Composers category: 3267 books

A magnificent collection of essays, opinions, and reflections on life, culture, art, love, and music—always lyrical, witty, and brazenly provocative—from one of the most acclaimed contemporary American composers Time magazine has called Ned Rorem “the world’s best composer of art songs.”...

Born in Venice, Italy, Antonio Vivaldi was one of the most influential and highly regarded Baroque composers, although his fame blazed only briefly. He is most remembered for his concertos, particularly “The Four Seasons,” but his overall production was enormous, ranging from orchestral and vocal...

The life and work of the greatest of all Italian composers, Giuseppe Verdi, including the much-loved anecdotes, which the author firmly believes reflect both historical and mythic truths about their subject. Covers all Verdi operas, from the early works in the bel canto tradition to the late masterpieces Otello and Falstaff.

A candid and fascinating portrait of the American composer. The son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Aaron Copland (1900-1990) became one of America's most beloved and esteemed composers. His work, which includes Fanfare for the Common Man, A Lincoln Portrait, and Appalachian Spring, has been...

In the earliest published diaries of Ned Rorem, the acclaimed American composer recalls a bygone era and its luminaries, celebrates the creative process, and examines the gay culture of Europe and the US during the 1950s One of America’s most significant contemporary composers, Ned Rorem...

The most radical and divisive composer of the twentieth century, Arnold Schoenberg remains a hero to many, and a villain to many others. In this refreshingly balanced biography, Mark Berry tells the story of Schoenberg’s remarkable life and work, situating his tale within the wider symphony of nineteenth-...

In the last decade of his life, starting when he was a sixty-two-year old curmudgeon in a backwater Slavic country, Czech composer Leo Jancek produced operas and chamber music that would stun the music world, one masterpiece on top of another. In Janceks Eternal Love, author George M. Cummins...

“I have been like a blind man groping in the dark, and you have opened my eyes to the splendour and beautiful truth of a love, which I felt but dimly as in a dream, until we met…” For over 70 years the secret romance between the famous Sir Granville Bantock, a British conductor and composer...

Now retired and no longer silenced by a contract, Maggie Cotton presents an honest and long-overdue player’s perspective of life inside a professional symphony orchestra, describing how she became the first female percussionist in what was initially a staunchly male-dominated world. Now retired after...

What’s the life of a concert pianist really like? With wit, gentle humor, and abundant optimism Paul Bisaccia writes about his life making music and the friends he’s made along the way. From growing up in Hartford, Connecticut, to his home on Cape Cod, to travels all over the world, Paul writes about...

Manuel de Falla's music perfectly reflected the full-blooded passion and intellectual aspirations of early 20th century Spanish culture. His personal life seemed to echo the spirit of his times and the broad range of his music. From his sensual treatment of Andalusian folk themes to the neoclassical...

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...

Paul McCartney is one of the most successful musicians and composers in the history of pop music. Most famous for his time in The Beatles, Paul has released sixty gold discs and has sold over 100 million singles. McCartney began writing songs in his early teens. He met John Lennon and the Quarrymen...

In At the Piano: Interviews with 21st-Century Pianists, Caroline Benser explores the kaleidoscopic world of twenty-first-century pianism through a series of extended interviews with eight major pianists: Leif Ove Andsnes, Jonathan Biss, Simone Dinnerstein, Marc-André Hamelin, Stephen Hough, Steven...