Classical category: 3244 books

'Anyone with the smallest interest in composition - not just concertos but novels, buildings, lives, you name it, should read this absorbing, spiky, dazzling book.' Adam Thirwell, TLS Books of the Year Harrison Birtwistle is recognised worldwide as one of the greatest of living composers, behind...

The BBC Proms is the world's biggest and longest-running classical music festival and one of the jewels in the crown for the BBC. It is one of the strongest brand names in the music world and attracts a glittering array of artists and orchestras from the UK and around the world in over 150 concerts,...

What is rhetorical music? In The Pathetick Musician, Bruce Haynes and Geoffrey Burgess illustrate the vital place of rhetoric and eloquent expression in the creation and performance of Baroque music. Through engaging explorations of the cantatas of J.S. Bach, the authors explode the conventional notion...

Brigid Brophy first published her passionate, profoundly original Mozart the Dramatist in 1964, revisiting it subsequently in 1988. Organised by theme, the text offers brilliant readings of Mozart's five most famous operas - Die Entf�hrung aus dem Serail, Le Nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cos�...

A distinguished dance critic offers an enchanting introduction to the art of ballet As much as we may enjoy Swan Lake or The Nutcracker, for many of us ballet is a foreign language. It communicates through movement, not words, and its history lies almost entirely abroad--in Russia, Italy, and...

Carlos Kleiber (1930-2004) was the greatest conductor of his generation. His reputation is legendary, and yet astonishingly, in his five decades on the podium, he conducted only 89 concerts, some 600 opera performances, and produced 12 recordings. How did someone who worked so little compared to his...

Charles Rosen is one of the world's most talented pianists -- and one of music's most astute commentators. Known as a performer of Bach, Beethoven, Stravinsky, and Elliott Carter, he has also written highly acclaimed criticism for sophisticated students and professionals. In Piano Notes, he...

"A fascinating and genuinely accessible guide....Educating, enjoyable, and delightfully unscary."—Classical Music What if Bach and Mozart heard richer, more dramatic chords than we hear in music today? What sonorities and moods have we lost in playing music in "equal temperament"—the...

Simultaneously the memoir of a famed composer, conductor, and music educator, and an important historical sourcebook on the American musical scene during the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, the autobiography of Gunther Schuller chronicles the first thirty-five years of this multifaceted...

Whether you’re a first-time visitor or an experienced Prommer, plan your summer through the 2014 BBC Proms season with the official Proms Guide. Contains: · brand-new articles on featured composers, insights on performers, new music and Proms Plus events · introduction to the season...

Tchaikovsky is one of the most popular composers who ever lived. He is also one of the most misunderstood, as both man and musician, and looks destined to remain among the most controversial. Widely misrepresented as an emotional voluptuary and typecast as a crazy Russian genius, he was, in fact, a highly...

Mendelssohn is one of the worlds best-loved composers. His greatest music The Hebrides, the Violin Concerto, the Italian Symphony is a cornerstone of the classical repertoire, while the Wedding March from his incidental music to A Midsummer Nights Dream has been the soundtrack to the happiest moments...

This book is a firsthand report of a great composer's intentions in regard to the performance of his music. These intentions have been digested and interpreted for us by the composer's friend Robert Schmitz (1889–1949), who was himself a distinguished pianist, an articulate musician, and a well-known...

Erik Satie's (1866-1925) music appeals to wide audiences and has influenced both experimental artists and pop musicians. Little about Satie was conventional, and he resists classification under easy headings such as "classical music". Instead of pursuing the path of a professional composer,...