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Hitler’s rising influence sent a flood of musical talent abroad, and many, including Klemperer, Stravinsky, and Schoenberg, wound up in the Los Angeles area. This book tells the stories of the immigrant musicians who profoundly influenced the film industry, the music institutions of LA, and the next generation of American musical leaders.

This outstanding guide to Mozart’s operas encompasses his most popular works and offers the most up-to-date, authoritative, and accessible information for listeners who have enjoyed a stage production or opera video and are curious to learn more.

Filled with a remarkable cast of characters and set against the backdrop of imperial Russia, this tale of forbidden romance could be the stuff of a great historical novel. But in fact The Pearl tells a true tale, reconstructed in part from archival documents that have lain untouched for centuries. Douglas Smith presents the most complete and accurate account ever written of the illicit love...

This lively book is the first to explore the history of the tenor voice from the sixteenth century to the present, shining the spotlight on such extraordinary performers as Enrico Caruso, Richard Tauber, Mario Lanza, Roberto Alagna, Ian Bostridge, Andrea Bocelli, Il Divo, and, of course, Pavarotti, Domingo, and Carreras.

The first study of composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb, longtime Broadway collaborators whose successes include  Cabaret, Chicago, and Kiss of the Spider Woman.

Cats, Jesus Christ Superstar, Phantom of the Opera, Evita—composer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s phenomenal musicals are familiar to hundreds of millions of audience members. This book, the first comprehensive survey of Webber’s creative career, explores his impact, the vast range of influences on his works, and the reasons for the controversies that surrou...

An essential resource for scholars and performers, this multifaceted comparative study by a world-renowned specialist illuminates the piano music of four major French composers, elucidating matters of artistic ethos and style, structure, text, and historical and performing issues.

This pioneering book by an acclaimed expert is the first to discuss all Bach’s unaccompanied pieces in one volume, including an examination of crucial issues of style and composition type and the options open to interpretation and performance

In this appealing book, acclaimed photographer Ralph Gibson offers more than 60 intimate black-and-white portraits of guitar masters playing their instruments.

Hermann Abert’s classic biography, first published in German more than eighty years ago, remains the most informed and substantial biography of Mozart in any language. Now available in English for the first time, Abert’s great work is not only superbly translated but also fully annotated to take into account all recent developments in Mozart scholarship.

Having scoured original sources to uncover the truth of Robert Schumann’s life, John Worthen now offers the first reliable portrait of the enigmatic composer. Far from a depressed and often helpless individual, Schumann emerges in this biography as an astute, witty, and immensely determined creative genius who composed some of the best music of his era.

Every musically curious traveler or reader will find this guidebook indispensable. Distinguished musicologists Julie Anne and Stanley Sadie have traveled across Europe to compile an unparalleled directory of more than three hundred houses and museums where composers have lived and worked. Lively commentary on each location is included.

This book and its two accompanying CDs bring to life many of the major figures in early twentieth-century American music--Charles Ives, Eubie Blake, Duke Ellington, Ira Gershwin, and others. Readers and listeners will find a fascinating assortment of material, including photographs, anecdotes, and recorded interviews available here for the first time.

This compelling biography of Richard Wagner goes back to primary sources—letters, diaries, and other documents—to reappraise the composer’s romantic and family relationships, the philosophical roots of his work, and his relationship with King Ludwig. This is a definitive study, aimed at both the seasoned Wagner aficionado and the new enthusiast.

The Vienna in which Franz Schubert lived for the thirty-one years of his life was a city of music, dance, and coffeehouses—a center of important achievements in the arts. But it was also the capital of an empire that was constantly at war in the composer's youth and that became a police state during his maturity. Now, in the bicentennial of Schubert's birth, this elegantly written and richly...

This is the first book devoted to the letters of composer Aaron Copland, who corresponded engagingly and prolifically throughout his life. Arranged chronologically and annotated with care, the selected letters reveal much about Copland and his music while also providing glimpses into the lives of other significant figures in twentieth-century music.

