Классика

Book DescriptionThis is the powerful memoirs which an ailing Dmitri Shostakovich dictated to a young Russian musicologist, Solomon Volkov. When it was first published in 1979, it became an international bestseller. This 25th anniversary edition includes a new foreword by Vladimir Ashkenazy, as well as black-and-white photos. "Testimony changed the perception of Shostakovich's life and work dramatically, and influenced innumerable performances of his music." - New Grove Dictionary

Book DescriptionEnrique Granados (1867-1916) is one of the most compelling figures of the late-Romantic period in music. During his return voyage to Spain after the premiere of his opera Goyescas at New York's Metropolitan Opera in 1916, a German submarine torpedoed the ship on which he and his wife were sailing, and they perished in the waters of the English Channel. His death was mourned on both sides of the Atlantic as a stunning loss to the music world, for he had died at the pinnacle of his career, and his late works held the promise of greater things to come. Granados was among the leading pianists of his time, and his eloquence at the keyboard inspired critics to dub him the "poet of the piano." In Enrique Granados: Poet of the Piano, Walter AaronClark offers the first substantive study in English of this virtuoso pianist, composer, and music pedagogue. While providing detailed analyses of his major works for voice, piano, and the stage, Clark argues that Granados's art...

Book DescriptionThis is the first biography of the famous Czech composer Antonin Dvorak (1841-1904) to be published in English in more than a decade, released on the centenary of his death. Kurt Honolka weaves the story of Dvorak's life into the rich tapestry of the political and social tensions of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the twilight of its power. Honolka sets the scene for Dvorak's 'American' music and his return from the United States, providing a fascinating context for hismost famous work, the Ninth Symphony from the New World.

Book Description The life of the brilliant composer and conductor Gustav Mahler was punctuated by crisis. His parents both died in 1889, leaving him the reluctant head of a household of siblings. He himself endured a nearly fatal medical ordeal in 1901. A beloved daughter died in 1907 and that same year, under pressure, Mahler resigned from the directorship of the Vienna Opera. In each case Mahler more than mastered the trauma; he triumphed in the creation of new major musical works. The finalcrisis of Mahler’s career occurred in 1910, when he learned that his wife, Alma, was having an affair with the architect Walter Gropius. The revelation precipitated a breakdown while Mahler was working on his Tenth Symphony. The anguished, suicidalnotes Mahler scrawled across the manuscript of the unfinished symphony revealed his troubled state. A four-hour consultation with Sigmund Freud in Leiden, Holland, restored the composer’s equilibrium. Although Mahler left little...

Book DescriptionGustav Mahler and Alma Maria Schindler were married in . . . 1902. The bride was twenty-one and a half years old, her groom a few months short of forty-two. Apart from their substantial age difference, it seems to have been the very disparity of their intellectual and social backgrounds that drew them together. Mahler was attracted to Alma by her beauty, her alert mind and emotional intensity. Though aware that he possessed by far the broader outlook, he trusted in Alma?s ability andwillingness to learn from him."?from the Introduction "Once the stiffness of unfamiliarity has been softened by a few months of marriage, Mahler?s style of correspondence with Alma is generally simple, direct, and astonishingly down-to-earth. In a manner akin to that of his musical style, he spikes his language with witticisms and double-entendres, colloquialisms and quotations from librettos and classical works of literature."?from the Preface This profusely...

Book DescriptionA monument in Mahler studies, this volume concentrates on the composer's vocal music and, in particular, on some of his most famous, most original and best loved compositions: the late Rueckert orchestral songs and Kindertotenlieder; Das Lied von der Erde, one of the composer's supreme masterpieces, and the vast Eighth Symphony. Much new ground is broken but the author bases his conclusions on a meticulous examination of the principal manuscript sources, especially those for Das Lied. He offers an unprecedented exploration of the original Chinese texts for that work and indeed of the whole Oriental dimension of Mahler's last and greatest song-cycle. Time and time again, the composer's sketches back up the author's reading of these massivescores and there will be few among this book's readers who will not find a familiar passage or movement sharply illuminated by fresh insights and information. The scope of the book, despite its concentration, is immensely wide; and so.

