Classical Composers

From the acclaimed author of Rip It Up and Start Again and Retromania—“the foremost popular music critic of this era (Times Literary Supplement)—comes the definitive cultural history of glam and glitter rock, celebrating its outlandish fashion and outrageous stars, including David Bowie...

Tina Davidson is three-and-a-half when she is adopted from her foster home in Sweden by a visiting American professor. Soon she is the oldest of five children, living with her mother and stepfather in Turkey, Germany, and Israel. She studies music and becomes a prolific pianist and composer. But something about her birth remains unnamed and hidden. When she returns to Sweden, she contacts the Swedish adoption agency. “Come,” says the voice on the phone, “I have information for you.”

Following on the success of The Story of Classical Music, Darren Henley and Marin Alsop combine forces again to tell, in more detail, the lives of six key composers: Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart, Beethoven, Dvorak, and Shostakovich. Their colourful lives and their love of music are told against the backdrop of some of their finest works, an ideal combination.

Liszt once said that Mozart composed more bars than a trained copyist could write in a lifetime. Mozart's gift and skill with instruments was also remarkable as he mastered all of them except the harp. For example, no sooner had the clarinet been invented and introduced than Mozart began playing and composing for it. In addition to his many insights into Mozart's music, Johnson also challenges the many myths that have followed Mozart, including those about the composer's health, wealth, religion, and relationships.

Read by the author, acclaimed conductor Jane Glover. 'You don’t have to be able to hum Mozart to find this book utterly engrossing . . . I couldn’t put it down' - Joanna Lumley An expertly researched and vividly written account of Mozart’s formative trips to Italy. At thirteen years old...

In a book that inspired the Amazon original series starring Gael Garcia Bernal and Malcolm McDowell, oboist Blair Tindall recounts her decades-long professional career as a classical musician, from the recitals and Broadway orchestra performances to the secret life of musicians who survive hand to mouth in the backbiting New York classical music scene, trading sexual favors for plum jobs and assignments in orchestras across the city.

The author of the critically acclaimed Your Favorite Band is Killing Me offers an eye-opening and frank assessment of the state of classic rock, assessing its past and future, the impact it has had, and what it’s loss would mean to an industry, a culture, and a way of life. Since the late...

An exuberant, uniquely accessible, beautifully illustrated look inside the enigmatic art and craft of conducting, from a celebrated conductor whose international career has spanned half a century. John Mauceri brings a lifetime of experience to bear in an unprecedented, hugely informative...

Brilliant, short-lived, incredibly prolific—Schubert is one of the most intriguing figures in music history. While his music attracts a wide audience, much of his private life remains shrouded in mystery, and significant portions of his work have been overlooked. In this major new biography, Lorraine Byrne Bodley takes a detailed look into Schubert's life, from his early years at the Stadtkonvikt to the harrowing battle with syphilis that led to his death at the age of thirty-one.

This book provides context before you listen to the piece and additional context afterwards. It’s an ideal way to familiarize yourself with the works of classical composers. This book focuses on German classical composers. The book includes the works of Georg Philipp Telemann, Johann Sebastian Bach, Johann Strauss, Johannes Brahms, Ludwig van Beethoven, Robert Schumann, Wilhelm Richard Wagner, Georg Friedrich Handel, and Felix Mendelssohn. It's the ideal way to introduce yourself to German classical composers and how they helped shaped classical music up to this day.

Explore the works of classical composers. This book provides context before you listen to the piece and additional context afterwards. This audiobook format, including full recordings of relevant pieces, is an ideal way to familiarize yourself with the works of classical composers. This book focuses on European classical composers. The book includes the selected works of Franz Liszt, Edvard Grieg, Frederic Chopin, Edward Elgar, Gustav Holst, Henry Purcell, and Antonin Dvorak.

Beethoven imbibed Enlightenment and revolutionary ideas in his hometown of Bonn, where they were fervently discussed in cafes and at the university. Moving to Vienna at the age of 21 to study with Haydn, he gained renown as a brilliant pianist and innovative composer. In that conservative city, capital of the Hapsburg empire, authorities were ever watchful to curtail and punish overt displays of radical political views. Nevertheless, Beethoven avidly followed the meteoric rise of Napoleon.

Set against the music we know and love, Mozart, Beethoven, and many more come alive through their correspondence. Poignant, funny, revealing, informative and so often direct and honest, these letters offer a fascinating insight into the personalities that created our Western musical tradition.

Amit Chaudhuri, novelist, critic, and essayist, is also a musician, trained in the Indian classical vocal tradition but equally fluent as a guitarist and singer in the American folk music style, who has recorded his experimental compositions extensively and performed around the world. A turning point in his life took place when, as a lonely teenager living in a high-rise in Bombay, far from his family's native Calcutta, he began, contrary to all his prior inclinations, to study Indian classical music.

An exploration into the question of greatness from the Chief Classical Music Critic of the New York Times When he began to listen to the great works of classical music as a child, Anthony Tommasini had many questions. Why did a particular piece move him? How did the music work? Over time, he...

From Mozart to Mendelssohn, this comprehensive guide to classical music history and classical music biography is the perfect latest addition to the bestselling Big Ideas series. Easy to understand and clear to follow, this history of classical music explores and explains music theory and the...

Explore the works of classical composers. This book provides context before you listen to the piece and additional context afterwards. It’s an ideal way to familiarize yourself with the works of classical composers. This book focuses on Austrian classical composers and includes the works of Franz Joseph Hadyn, Franz Peter Schubert, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Explore the works of classical composers. This book provides context before you listen to the piece and additional context afterwards. It’s an ideal way to familiarize yourself with the works of classical composers. This book focuses on Italian classical composers. The book includes the works of Antonio Vivaldi, Arcangelo Corelli, Guiseppe Scarlatti, Niccolo Paganini, Tomaso Albinoni, and Ridolfo Boccherini.

Explore the works of classical composers. This book provides context before listening to the piece and additional context afterward. It’s an ideal way to familiarize yourself with the works of classical composers. This book focuses on French classical composers. The book includes the works of Charles Widor, Louis-Hector Berlioz, Archille Claude Debussy, Charles Saint-Saens, Francois Couperin, and Joseph Maurice Ravel.

In his time, the Austrian American composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) was an international icon. His twelve-tone system was considered the future of music itself. Today, however, leading orchestras rarely play his works, and his name is met with apathy, if not antipathy. With this interpretative account, the acclaimed biographer of Toscanini finally restores Schoenberg to his rightful place in the canon, revealing him as one of the twentieth century's most influential composers and teachers.