 

Music lovers will find this book a treasury abounding with information, walking tours, illustrations, maps, biographies, and more relating to the multitude of musical landmarks in London. From Handel’s house to George Gershwin’s recording studios, from cathedrals to graveyards, this unprecedented guide features an incredible array of fascinating musical sites.

Reluctant to discuss his music or the complexities that went into its making, French composer Olivier Messiaen was similarly reticent about his private life. This book is the first to explore his extraordinary life and work, based on unprecedented access to the musician’s extensive private archive, including musical sketches, letters, diaries, and photographs.

Informed by a wealth of information that has come to light in recent years, this engaging biography tells the complete story of the life and work of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius. The book is the first to set all Sibelius’s works in historical and musical context, assess the full range of his formerly unknown early works, and dispel myths surrounding his life ...

 

This is the first practical guide to historical singing styles, covering the early baroque period to the present and spanning Europe, Russia, and the United States. In chapters devoted to separate historical eras, Martha Elliott discusses singers and composers of the time, the vocal repertoire, stylistic conventions, and more, drawing everything together into a convenient handbook fo...

This inspiring book is the first collection of the writings of Robert Shaw, the most influential choral conductor in American history. An invigorating mix of music history and analysis, philosophy, and practical advice, these letters and notes about music reveal the full breadth of Shaw’s knowledge, intensity, and humor.

In the two decades prior to the Civil War, the Hutchinson Family Singers of New Hampshire emerged as America’s most popular musical act. This engaging book tells the Hutchinsons’ story and documents their contributions to abolition and temperance, to the transformation of American culture, and to the history of the American protest song.

This book is the first to explore the profound impact of the Bible on African American culture and history, from the colonial era to the present. Connecting hip-hop, soul, sermons, and a wide range of other arts to the Bible, Allen Callahan shows how certain biblical themes have helped African Americans deal with extraordinary injustice and find a collective identity.

 

In this original investigation of musical representations of native America, Michael Pisani travels widely through centuries and cultures, from the ballets of Lully in the court of Louis XIV to film music evoking Apaches in Hollywood westerns. Pisani shows how “Indian music,” much of it imagined, has alternately idealized, humanized, and exploited native Americans.

In this stimulating book, Michael Broyles explores the centuries-old tradition of maverick composers in American music. He examines the lives of notably unconventional composers, among them Charles Ives, John Cage, and Frank Zappa, to reveal much about the role of music in American culture and about American attitudes toward the arts.

With this innovative analysis of the music of Charles Ives, Philip Lambert fills a significant gap in the literature on one of America's most important composers. Lambert portrays Ives as a composer of great diversity and complexity who nevertheless held to a single artistic vision.

Although Charles Ives has long been viewed as the quintessential American composer, he was also closely linked to the European classical tradition, say the Ives scholars in this book. Contributors explore the influences on Ives of his musical predecessors and the parallels between Ives and his European contemporaries, revealing him as culturally unique and yet reliant on the classical tradition fo...

Written by the eminent Charles Ives scholar J. Peter Burkholder, this book is the first detailed, panoramic examination of Ives's compositional practices and techniques of borrowing material from his own and other people's music.

Every opera-lover enjoys a performance more when accompanied by a knowledgeable friend. In this indispensable guide, well-known opera critic Charles Osborne provides exactly that. Osborne fills in the details on 175 of the world’s most frequently performed operas, including facts about the composer and the music, a plot outline, accounts of famous performers, and much more.

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This book is the first collection of Bernard Williams’s extensive writings on opera—articles, essays, talks, program notes, two unpublished pieces, and more. The selections reflect Williams’s lifelong engagement with all facets of opera, its performance, and its power to move both the heart and the intellect. His book is a treasure for opera scholar and general reader alike.

In 1764-65 the irrepressible playwright Beaumarchais traveled to Madrid where he immersed himself in the culture and society of the day. Inspired by his visit, Beaumarchais returned home to create The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro. This entertaining book offers a lively account of the playwright’s trip and of the society that fired his imagination.

