Chinese, Arab, Jewish, Mongol and Portuguese - entrepreneurs who interacted with and moved through this world. Their dramatic first hand observations are woven into a sophisticated new narrative of the period and region.

While European civilization stagnated in the Dark Ages," Asia flourished as the wellspring of science, philosophy, and religion. Linked together by a web of spiritual, commercial, and intellectual connections, the distant regions of Asia's vast civilization, from Arabia to China, hummed with trade, international diplomacy, and the exchange of ideas. Stewart Gordon has fashioned a compelling and unique look at Asia from AD 700 to 1500,a time when Asia was the world,by relating the personal journeys of Asia's many travellers.

In this book, Dr Stewart Gordon presents a comprehensive history of one of the most colourful and least-understood kingdoms of India: the Maratha Empire. The empire was founded by Shivaji in the mid-seventeenth century, spread across most of India during the following century, and was conquered by the British in the nineteenth century. Using administrative documents of the Maratha polity, family papers and Histories of the Empire, Stewart Gordon explores the origin of the Marathas, their emergence as elite families, patterns of loyalty and strategies for maintaining legitimacy. He traces how the armies developed into European-style infantry and artillery and assesses the economics that funded the polity, especially taxation and credit. Finally the author considers the lasting effects the empire had on administrations, law and trade patterns of Central India, Gujarat and Maharashtra.

In this book, Dr Stewart Gordon presents a comprehensive history of one of the most colourful and least-understood kingdoms of India: the Maratha Empire. The empire was founded by Shivaji in the mid-seventeenth century, spread across most of India during the following century, and was conquered by the British in the nineteenth century. Using administrative documents of the Maratha polity, family papers and Histories of the Empire, Stewart Gordon explores the origin of the Marathas, their emergence as elite families, patterns of loyalty and strategies for maintaining legitimacy. He traces how the armies developed into European-style infantry and artillery and assesses the economics that funded the polity, especially taxation and credit. Finally the author considers the lasting effects the empire had on administrations, law and trade patterns of Central India, Gujarat and Maharashtra.

Stories of disasters at sea, whether about Roman triremes, the treasure fleet of the Spanish Main, or great transatlantic ocean liners, fire the imagination as little else can. From the historical sinkings of the Titanic and the Lusitania to the recent capsizing of a Mediterranean cruise ship, the study of shipwrecks also makes for a new and very different understanding of world history. A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks explores the age-old, immensely hazardous, persistently romantic, and ongoing process of moving people and goods across the seven seas. In recounting the stories of ships and the people who made and sailed them, from the earliest craft plying the ancient Nile to the Exxon Valdez, Stewart Gordon argues that the gradual integration of mainly local and separate maritime domains into fewer, larger, and more interdependent regions offers a unique perspective on world history. Gordon draws a number of provocative conclusions from his study, among them that the European “Age of Exploration” as a singular event is simply a myth: over the millennia, many cultures, east and west, have explored far-flung maritime worlds, and technologies of shipbuilding and navigation have been among the main drivers of science and exploration throughout history. In a series of compelling narratives, A History of the World in Sixteen Shipwrecks shows that the development of institutions and technologies that made the terrifying oceans familiar and turned unknown seas into well-traveled sea-lanes matters profoundly in our modern world.

"Gordon's survey of the topic makes it clear that slavery in the Americas can be understood much better if we put it in this larger context, in terms of both time and place. His chapters on East African and Mediterranean slavery are especially valuable, since these were contemporary with so-called Atlantic slavery and can provide students with valid points of comparison, revealing both the similarities and the variable nature of early-modern bondage. The final chapter is especially timely, reminding readers that much of what we think of as enslavement hasn't really gone away, but simply slipped below the radar of the world media. All in all, Gordon makes it clear that, though it has arisen in different guises and at many different times and places, slavery has been and remains deeply rooted in human society. A rewarding introduction for anyone looking to better understand slavery as a world-wide institution."—Robert Davis, The Ohio State University

"Gordon's survey of the topic makes it clear that slavery in the Americas can be understood much better if we put it in this larger context, in terms of both time and place. His chapters on East African and Mediterranean slavery are especially valuable, since these were contemporary with so-called Atlantic slavery and can provide students with valid points of comparison, revealing both the similarities and the variable nature of early-modern bondage. The final chapter is especially timely, reminding readers that much of what we think of as enslavement hasn't really gone away, but simply slipped below the radar of the world media. All in all, Gordon makes it clear that, though it has arisen in different guises and at many different times and places, slavery has been and remains deeply rooted in human society. A rewarding introduction for anyone looking to better understand slavery as a world-wide institution."—Robert Davis, The Ohio State University