Paul Simon: A Bio-Bibliography (Bio-Bibliographies in Music)
by James E. Perone
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Publication date: January 30, 2000
Binding: Hardcover
Subjects: Simon, Paul,; 1941-; Bibliography
ISBN: 0313310165
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The Self-Promoting Musician : Strategies for Independent Music Success
by Peter Spellman
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Publication date: February 2000
Binding: Paperback
Subjects: Music; Business Aspects
ISBN: 0634006444
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Gian Carlo Menotti: A Bio-Bibliography (Bio-Bibliographies in Music)
by Donald L. Hixon
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Publication date: February 28, 2000
Binding: Hardcover
Subjects: Menotti, Gian Carlo,; 1911-; Bibliography
ISBN: 0313261393
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Indian Music and the West
by Gerry Farrell
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Publication date: March 2000
Binding: Paperback
Subjects: Music; Ethnomusicology
ISBN: 0198167172
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Music and Humanism : An Essay in the Aesthetics of Music
by R. A. Sharpe
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Publication date: March 2000
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Subjects: Aesthetics; Music; Philosophy and aesthetics
ISBN: 0198238851
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Music and Gender
by Pirkko Moisala(Editor), et al
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Publication date: March 2000
Binding: Hardcover
Subjects: Women musicians; Sex in music; Women And Music
ISBN: 025202544X
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Dream:Western Poets in Russian Music
by S Larin, L Bekova
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Publication date: March 2000
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And the Angel Sings:Music by Bruch
by Feidman, Shambadal
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Publication date: March 2000
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ISBN: 6305785872
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A Performer's Guide to Medieval Music (Music: Scholarship and Performance
Published in Cooperation With Early Music America)
by Ross W. Duffin(Editor)
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Publication date: March 2000
Binding: Hardcover
Subjects: Music; History & Criticism; Instruction & Study
ISBN: 0253337526
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Christian Minstrel (Earlier American Music, No 30)
by Jesse B. Aikin
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Publication date: March 2000
Binding: Hardcover
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The Celestial Twins : Poetry and Music Through the Ages
by H. -T Kirby-Smith
Our Price: $40.00
Publication date: January 2000
Binding: Hardcover
Subjects: General; Lyric poetry; History and criticism
ISBN: 1558492259
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The Spheres of Music : A Gathering of Essays
by Leonard B. Meyer
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Publication date: February 2000
Binding: Hardcover
Subjects: Music; History and criticism; Philosophy And Esthetics Of Music
ISBN: 0226521532
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The Spheres of Music : A Gathering of Essays
by Leonard B. Meyer
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Publication date: February 2000
Binding: Paperback
Subjects: Music; History and criticism; History & Criticism
ISBN: 0226521540
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George Gershwin (Bio-Bibliographies in Music)
by Norbert Carnovale
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Publication date: February 2000
Binding: Hardcover
Subjects: Gershwin, George,; 1898-1937; Bibliography
ISBN: 0313260036
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The Wind and Wind-Chorus Music of Anton Bruckner (Contributions to the
Study
of Music and Dance, No. 51)
by Keith William Kinder
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Publication date: February 2000
Binding: Hardcover
Subjects: Bruckner, Anton,; 1824-1896; Criticism and interpretation
ISBN: 0313308349
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The Romantic Age (Cambridge Readings in the Literature of Music)
Publication date: February 2000
Binding: Hardcover
Subjects: Music; Music Of The 19th Century; Reference
ISBN: 052126006X
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Music Therapy
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Publication date: February 2000
Binding: Paperback
Subjects: Music
ISBN: 0028654234
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The Sacred in Music
by Albert L. Blackwell
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Publication date: February 2000
Binding: Paperback