What was it like at the opening night of Mozart’s Don Giovanni or Wagner’s Das Rheingold? This glittering introduction to the world of opera takes us behind the scenes during premiere performances of five extraordinary operas. Nervous composers and performers along with the eager audience members await the verdict: a triumph, or a humiliation?


...

This lively book takes us back to the very first performances of five famous pieces of music: Monteverdi’s Orfeo in 1607, Handel’s Messiah in 1742, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony in 1824, Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique in 1830, and Stravinsky’s Sacre du printemps in 1913. Thomas Forrest Kelly brings to life the fascinating...

This exceptional book introduces six operas, including La Bohème, Otello, and La traviata, to intermediate students of Italian while engaging them in a rich variety of speaking, reading, and writing activities. As students learn about the characters, plots, settings, and themes of great operas, they also improve their vocabulary, accuracy, and fluency in Italian.

In this book the late musicologist, performer, and writer Robert Donington discusses the workings of symbolism in opera and the importance of staging an opera in keeping with the composer's intentions. His analysis includes scenes and characters from operas by Monteverdi, Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, Bizet, Puccini, Debussy, Strauss, Stravinsky, Berg, Britten, Tippett, and other composers.

Rich in musical, social, and cultural lore, this book is an engrossing history of the early male and female sopranos—the castrati and prima donnas—who graced and disgraced the operatic stage. It also tells the story of the singing tradition they founded and perfected, known as bel canto and still the background of operatic singing today.

This bountiful book is a comprehensive guide to the thousands of films, videos, and DVDs featuring operas and opera singers from 1896 to the present. An invaluable A-Z reference work, it contains more than 1900 entries covering not only expected topics—composers, singers, directors—but also the unexpected and offbeat—opera, silent films about opera, imaginary operas, and many oth...

For all travelers who wish to explore the musical sites of Paris—in person or from an armchair—this is the essential guidebook. Virtually every Paris neighborhood has in some way contributed to the city’s extraordinary musical tradition. The gazetteer will take you to the addresses, meeting places, and gravesites of major composers; to churches, theaters, and concert halls; to li...

Cats, Jesus Christ Superstar, Phantom of the Opera, Evita—composer Andrew Lloyd Webber’s phenomenal musicals are familiar to hundreds of millions of audience members. This book, the first comprehensive survey of Webber’s creative career, explores his impact, the vast range of influences on his works, and the reasons for the controversies that surrou...

This lively book examines the long and prolific career of composer Richard Rodgers, providing rich details about the creation, staging, and critical reception of some of his most popular musicals. Geoffrey Block offers insights into shows by Rodgers and Hart and by Rodgers and Hammerstein, as well as the five musicals that Rodgers composed after Hammerstein’s death.

Frank Loesser, most famous for composing the ever-popular musical Guys and Dolls (1950), also wrote the music and lyrics for the Pulitzer prize-winning How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying and other hits. This book is the first to bring the full story of Loesser’s life and creative achievement in Hollywood and on Broadway into the ligh...

This book presents the first detailed study of Sigmund Romberg, the operetta composer whose popularity in American musical theater in the 1920s was unsurpassed. The book examines Romberg’s musical accomplishments on Broadway and in Hollywood, demonstrating his important and lasting influence on the history of American musicals.

This is the first book to explore the full extent of the musical accomplishments of legendary composer Jerome Kern. Encompassing the music Kern wrote for Broadway, Hollywood, and London’s West End, the book illuminates such beloved standards as “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes” and “Ol’ Man River” and assesses Kern’s contributions to the American musical.

Premiering on Broadway in 1943, Oklahoma! launched Rodgers and Hammerstein’s brilliant musical partnership. This fascinating book presents the first complete behind-the-scenes look at the creation of the show, dispelling many myths about the beloved musical and revealing much about its creators, producers, cast, and cultural significance.

Best known as George Gershwin’s musical advisor and intimate friend, Kay 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.

Filled with fascinating anecdotes and behind-the-scenes details of the world of musical theater, this is the first comprehensive biography of celebrated composer/lyricist Jerry Herman. Drawing on Herman’s own recollections and those of scores of his theatrical colleagues and close friends, the book sheds new light on his memorable music and lyrics.

