The Lives of the Great Composers / Edition 3

by Harold C. Schonberg

Overview

An updated and expanded edition of this perennial favorite, tracing the line of composers from Monteverdi to the tonalists of the 1990s.

In this new edition, Harold Schonberg offers music lovers a series of fascinating biographical chapters. Music, the author contends, is a continually evolving art, and all geniuses, unique as they are, were influenced by their predecessors. Schonberg discusses the lives and works of the foremost figures in classical music, among them Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, the Schumanns, Copland, and Stravinsky, weaving a fabric rich in detail and anecdote. He also includes the creators of light music, such as Gilbert and Sullivan and the Strausses.

Schonberg has extended the volume's coverage to provide informative and clearly written descriptions of the later serialists such as Stockhausen and Carter, the iconoclastic John Cage, the individualistic Messiaen, minimalist composers, the new tonalists, and women composers of all eras, including Mendelssohn Hensel, Chaminade, Smyth, Beach, and Zwilich. Scattered throughout are many changes and additions reflecting musicological findings of the past fifteen years.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393038576
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	04/17/1997
Edition description:	Subsequent
Pages:	656
Sales rank:	252,846
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.80(d)

About the Author

Harold C. Schonberg, senior New York Times music critic for twenty years, was the first in his field to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism (1971). He is the author of many articles and eight books, including one on chess. Schonberg lives in New York City.

Table of Contents

Preface

Pioneer of Opera: Claudio Monteverdi
2. Transfiguration of theBaroque: Johann Sebastian Bach
3. Composer and Impresario: George Frideric Handel
4. Reformer of Opera: Christoph Willibald Gluck
5. Classicism par excellence: Joseph Haydn
6. Prodigy from Salzburg: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
7. Revolutionary from Bonn: Ludwig van Beethoven
8. Poet of Music: Franz Schubert
9. Freedom and a New Language: Weber and the Early Romantics
10. Romantic Exuberance and Classic Restraint: Hector Berlioz
11. Florestan and Eusebius: Robert Schumann
12. Apotheosis of the Piano: Frederic Chopin
13. Virtuoso, Charlatan - and Prophet: Franz Liszt
14. Bourgeois Genius: Felix Mendelssohn
15. Voice, Voice, and More Voice: Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini
16. Spectacle, Spectacle, and More Spectacle: Meyerbeer, Cherubini, Auber
17. Colossus of Italy: Giuseppe Verdi
18. Colossus of Germany: Richard Wagner
19. Keeper of the Flame: Johannes Brahms
20. Master of the Lied: Hugo Wolf
21. Waltz, Can-Can, and Satire: Strauss, Offenbach, Sullivan
22. Faust and French Opera: From Gounod to Saint-Saens
23. Russian Nationalism and the Mighty Five: From Glinka to Rimsky-Korsakov
24. Surcharged Emotionalism: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
25. From Bohemia to Spain: European Nationalists
26. Chromaticism and Sensibilite: From Franck to Faure
27. Only for the Theater: Giacomo Puccini
28. Romanticism's Long Coda: Richard Strauss
29. Religion, Mysticism, and Retrospection: Bruckner, Mahler, Reger
30. Symbolism and Impressionism: Claude Debussy
31. Gallic Elegance and the New Breed: Maurice Ravel and Les Six
32. The Chameleon: Igor Stravinsky
33. The English Renaissance: Elgar, Delius, Vaughan Williams
34. Mysticism and Melancholy: Scriabin and Rachmaninoff
35. Under the Soviets: Prokofiev and Shostakovich
36. German Neoclassicism: Busoni, Weill, Hindemith
37. Rise of an American Tradition: From Gottschalk to Copland
38. The Uncompromising Hungarian: Bela Bartok
39. The Second Viennese School: Schoenberg, Berg, Webern
40. The International Serial Movement: From Varese to Messiaen
41. The New Eclecticism: From Carter to the Minimalists General Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

This third edition of a work that has become a standard resource since its publication in 1981 includes brief but significant changes. A new chapter brings the work up to date, covering later serialists such as Stockhausen and Carter, minimalists Philip Glass and John Adams, and Alfred Schnittke and Peter Maxwell Davies. Schonberg discusses the recent phenomenal success of recordings of Gregorian chant and the search for styles of composition that combine originality and complexity with audience appeal. Women composers Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel, Amy Beach, Cecile Chaminade, Ethel Smyth, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich are now included. Though each has been given only one paragraph, it is valuable to see them placed in the context of their contemporaries and their predecessors. Schonberg writes for the lay reader. His intention is to humanize the composers and the writing, always highly readable, emphasizes biographical information rather than musical analysis. Recommended for all public and academic libraries.Kate McCaffrey, Onondaga Cty. P.L., Syracuse, N.Y.

Library Journal