Choral Masterworks - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Choral Masterworks write by Michael Steinberg. This book was released on 2008-03-28. Choral Masterworks available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Michael Steinberg's highly successful listener's guides--The Symphony and The Concerto--have been universally praised for their blend of captivating biography, crystal clear musical analysis, and delightful humor. Now Steinberg follows these two greatly admired volumes with Choral Masterworks, the only such guide available to this most popular of musical forms. Here are more than fifty illuminating essays on the classic choral masterworks, ranging from Handel's Messiah, Bach's Mass in B Minor, and Beethoven's Missa solemnis, to works by Haydn, Brahms, Mendelssohn, and many others. Steinberg spans the entire history of classical music, from such giants of the Romantic era as Verdi and Berlioz, to leading modern composers such as Elgar, Rachmaninoff, Vaughan Williams, and Stravinsky, to contemporary masters such as John Adams and Charles Wuorinen. For each piece, Steinberg includes a fascinating biographical account of the work's genesis, often spiced with wonderful asides. The author includes an astute musical analysis of each piece, one that casual music lovers can easily appreciate and that more serious fans will find invaluable. The book also provides basic information such as the various movements of the work, the organization of the chorus and orchestra, and brief historical notes on early performances. More than twenty million Americans perform regularly in choirs or choruses. Choral Masterworks will appeal not only to concert goers and CD collectors, but also to this vast multitude of choral performers, an especially engaged and active community. "What sets Steinberg's writing apart is its appealing mixture of impregnable authority (he knows this music) and purely personal asides (by the end of the book, we know this man). Choral Masterworks can be read by anybody, from a professional musician to any young listener newly braced by the stoic pessimism of the Brahms 'German Requiem.'" --Washington Post Book World
Guide to Choral Masterpieces
Guide to Choral Masterpieces - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Guide to Choral Masterpieces write by Melvin Berger. This book was released on 1993. Guide to Choral Masterpieces available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle.
Choral Masterworks from Bach to Britten
Choral Masterworks from Bach to Britten - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Choral Masterworks from Bach to Britten write by Robert J. Summer. This book was released on 2007. Choral Masterworks from Bach to Britten available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Presents a series of discussions about sixteen choral masterworks, facilitating conductors who perform these works and wish to know them. This work examines compositions such as Bach's "Mass in B Minor", Mahler's "8th Symphony", and more, in terms of textual symbolism, musical structure, and identification of endearing traits of each work.
Chamber Music
Chamber Music - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Chamber Music write by James M. Keller. This book was released on 2011. Chamber Music available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Oxford's highly successful listener's guides--The Symphony, The Concerto, and Choral Masterworks--have been widely praised for their blend of captivating biography, crystal clear musical analysis, and delightful humor. Now James Keller follows these greatly admired volumes with Chamber Music. Approaching the tradition of chamber music with knowledge and passion, Keller here serves as the often-opinionated but always genial guide to 192 essential works by 56 composers, providing illuminating essays on what makes each piece distinctive and admirable. Keller spans the history of this intimate genre of music, from key works of the Baroque through the emotionally stirring "golden age" of the Classical and Romantic composers, to modern masterpieces rich in political, psychological, and sometimes comical overtones. For each piece, from Bach through to contemporary figures like George Crumb and Steve Reich, the author includes an astute musical analysis that casual music lovers can easily appreciate yet that more experienced listeners will find enriching. Keller shares the colorful, often surprising stories behind the compositions while revealing the delights of an art form once described by Goethe as the musical equivalent of "thoughtful people conversing."
Opera and the Morbidity of Music
Opera and the Morbidity of Music - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Opera and the Morbidity of Music write by Joseph Kerman. This book was released on 2008-04-08. Opera and the Morbidity of Music available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The death of classical music, the distinguished critic and musicologist Joseph Kerman declares, is “a tired, vacuous concept that will not die.” In this wide-ranging collection of essays and reviews, Kerman examines the ongoing vitality of the classical music tradition, from the days of Guillaume Dufay, John Taverner, and William Byrd to contemporary operas by Philip Glass and John Adams. Here are enlightening investigations of the lives and works of the greatest composers: Bach and his Well-Tempered Clavier, Mozart’s and Beethoven’s piano concertos, Schubert’s songs, Wagner’s and Verdi’s operas. Kerman discusses The Magic Flute as well as productions of the Monteverdi operas in Brooklyn and the Ring in San Francisco and Bayreuth. He also includes remembrances of Maria Callas and Carlos Kleiber that make clear why they were such extraordinary musicians. Kerman argues that predictions—let alone assumptions—of the death of classical music are not a new development but part of a cultural transformation that has long been with us. Always alert to the significance of historical changes, from the invention of music notation to the advent of recording, he proposes that the place to look for renewal of the classical music tradition in America today is in opera—in a flood of new works, the rediscovery of long-forgotten ones, and innovative productions by companies large and small. Written for a general audience rather than for experts, Kerman’s essays invite readers to listen afresh and to engage with his insights into how music works. “His gift is so uncommon as to make one sad,” Alex Ross has said.