In this book, a renowned concert pianist and foremost authority on Sergei Prokofiev guides music lovers and serious pianists through the great Russian composer’s nine sonatas. Boris Berman discusses each work in detail and offers a Master Class for each with suggestions and advice for interpretation and performing.

In this book a leading international violin soloist offers the equivalent of a master class on the performance of Bach’s six Sonatas and Partitas for unaccompanied violin. Advanced students and performers will find priceless guidance on practical matters of performance from a uniquely gifted teacher and practitioner.

Challenging the notion of the ineffable “Russianness” of Russian music and other myths, this book examines Russia’s long era of state-endorsed musical nationalism, from Glinka’s opera A Life for the Czar to Stalin’s death in 1953. The book illuminates the mystique and richness of Russian nationalist music as well as the eventual p...

For everyone who has ever listened to, or learned to play, a Beethoven piano sonata, this book will be a revelation. Internationally renowned pianist Charles Rosen brings out the gravity, passion, and humor of Beethoven’s sonatas in this comprehensive guide, placing the works in context and detailing the role of the piano in the composer’s life and work. Rosen examines each individual ...

In the definitive guide to Brahms’s four symphonies, Walter Frisch presents an engaging and thorough treatment of their genesis, structure, reception, and performance history. He also offers analytical commentary on the symphonies and considers their place within Brahms’s oeuvre, within the symphonic repertory of his day, and within the broader musical culture of his era.

In this engaging book George B. Stauffer explores the music and complex history of Bach’s last—and possibly greatest—masterpiece. Stauffer examines the individual sections of the B-Minor Mass in detail as well as the events that led to its writing, its place in Bach’s ouevre, issues of performance practice, and the qualities that give the work its universal appeal.

Leaders of the Soviet Union during the Stalin era well understood the power of art, and their response was to attempt to control artists and writers in every way possible. This book presents a history of repression of cultural and artistic life in the Soviet Union, drawing on remarkable archival documents translated into English for the first time.

Russian historian Richard Stites offers in this masterful book a rich history of the role of the arts—music, theater, and visual art—in shaping Russian society in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He integrates the life of the peasantry, the gentry, and the city elites to arrive at new insights into the origins of Russia’s artistic prowess in the 1800s.

In this highly original view of six nineteenth- and twentieth-century works of Russian music, Boris Gasparov shows the fascinating interplay of music and cultural history. Each musical work—from Glinka’s Ruslan and Ludmilla to Shostakovich’s Fourth Symphony—becomes a tableau representing a moment in Russian history and reflecting cultural trends. 

In this groundbreaking book, Patrick Carnegy vividly evokes the great productions of Wagner’s operas that have influenced our understanding not only of the composer but also of modern theatre. The author describes the full context of each important production, from Wagner’s own to the interpretations of subsequent designers and directors.

This book paints an intriguing and detailed portrait of leading orchestral conductors from Wagner to von Karajan, Bernstein, and Szell, analyzing their careers, performance practices, vision, and style. The author, a professional conductor himself, traces the great conducting tradition that emerged from Central Europe and offers valuable insights into its most gifted exponents.

First published in 1987 and now considered a classic, The Recording Angel charts the ways in which the phonograph and its cousins have transformed our culture. In a new Afterword, Evan Eisenberg shows how digital technology, file trading, and other recent developments are accelerating—or reversing—these trends. Influential and provocative, The Recording Angel is re...

In this wide-ranging book, Robert Philip examines the interaction between music-making and recording throughout the twentieth century. He considers the impact of recording on live performance, how musicians lives have changed, attitudes toward freedom of expression, the authority of composers’ over recordings, the globalization of performing styles, and more.

In this book an eminent musical theorist presents the first systematic and in-depth study of the early atonal works of avant-garde Austrian composer Anton Webern. Analyzing such elements as pitch, register, timbre, rhythm, form, and text setting, Allen Forte shows how Webern displaced the functional connections of traditional tonality to create a totally new sonic universe.