Subjects: Religion - Worship - Music; Music; Hymns
ISBN: 0664221718
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Vh1 Behind the Music : 1968
by Wayne Robins, Wayne Robbins
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Publication date: February 2000
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Subjects: Music; Rock; History & Criticism
ISBN: 067103961X
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Getting Started in Christian Music (Ccm Book)
by Reed Arvin(Editor), Academy of Gospel Music Arts
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Publication date: February 2000
Binding: Paperback
Subjects: Contemporary Christian music; Writing and publishing; Church
music
ISBN: 0736902678
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Drumming for the Gods : The Life and Times of Felips Garcia Villamil,
Santero, Palero, and Abakua (Studies in Latin American and Caribbean
Music)
by Maria Teresa Velez
Our Price: $44.63 -- You Save: $14.87 (25%)
Publication date: January 21, 2000
Binding: Hardcover
Subjects: Garcia Villamil, Felipe,; 1931-; Drummers (Musicians)
ISBN: 1566397308
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Dissecting Marilyn Manson
by Gavin Baddeley
Our Price: $14.41 -- You Save: $2.54 (15%)
Publication date: January 25, 2000
Binding: Paperback
Subjects: Music; Rock Music; Popular
ISBN: 0859652831
URL: REVIEW
1. "Beethoven's Concertos: History, Style, Performance"
by Leon Plantinga
Book Review/Order
Analysis of Beethoven's concertos here yields insights into
almost every aspect of the composer's work. Even readers who
are not pianists will find helpful, practical information
about when and how a soloist might participate in the
orchestral sections of classical concertos, systems of
tuning in the period, cadenzas, and historical ideas about
tempo. They will also enjoy Plantinga's direct, colorful
writing style.
2. "Richard Strauss: Man, Musician, Enigma"
by Michael Kennedy
Book Review/Order
Michael Kennedy undertakes to penetrate Strauss's
contradictions and see the man whole. Through his impressive
access to diaries, letters, and living relatives, he posits
an underlying consistency of attitude that made "art the
reality in [Strauss's] life." Kennedy demystifies much of
the received opinion that has developed around the
composer. He devotes a significant portion of the book to
the composer's position as president of the Reich Music
Chamber and subsequent fall from grace both with the Nazis
and in world opinion. In his view, Strauss becomes a "tragic
figure, symbolizing the struggle to preserve beauty and
style in Western European culture" against emerging
barbarism.
3. "Bohemian Fifths: An Autobiography"
by Hans Werner Henze; translated by Stewart Spencer
Book Review/Order
Hans Werner Henze's autobiography, like his music, is
alternately elegant, dense, and humorous, with a clear love
of history and classical beauty. Henze covers both his life
and work through 1995. Anecdotes about almost all of Henze's
music abound, but the most interesting comments are about
music in general.
4. "The Four and the One: In Praise of String Quartets"
by David Rounds
Book Review/Order
Why have so many great composers reserved some of their most
profound, personal music for their string quartets? David
Rounds suggests an explanation: the instrumental combination
resembles human voices, and socially the group resembles a
family or a gathering of friends carrying on a conversation.
The author's premise is that in a quartet, four players and
four instruments have to become one unit. The book begins
with an introduction to the development of chamber music and
ends with a guide to the quartet repertoire.
5. "Mozart: A Cultural Biography"
by Robert W. Gutman
Book Review/Order
Robert Gutman portrays a musical genius who slowly and
painfully achieved personal maturity as he emerged from the
shadow of his domineering father. The rich cultural life of
18th-century Europe forms a vivid background for Mozart's
professional and artistic evolution. Gutman's descriptions
of Mozart's work are models of music writing for the lay
reader: they capture the brilliance and beauty of the great
composer's art in easily accessible language.
6. "Maestros of the Pen: A History of Classical Music
Criticism in America"
by Mark N. Grant
Book Review/Order
Mark Grant tells the story of music criticism's evolution in
the United States from shallow dilettantism into an
enterprise that itself became an art. He considers the
influence of critics as evangelists for music and as
tastemakers. Grant also considers the now nearly vanished
breed of the composer who doubled as critic. He ends with
speculations about the current perilous state of music
criticism and some of the new possibilities posed by the
Internet. This book is indispensable to anyone interested in
the practice and significance of critical writing about all
of the arts--and it makes for a highly pleasurable read.
