Author: Tia DeNora
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 740

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Author: Charles Rosen
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393006537
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 484

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The National Book Award-winning masterpiece by a world-class pianist and writer on music.

Author: Glenn Stanley
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107494044
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
This Companion, first published in 2000, provides a comprehensive view of Beethoven and his work. The first part of the book presents the composer as a private individual, as a professional, and at the work-place, discussing biographical problems, Beethoven's professional activities when not composing and his methods as a composer. In the heart of the book, individual chapters are devoted to all the major genres cultivated by Beethoven and to the elements of style and structure that cross all genres. The book concludes by looking at the ways that Beethoven and his music have been interpreted by performers, writers on music, and in the arts, literature, and philosophy. The essays in this volume, written by leading Beethoven specialists, maintain traditional emphases in Beethoven studies while incorporating other developments in musicology and theory.

Author: Beethoven Forum
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803261952
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Collecting the best of international Beethoven studies, Beethoven Forum promotes and sustains the high level of scholarship inspired by Beethoven's extraordinary works.

Author: Tia DeNora
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520920155
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
In this provocative account Tia DeNora reconceptualizes the notion of genius by placing the life and career of Ludwig van Beethoven in its social context. She explores the changing musical world of late eighteenth-century Vienna and follows the activities of the small circle of aristocratic patrons who paved the way for the composer's success. DeNora reconstructs the development of Beethoven's reputation as she recreates Vienna's robust musical scene through contemporary accounts, letters, magazines, and myths—a colorful picture of changing times. She explores the ways Beethoven was seen by his contemporaries and the image crafted by his supporters. Comparing Beethoven to contemporary rivals now largely forgotten, DeNora reveals a figure musically innovative and complex, as well as a keen self-promoter who adroitly managed his own celebrity. DeNora contends that the recognition Beethoven received was as much a social achievement as it was the result of his personal gifts. In contemplating the political and social implications of culture, DeNora casts many aspects of Beethoven's biography in a new and different light, enriching our understanding of his success as a performer and composer.

Author: Simon P. Keefe
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1009254367
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
The first extended study of the combined reception of Haydn and Mozart in the long nineteenth century, this book generates new, holistic understandings of their musical, cultural and historical significance in the Germanic, French and Anglophone worlds. It places a wide range of written sources under the microscope, including serious and popular biographies, scholarship, musical and non-musical criticism, and a diverse body of fiction, and evaluates the impact of anniversary commemorations. Haydn and Mozart in the Long Nineteenth Century determines how reputations, images and narratives for the two composers converge, diverge, develop at different speeds, and influence one another. Countering received wisdom about Haydn's reputational decline and reassessing Mozart reception through consideration of a broad spectrum of publications, we hear Haydn and Mozart speaking to the long nineteenth century in more nuanced, powerful, and persuasive voices than previously recognized.

Author: Jan Swafford
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 061805474X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 1107

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Book Description
The definitive book on the life and music of Ludwig van Beethoven, written by the acclaimed biographer of Brahms and Ives.

Author: Harvey Sachs
Publisher: Liveright Publishing
ISBN: 1631495194
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Some pieces of music survive. Most fall into oblivion. What gives the ten masterpieces selected for this book their exceptional vitality? In this penetrating volume, Harvey Sachs, acclaimed biographer and historian of classical music, takes readers into the hearts of ten extraordinary works of classical music in ten different genres, showing both the curious novice and the seasoned listener how to recognize, appreciate, and engage with these masterpieces on a historical and compositional level. Far from what is often thought, classical music is neither dead nor dying. As a genre, it is constantly evolving, its pieces passing through countless permutations and combinations yet always retaining that essential élan vital, or life force. The works collected here, composed in the years between 1784 and 1966, are a testament to this fact. As Sachs skillfully demonstrates, they have endured not because they were exceptionally well-made or interesting but because they were created by composers—Mozart and Beethoven; Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz, Verdi, and Brahms; Sibelius, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky—who had a particular genius for drawing music out of their deepest wellsprings. “Through music,” Sachs writes, “they universalized the intimate.” In describing how music actually sounds, Ten Masterpieces of Music seems to do the impossible, animating the process of composing as well as the coming together of disparate scales and melodies, trills and harmonies. It tells us, too, how particular compositions came to be, often revealing that the pieces we now consider “classic” were never intended to be so. In poignant, exquisite prose, Sachs shows how Mozart, a former child prodigy under constant pressure to produce new music, hastily penned Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major, one of his finest piano concertos, for a teenage student, and likewise demonstrates how Goethe’s Faust, Part One, became a springboard for the musical imagination of the French composer Berlioz. As Sachs explains, these pieces are not presented as candidates for a new “Top Ten.” They represent neither the most well-known nor the most often-performed works of each composer. Instead, they were chosen precisely because he had something profound to say about them, about their composers, about how each piece fits into its composer’s life, and about how each of these lives can be contextualized by time and place. In fact, Sachs encourages readers to form their own favorites, and teaches them how to discern special characteristics that will enhance their own listening experiences. With Ten Masterpieces of Music, it becomes evident that Sachs has lived with these pieces for a veritable lifetime. His often-soaring descriptions of the works and the dramatic lives of the men who composed them bring a heightened dimension to the musical perceptions of all listeners, communicating both the sheer improbability of a work becoming a classic and why certain pieces—these ten among them—survive the perilous test of time.

Author: Paul Griffiths
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521842948
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 335

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Author: Anthony Tommasini
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143111086
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 505

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Book Description
An exploration of the question of greatness from the chief classical music critic of The New York Times Anthony Tommasini has devoted particular attention to living composers and overlooked repertory. But, as with all classical music lovers, the canon has remained central for him. Tommasini resists the neat laws of canon formation—and yet, he can’t help but admit that these exalted composers have guided him through his life, resonating with his deepest emotions and profoundly shaping how he sees the world. Now, in The Indispensable Composers, Tommasini offers his own personal guide to what the mercurial concept of greatness really means in classical music. As he argues for his particular pantheon of indispensable composers, Tommasini provides a masterclass in what to listen for and how to understand what music does to us.