Allan Forte set forth his analytical approach fully in The Structure of Atonal Music (1973). Here he applies it in detail to a large-scale work that is familiar to every student of music. In his introduction Forte reviews certain technical aspects of his method in order to prepare readers for the close analysis that follows. He particularly considers general features of pitch and ...

Over the course of a long and brilliant career, Alfred Hitchcock changed the way we think about film music. This book is the first to explore the essential role that music played in Hitchcock’s movies, from Stage Fright to Vertigo to Family Plot. It also illuminates his legendary partnership with composer Bernard Herrmann and the thinking behind his musical choices.

This appealing book is the first to examine movies that portray the lives of composers. John Tibbetts surveys films made from the 1920s through today that depict composers as diverse as Mozart, George M. Cohan, and Duke Ellington. By examining historical accuracy, visual representation, and more, Tibbetts explores the role that film biographies play in our understanding of history and culture.

How does an opera change when it becomes a movie, a television presentation, or a video? This book explores opera and its treatment on the screen for the first time from a musicologist’s perspective. Marcia J. Citron provides a fascinating history of the nearly 100-year-old genre, examines landmark works of opera on screen, and shows how different electronic media shape the conception of thi...

In this engaging personal account of the jazz scene in Paris in the 1980s and 1990s, music critic Mike Zwerin writes lovingly—but unsparingly—about Miles Davis and other jazz legends he has known and interviewed. A world-class trombonist himself, Zwerin also tells about his own intriguing life and where his passion for music has taken him.

How does the jazz of Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, and Charlie Parker fit into the great tradition of modernist art? In this book, an eminent cultural historian provides the answer and offers a brilliant new way of understanding jazz.

This enthralling book is the first biography in English of Bill Evans, one of the most influential of all jazz pianists. Peter Pettinger, himself a concert pianist, describes Evans’s life (the personal tragedies and commercial successes), his musicmaking (technique, compositional methods, and approach to group playing), and his legacy. The book also includes a full discography and dozens of ...

In the 1960s, when so-called free jazz liberated American jazz from its historic ties to Western music, European musicians found their own distinctive voices and created an independent jazz culture. This book examines the pan-Eurasian musical revolution, its development, its contexts, and its implications for the histories of both Western music and jazz. 

This book—a revised and expanded edition of the definitive biography of Bessie Smith, known as the “Empress of the Blues”—debunks many of the myths that circulated after her untimely death in 1937. Chris Albertson now provides more details of Bessie’s early years, new interview material, and a chapter devoted to events and responses that followed the original publicat...

This dual biography of two great figures of jazz—one black and the other white, one legendary and the other nearly forgotten—explores their diverging legacies in the context of race and commerce and illuminates the history of early jazz. 

This engaging and astute anthology of jazz criticism discusses nearly seventy major jazz figures and many of the music’s key stylistic developments. Larry Kart suggests that jazz is a unique perpetual narrative—one in which musicians, their audiences, and the evolving music itself are intimately intertwined—and his critical reactions to the music have a similarly active and atten...

This new book from the editor of The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz offers a unique way of approaching and understanding jazz. Drawing on twenty-one historic jazz recordings, reproduced on a compact disc that accompanies the book, Barry Kernfeld illustrates jazz rhythm, forms, arrangement, composition, improvisation, style, and sound.

 

Includes one compact disc. 

In this delightful book, jazz writer and lyricist Gene Lees offers minibiographies of fifteen friends he has known in the world of jazz music. He introduces us not only to jazz greats but also to up-and-comers, providing an affectionate view of the jazz community that only an insider could provide.

This comprehensive volume on the trombone considers the instrument from nearly every imaginable perspective. Written by a leading trombone player and historian, the book explores the history of the instrument from its invention to modern times, its repertoire, little-known information about how it was played in different eras and countries, and much more.

In this authoritative book two distinguished oboist-musicologists trace the history of the oboe from its beginnings as a shawm and hautboy to the present time, discussing how and why the oboe evolved, what music was written for it, and which players were prominent. The book includes extensive illustrations, useful technical appendices, and discography.

