Classical category: 3244 books

The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 1 by Rupert Hughes, an American novelist, film director, Oscar-nominated screenwriter, military officer, and music composer.He was the brother of Howard R. Hughes, Sr. and uncle of billionaire Howard R. Hughes, Jr. His three volume scholarly biography of...

This new biography is a fascinating account of the period in which Chopin lived, and the way in which the political scene helped shape his music. The important people and places in the composer's life are brought vividly to life by the use of contemporary engraving, paintings and lithographs. The...

This book is the most authoritative and up-to-date source of quick reference on the Baroque composer and theorist Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683-1764), covering every significant area of his life and creative activity. In particular, the dictionary and work-list provide the reader with easy access to...

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From the Author's Preface: "I believe that in his greatest music Beethoven was primarily concerned to express his personal vision of life. This vision was, of course, the product of his character and his experience. Beethoven the man and Beethoven the composer are not two unconnected entities,...

This series of biographies presents the great composers against the background of their times. Each draws on personal letters and recollections, engravings, paintings and, when they exist, photographs, to present a complete picture of the composer's life.

Witold Lutosławski (1913-1994), who claimed that 'talking was not his speciality', emerges during a series of conversations with the music critic Tadeusz Kaczynski as a most lucid and articulate commentator, not only on his own compositions, but on every aspect of twentieth-century music and musicianship. This...

How music provided hope in one of the world's darkest times—the inspirational life story of Alice Herz-Sommer, the oldest living Holocaust survivor Alice Herz-Sommer was born in Prague in 1903. A talented pianist from a very early age, she became famous throughout Europe; but, as the Nazis...

A selection of Mozart's letters, translated into English, complete with notes, linking commentary and chronology.

Alain Lefèvre est un pianiste-compositeur que la carrière conduit sur les plus prestigieuses scènes du monde. « L’amour indéfectible du public rendait aussi naturelle qu’inévitable la parution d’un portrait consacré à l’artiste à la mi-temps de sa vie, alors qu’il atteint le jeune...

Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, in the enormous diversity of his activities, is arguably the most complete musician of all time. Not only does he have a remarkable 300 commissioned concert works to his credit, which have established him among the leading British twentieth-century composers, yet at the...

The foremost contemporary choreographer in the history of ballet, George Balanchine extended the art form into radical new paths that came to seem inevitable under his direction. He transformed movement and dance in classical and modern ballet, on the Broadway stage, and in the cinema. George...

~ 2014 RITA Finalist, Best Historical Romance ~ Clara Becker is a supremely gifted composer--a talent of little to use to a woman in 1830s Europe. Her compositions only have worth when they are published under her brother's name, yet this deception barely enables them to scrape out a living...

Written towards the end of the second century AD, The Golden Ass tells the story of the many adventures of a young man whose fascination with witchcraft leads him to be transformed into a donkey. The bewitched Lucius passes from owner to owner - encountering a desperate gang of robbers and being forced...