Twentieth century music has been remarkable for its pluralism. The various styles--atonality, neo-classicism, nationalism, serialism, jazz, computer music, minimalism, electronics, folklorism, "happenings," sheer chance--have been far from monolithic, and experimentation has been, perhaps, the century's only defining feature. With over 2500 entries, The Companion to 20th-Century Music is the first book to comprehensively define and applaud this diversity. Norman Lebrecht celebrates variety and innovation, assessing composers and musicians according to artistic merit rather than...
Twentieth century music has been remarkable for its pluralism. The various styles--atonality, neo-classicism, nationalism, serialism, jazz, computer m...
In this compulsively readable, fascinating, and provocative guide to classical music, Norman Lebrecht, one of the world's most widely read cultural commentators tells the story of the rise of the classical recording industry from Caruso's first notes to the heyday of Bernstein, Glenn Gould, Callas, and von Karajan. Lebrecht compellingly demonstrates that classical recording has reached its end point-but this is not simply an expos? of decline and fall. It is, for the first time, the full story of a minor art form, analyzing the cultural revolution wrought by Schnabel, Toscanini, Callas,...
In this compulsively readable, fascinating, and provocative guide to classical music, Norman Lebrecht, one of the world's most widely read cultural co...
Exposes the strange truth and sheer brilliance behind the classical music recording industry. This book charts its rise since Caruso's first gramophone bestseller of 1902 and predicts the industry's imminent doom in the face of schmaltzy crossover albums a
Exposes the strange truth and sheer brilliance behind the classical music recording industry. This book charts its rise since Caruso's first gramophon...
Here is one of the most enjoyable and illuminating books ever published for the music lover, a feast of delightful anecdotes that reveal the all-too-human side of the great composers and performers. There are stories of appetites (Handel eating dinner for three), embarrassments (Brahms falling asleep as Liszt plays), oddities (Bruckner's dog being trained to howl at Wagner), and devotions (a lovely admirer disrobing in tribute to Puccini). There are memorable accounts of Stravinsky telling Proust how much he hates Beethoven, of Tchaikovsky's first bewildering telephone call, of Dvorak's...
Here is one of the most enjoyable and illuminating books ever published for the music lover, a feast of delightful anecdotes that reveal the all-too-h...
Why Mahler? Why does his music affect us in the way it does? Norman Lebrecht, one of the world's most widely read cultural commentators, has been wrestling obsessively with Mahler for half his life. Following Mahler's every footstep from birthplace to grave, scrutinizing his manuscripts, talking to those who knew him, Lebrecht constructs a compelling new portrait of Mahler as a man who lived determinedly outside his own times. Mahler was--along with Picasso, Einstein, Freud, Kafka, and Joyce--a maker of our modern world. Why Mahler? is a book that shows how music can change our...
Why Mahler? Why does his music affect us in the way it does? Norman Lebrecht, one of the world's most widely read cultural commentators, has be...