Internationally known as a concert pianist and highly respected as a piano teacher, Boris Berman here offers an entertaining and informative exploration of both piano technique and music interpretation. Berman combines explanations and practical advice with anecdotes about students, colleagues, and former teachers, along the way providing many insights into the psychological aspects of performing ...

The first book based on the rich archive of Steinway business and family papers at LaGuardia Community College in New York, as well as on interviews with family members and company employees in the United States, Germany, and England, this authoritative and entertaining book tells the story of the most famous piano company in the world and of the family behind it.

This fascinating book presents the history of percussion instruments from the Old Stone Age to the present. Jeremy Montagu discusses common and uncommon percussion instruments from all parts of the world, tracing their development and use across cultures. Performers, students, and music enthusiasts alike will find this wide-ranging book a useful and enjoyable resource.

The clarinet has a long and rich history as a solo, orchestral, and chamber musical instrument. In this comprehensive book Eric Hoeprich, a performer, teacher, and expert on historical clarinets, explores the entire history of the clarinet, from its early antecedents to its modern form, as well as its repertoire, performance history, and modern roles.

This authoritative book tells the story of the flute in the musical life of Europe and North America from the twelfth century to the present day. It discusses the evolution of the flute, the revolutions in playing style and repertoire, the lives of flute players and makers, and the uses of the instrument within various types of music. The volume will delight both those who play the flute and those...

In this engrossing book, David Nice provides a new assessment of the life and work of Sergey Prokofiev. Drawing on a range of new sources, Nice follows the renowned composer’s personal and musical progression from his childhood on a Ukrainian country estate through his unexpectedly long years of travel in the West to his return to Stalin’s Soviet Union in 1936.

In this sophisticated biography of Gustav Mahler, Stuart Feder explores the ways in which the composer channeled the painful crises of his life into his greatest musical works. The book is at once a sophisticated consideration of Mahler’s work and a psychologically acute portrait of the life events that shaped it.

This new biography of the brilliant Austrian cellist Emanuel Feuermann provides a gripping narrative of his life and work and awards him the place in musical history that his tragic early death denied him. The book describes Feuermann’s unique style of playing and includes a wealth of first-hand recollections of his performances as well as a CD with examples of his playing, some never before...

Focusing on Wagner’s music, dramas, and prose writings, James Treadwell identifies their habitual concerns and extends their dimensions, providing new ways to interpret Wagner’s art.

This authoritative new collection of Arnold Schoenberg’s essays, letters, literary writings, musical sketches, paintings, and drawings offers fresh insights into the famed composer’s life, work, and thought. Extensive commentary by Joseph Auner places the materials in context and traces important themes throughout Schoenberg’s career.

In this book Clive Brown weaves together a rich array of documents to present an unprecedented portrayal of Felix Mendelssohn, a composer whose music and personality have been both extolled and denigrated. Mendelssohn was an innovative and highly cerebral composer, Brown shows, and his influence on musical thought extended into the twentieth century.

In this lively book, David Benjamin Levy explores the cultural and musical meanings that surround Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. He analyzes the music, discusses the initial performances, traces the symphony’s critical reception and legacy, and examines interpretations of the work by prominent conductors. The book is accompanied by a fully annotated discography of selected recordings.

One of America’s most acute cultural commentators, Terry Teachout here turns his sharp eye to every corner of the arts world—music, dance, literature, theater, film, TV, and the visual arts. In a thoughtful introduction to this selection of essays, Teachout considers popular culture of the twenty-first century and how it has been altered by the information age.

This engaging analysis of rock music from the 1950s to the present explores the features that make it distinct from earlier music styles. Ken Stephenson focuses on the theoretical and structural aspects of the music and provides richly detailed analyses of individual rock pieces from many well-known groups.

A collection of off-stage photographs of rock & roll superstars––among them Elvis, Eric Clapton, the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and Jimi Hendrix––by the most talented photographers of the era.

In this appealing book, acclaimed photographer Ralph Gibson offers more than 60 intimate black-and-white portraits of guitar masters playing their instruments.