7. "Aaron Copland: The Life and Work of an Uncommon Man"
by Howard Pollack
Book Review/Order
This superb biography elucidates Aaron Copland's background,
beliefs, affiliations, and achievements. Howard Pollack
depicts Copland as a man whose inner serenity and
self-confidence enabled him to encompass "startling
dichotomies" in his life and work. The author writes with a
clarity and dignity eminently suitable to his subject, who
seems as warmly appealing as his music.
8. "Twentieth Century Opera: A Guide"
by George Martin
Book Review/Order
George Martin begins with a group of essays on such topics
as how World War I was the defining event for the form of
opera in this century, the two "revolutions" in opera
(12-tone music and electronic amplification), and the
literary quality of opera librettos. The bulk of the book
offers a chronological series of 90 plot synopses. Martin is
a refreshingly honest opera companion, quite free with his
opinions.
9. "Prepare for Saints: Gertrude Stein, Virgil Thomson, and
the Mainstreaming of American Modernism"
by Steven Watson
Book Review/Order
When "Four Saints in Three Acts" premiered in 1934, it
caused a sensation, making it virtually unique among
American operas. Forever associated with that first
production, "Four Saints" became a cult object and a
landmark of the avant-garde. Steven Watson's deft study
follows the opera's creation and the cultural constellation
whose mission was to see it produced. The opera came to
represent the moment when modernism intersected with high
society and became chic.
10. "New World Symphonies: How American Culture Changed
European Music"
by Jack Sullivan
Book Review/Order
Beginning with the touchstone "New World" symphony of
Dvorak, Jack Sullivan takes readers on a tour of music
history right up to the present day. His study centers on
the American writers, poets, and styles that have influenced
the Old World. The book ends with a long consideration of
the effects of jazz, which Sullivan views as *the* American
classical music.
"The Musical Dialogue: Thoughts on Monteverdi, Bach and Mozart"
by Nikolaus Harnoncourt
Book Review/Order
Nikolaus Harnoncourt has been one of the most important and
influential leaders of the 20th-century revival of Baroque
instruments and period performance practice--not just
because he's a hardworking and talented musician, but
because he's articulate. "The Musical Dialogue" is a
valuable collection of lectures and essays laying out his
ideas. Here Harnoncourt gets specific: he discusses how
Monteverdi, Bach, and Mozart used particular instruments and
forms and talks about his own experience analyzing and
performing specific works. Among the topics he treats are
the various possibilities for instrumentation in
Monteverdi's works (and why there are so many) and the
performance history of the "St. Matthew Passion" and the
Mass in B Minor. Perhaps most valuable are Harnoncourt's
discussions of Mozart: for example, how the meaning of tempo
markings such as "allegro" and "andante" has changed from
the 18th century to today, and the many and varied
conventions of phrasing that were widely understood--and
therefore were not written out in Mozart's scores and
performing parts. One caveat: these essays were written in
the 1970s and 1980s, and there are a few cases where
subsequent events have overtaken Harnoncourt's comments.
Nevertheless, the observations of this important,
influential, and idiosyncratic maestro make fascinating
reading.
"Believing in Opera"
by Tom Sutcliffe
Book Review/Order
The tension between opera's conservatives and innovators has
gone on for years: the defenders of an established canon
take issue with those who want fresh perspectives. Directors
grow increasingly daring, and they often stir controversy
with extreme interpretations. Tom Sutcliffe, a British opera
journalist, stands firmly with the innovators. He sees
opera's future health in its ability to reimagine its
classics. His descriptions of the work of provocative
directors in the past two decades make a persuasive case,
even when some of the productions sound like misfires.
Sutcliffe locates the true effect of a performance inside
the mind of the spectator. For him, "believing" in a
performance--the ability to become engaged and stirred by
it--is the crucial sign of its worth. It is a measure that
allows the greatest latitude in interpretation. Sutcliffe
examines the work of some aggressively imaginative directors
such as Patrice Chereau, Peter Sellars, and Richard Jones.
Live performances are difficult to write about for those who
haven't seen them. Sutcliffe fails to solve the problem
with excessively minute descriptions of staging, which tend
to obscure his larger points. His uninflected prose style,
perhaps designed for reportorial accuracy, doesn't help.
Nevertheless, his study will stimulate those who see opera
as a limitless source of theatrical riches.
