Relaxed and accessible in style, this authoritative guide is the first symphony handbook for non-musicians. The book begins with a general introduction to the symphony and short pieces on the orchestra and musical styles. Mordden goes on to describe, chronologically, over 700 pieces--from Vivaldi to twentieth-century composers. Further aids to the reader include two lists of repertory builders and a glossary of musical terms. "Easy and pleasurable to read...a genuinely useful guide for the music lover who has not had a musical education but loves concert music."--John Barkham Reviews
Relaxed and accessible in style, this authoritative guide is the first symphony handbook for non-musicians. The book begins with a general introductio...
Vividly recreating the unique pleasure of experiencing a song-and-dance show, Broadway Babies spotlights the men and women who made a difference in the development of American musical comedy. Mordden's account features such show people as Florenz Ziegfeld, Harold Prince, Bert Lahr, Gwen Verdon, Angela Lansbury, Victor Herbert, Liza Minnelli, and Stephen Sondheim, and such musicals as Sally, Oh Kay , Anything Goes, Show Boat, Oklahoma , Follies, Chicago, and countless others. While theatrical historians traditionally have emphasized the role of the authors of musicals, Mordden also...
Vividly recreating the unique pleasure of experiencing a song-and-dance show, Broadway Babies spotlights the men and women who made a difference in th...
From backstage squabbles and box-office chicanery to the gallantry and glory of creation, this book unveils a delightful panorama of opera lore, alternately hilarious, poignant, and wise. Ethan Mordden has mined the literature for "the best stories" and retells them in the fresh and witty style that prompted Publishers Weekly to hail him as "one of the most entertaining and provocative writers around." Mordden has selected a vast collection of classic, arcane and unusual anecdotes, including Giuseppe Verdi's advice on how to run an opera house and how to write an aria, Enrico Caruso's...
From backstage squabbles and box-office chicanery to the gallantry and glory of creation, this book unveils a delightful panorama of opera lore, alter...
"Music and girls are the soul of musical comedy," one critic wrote, early in the 1940s. But this was the age that wanted more than melody and kickline form its musical shows. The form had been running on empty for too long, as a formula for the assembly of spare parts--star comics, generic love songs, rumba dancers, Ethel Merman. If Rodgers and Hammerstein hadn't existed, Broadway would have had to invent them; and Oklahoma and Carousel came along just in time to announce the New Formula for Writing Musicals: Don't have a formula. Instead, start with strong characters and atmosphere:...
"Music and girls are the soul of musical comedy," one critic wrote, early in the 1940s. But this was the age that wanted more than melody and kickline...
"What unites us, all of us, surely is brotherhood, a sense that our friendships are historic, designed to hold Stonewall together," muses on character in Ethan Mordden's Buddies. This need for friendship, for nonerotic affection, for buddies, shines forth as an American obsession from Moby-Dick through Of Mice and Men to The Sting. And American gay life has built upon and cherished these relationships, even as it has dared-perhaps its most startling iconoclasm-to break new ground by combining romance and friendship: one's lover is one's buddy.
This book is...
"What unites us, all of us, surely is brotherhood, a sense that our friendships are historic, designed to hold Stonewall together," muses on charac...
In this brilliant and lyrical novel of family passions and personal fate, Ethan Mordden weaves a family saga of fiery intensity, as the scornful Witch of Fooley plays chess with the King of Tara to determine the fate of his sons.
In this brilliant and lyrical novel of family passions and personal fate, Ethan Mordden weaves a family saga of fiery intensity, as the scornful Wi...
A gay ghost, a talking dog, and a street kid who thinks he's an elf-child join our narrator Bud, best friend Dennis Savage, eternally young Little Kiwi, devastating hunk Carlo, and the other characters from I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore and Buddies in this final volume in Mordden's trilogy on gay life in the big city.
And there's trouble in paradise: Dennis Savage is suffering midlife crisisl; his lover little Kiwi who uses sex as a weapon, threatens to tear apart the delicate fabric of this gay family of buddies, lovers, and brothers and the AIDS crisis...
A gay ghost, a talking dog, and a street kid who thinks he's an elf-child join our narrator Bud, best friend Dennis Savage, eternally young Little ...
"We have traded tales, my buddies and I; of affairs, encounters, secrets, fears, self-promotion-of fantasies that we make real in the telling."
In this, the first volume in Ethan Mordden's acclaimed trilogy on Manhattan gay life, he introduces a small group of friends-Dennis Savage, Little Kiwi, Carlos, and the narrator, Bud-and chronicles their exploration of the new world of gay life and the new people they are in the process of becoming.
In a voice at once ironic, wistful, witty, and profound, Mordden investigates his suspicion that all of gay life is stories and that,...
"We have traded tales, my buddies and I; of affairs, encounters, secrets, fears, self-promotion-of fantasies that we make real in the telling."
Some Men Are Lookers, Ethan Mordden's much lauded fourth volume in his "Buddies" cycle, follows the exploits of his best-loved characters-Dennis Savage, Little Kiwi, Carlo, the 'elf-child' Cosgrove, and narrator Bud. Mordden lays bare the emotional landscape of the city within a city that is Gay Manhattan. Blending the comic, the sexy, and the at once idealistic and realistic, these stories represent Ethan Mordden at his very best.
Some Men Are Lookers, Ethan Mordden's much lauded fourth volume in his "Buddies" cycle, follows the exploits of his best-loved characters-De...
For Ethan Mordden, the closing night of the hit musical, 42nd St. sounded the death knell of the art form of the Broadway musical. After that, big orchestras, real voices, recognizable books and intelligent lyrics went out the window in favor of cats, helicopters, yodeling Frenchmen, and the roof of the Paris Opera. Mordden takes us through the aftermath of the days of the great Broadway musical. From the long-running Cats to Miss Saigon, Phantom, and Les Miserables, to gems like The Producers, he is unsparing in his look at the remains of the...
For Ethan Mordden, the closing night of the hit musical, 42nd St. sounded the death knell of the art form of the Broadway musical. After tha...