Book DescriptionAdorno was 21 years old when he travelled to Vienna in March 1925 to study musical composition with Alban Berg. Twenty years later, Adorno wrote: 'How much of my writing will remain is beyond my knowledge or my control, but there is one claim I wish to stake: that I understand the language of music as the heroes in fairy tales understand the language of birds.' It was no less than the desire to learn to speak this language that drew him to Berg. Adorno already knew what he wanted to compose before he came to Berg and the aim of his stay in Vienna and the following years was to learn to put this knowledge of musical compostition into practice. His correspondence with Berg, who was soon to be world-famous, is partly defined by his engagement with the compositional problems posed for the musical avant-garde by Schonberg's discovery of the twelve-tone technique, for which Adorno was to become an advocate, not least in Vienna and through Berg. This correspondence...

Book Description"Liszt was first presented to Beethoven by his teacher Carl Czerny, while he was a boy of eleven. . . . At the end of the meeting, Beethoven bestowed the famous ?kiss of consecration? on the boy?s forehead, which Liszt thereafter regarded as a benediction on his career. In later life, he often spoke of this meeting, the memory of which was a powerful stimulus to the further study and performance of Beethoven?s music."?from Chapter Two In a series of lively essays that tell us much not only about the phenomenon that was Franz Liszt, but also about the musical and cultural life of nineteenth-century Europe, Alan Walker muses on aspects of Liszt?s life and work that he was unable to explore in his acclaimed three-volume biography of the great composer and pianist. Topics include Liszt?s contributions to the Lied, the lifelong impact of his encounter with Beethoven, his influence on students who became famous in their own right, his...

Book Description Kay Swift (1897-1993) was one of the few women composers active on Broadway in the first half of the twentieth century. Best known as George Gershwin's assistant, musical adviser, and intimate friend, Swift was in fact an accomplished musician herself, a pianist and composer whose Fine and Dandy (1930) was the first complete Broadway musical written by a woman. This fascinating book-the first biography of Swift-discusses her music and her extraordinary life. Vicki Ohl describes Swift's work for musical theater, the ballet, Radio City Music Hall's Rockettes, and commercial shows. She also tells how Swift served as director of light music for the 1939 World's Fair, eloped with a cowboy from the rodeo at the fair, and abandoned her native New York for Oregon, later fashioning her experiences into an autobiographical novel, Who Could Ask for Anything More? Informed by rich material, including Swift's unpublished memoirs and extensive interviews with her family members...

Book Description In this new biography of Richard Wagner, Joachim Kohler draws on social and political analysis, documentary interpretation, and psychological insights to paint a rounded picture of Wagner as both a controversial historical phenomenon and a complex human being. Kohler’s reading of the letters, diaries, and other documents of the main protagonists, some of them unfamiliar even to seasoned Wagnerians, results in some breathtaking but convincing reappraisals. He examines Wagner’s love affairs with Jessie Laussot, Mathilde Wesendonck, and Judith Gautier and assesses their lasting emotional effect. He re-evaluates Wagner’s relationships with his mother, step-father, sister, and—most revealingly—his wife, Cosima, a relationship seen as based on fear rather than love. Kohler explores the philosophical roots of Wagner’s work, which the composer himself deliberately obfuscated. And he analyzes Wagner’s...

Book DescriptionThis new biography of Elgar draws on letters and documents which have become available over the last twenty-five years. Michael Kennedy, a leading scholar of British music as well as a distinguished musical biographer, uses the new material (including Elgar's vast personal correspondence) to analyze the composer's complex personality. Elgar's letters reveal his unpredictable swings of mood, from gaiety and a fondness for puns to morose self-pity and a feeling that he was "not wanted."