"Beethoven: His Spiritual Development"
by J.W.N. Sullivan
Book Review/Order
Great creative artists can engage people's imagination for
centuries. Beethoven, as man and composer, has inspired
innumerable books both by his contemporaries and later
writers, and it is proof of his endlessly fascinating,
controversial nature that they all throw a different light
on some aspect of his life and work. Since Sullivan wrote
his book in 1927, much new information about Beethoven, his
character, his illnesses, and his relationships has come to
light, but it is still a valid contribution to the Beethoven
literature. Sullivan's basic theory is that Beethoven's
greatness lies in his extraordinary perceptions, his
heightened experiences and "states of consciousness," and
his ability to organize and synthesize these into a musical
expression of a "view of life." He asserts that Beethoven's
initially despairing, then defiant struggle against his
suffering--especially his deafness and resulting isolation--
gives his middle-period works their heroism, and that his
ultimate acceptance of it as necessary to his creativity
marks the peak of his "spirituality" and gives his latest
works their unparalleled sublimity. Sullivan, who is not a
musician, offers some interesting, if sometimes extravagantly
extramusical, analyses of Beethoven's works. He also makes
subjective, high-handed value judgments. But his book brings
up questions about beauty and greatness in art, the
relationship between moral character and genius, and the
impact of a person's personal experiences upon
creativity--all age-old but forever timely.
"La Callas"
by Andre Tubeuf
Book Review/Order
It's hard to believe there's a whole new generation of opera
lovers who have come of age with little acquaintance with
the unparalleled art of Maria Callas. This singer was a key
catalyzing element in the postwar renaissance of fascination
with opera's possibilities--musical and dramatic--that
continues into the present. Of course, the techniques of
"mechanical reproduction" can only hint at the unique aura
that this icon--known to her admirers as "La Divina"--possessed.
But no opera lover should be without at least some examples
of her recorded legacy, say in such signature roles as
Tosca, Norma, or Violetta in "La Traviata." As for that
other crucial aspect of the Callas aura--her mesmerizing
stage presence--this attractively produced book offers a
tantalizing hint, whether for the longtime Callas fanatic or
the budding operaphile. Copublished by the Vendome Press
(which is also the source for the lavishly illustrated
coffee-table tribute to the Great Tenors), "La Callas" is
essentially a visual essay comprising 40-plus black-and-white
photographs. We see the artist backstage, in her private
life, and wearing the masks of several of her great
roles. When Callas becomes the medium for one of these
character interpretations--Medea, Lucia, Butterfly--the
utter transformation registered by the camera is still
transfixing. Introducing the photographs is a short but
notionally rich essay by French music critic Andre Tubeuf,
consisting of a thumbnail sketch of Callas's life and some
thoughtful musings on the significance of her fame. Those
seeking an in-depth assessment of Callas's legacy will do
well by John Ardoin's well-regarded "The Callas Legacy"; the
recent controversial biography by Stelios Galatopoulos
should also be of interest.
CD BOX SETS/"BACH 2000" GIVEAWAY
The year 1999 has seen an explosion of big (really big!) CD
box sets. From John Adams to Teldec's "Bach 2000" edition of
the complete works of J.S. Bach, there have never been so
many great classical box sets to beef up your collection.
Here's a list including the most impressive new box releases.
And remember to check Amazon.com's Classical store for our
exciting "Bach 2000" giveaway promotion.
CD BOXED Set/Order
HOLIDAY SPOTLIGHT
"The Messiah: An Oratorio Complete Vocal Score"
Book Review/Order
Ever since its premier in 1742, Handel's "Messiah" has
remained one of the most popular pieces of music ever
composed. Although the piece was originally written as an
Easter work, no Christmas season seems complete without its
resounding choruses and immensely varied, heartfelt arias.
And this popular piano-vocal edition of the score is a
must-have if you plan to join in on a Handel sing-along.
Moreover, the seemingly infinite number of recorded versions
of the oratorio can present a daunting choice to the record
buyer. Amazon.com contributor Ted Libbey weighs the merits
of some of the more prominent interpretations in this
discography.
Book Review/Order