The Rough Guide to Classical Music: The A-Z of Composers, Key Works and Top Recordings

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This expanded and completely revised fourth edition is a unique handbook, spanning a thousand years of music from Gregorian chant via Bach and Beethoven to current leading lights such as Thomas Adès and Kaija Saariaho.

There are concise biographical profiles of more than 200 composers and informative summaries of the major compositions in all genres, from chamber works to operatic epics. Topics such as the influence of jazz, notation, conducting, the madrigal, and why ...

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Overview

This expanded and completely revised fourth edition is a unique handbook, spanning a thousand years of music from Gregorian chant via Bach and Beethoven to current leading lights such as Thomas Adès and Kaija Saariaho.

There are concise biographical profiles of more than 200 composers and informative summaries of the major compositions in all genres, from chamber works to operatic epics. Topics such as the influence of jazz, notation, conducting, the madrigal, and why Stradivarius made such great violins are covered fully in feature boxes. The Rough Guide has been praised for its mix of well-known composers with more obscure, but interesting, figures (like Antoine Brumel and Barbara Strozzi), and for the way it takes contemporary music seriously.

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Editorial Reviews

Library Journal
These two books on classical music do not exactly cover the same territory and do not share the same purpose, but they nevertheless overlap in subject matter and partially in intent. In The Rough Guide, the 200-plus A-Z entries (up from 160 in the third edition) are arranged by composer and typically contain a short biography (often with a photograph), a discussion of the composer's oeuvre, and recommended recordings (often only one). Returning editors Staines and Clark make no attempt to be comprehensive in terms of the music; their choices reflect what they consider to be the best. The bigwigs of the past and present are all here-Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Thomas Ad s, and Kaija Saariaho-but many minor composers are not included. Scattered throughout are essays on general topics ("Tuning and Temperament"; "The Crisis of Tonality") that help orient readers to the world of classical music. In The Penguin Companion, Griffiths, the former chief music critic for The New Yorker, covers all facets of classical music, encompassing composers (some quite obscure), instruments, musical notation and theory, and performers. The several thousand entries are short, except in the cases of some major composers, who garner works lists (e.g., the Beethoven article is five pages long, with works list). Bottom Line The Rough Guide is perhaps the best general guide to mainstream classical music and selected recordings; recommended for all public libraries. Readers who want a more thoroughgoing CD buyer's guide should instead consult The Penguin Guide to Compact Discs & DVDs: The Key Classical Recordings. The Penguin Companion specializes in ready-reference entries on both people and concepts, but it does not replace the fuller treatment usually afforded concepts in The Harvard Dictionary of Music (4th ed.) or people in Baker's Biographical Dictionary of Musicians. Nevertheless, it is an excellent resource suitable for public and academic libraries.-Bruce R. Schueneman, Texas A&M Univ. Lib., Kingsville Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781843532477
  • Publisher: DK Publishing, Inc.
  • Publication date: 8/29/2005
  • Series: Rough Guide Reference Series
  • Edition description: Revised
  • Edition number: 4
  • Pages: 656
  • Product dimensions: 6.68 (w) x 9.22 (h) x 1.35 (d)

Table of Contents

Introduction viii
Chronology of composers x
John Adams 1
Thomas Ades 4
Isaac Albeniz 6
Tomaso Albinoni 8
Gregorio Allegri 9
Louis Andriessen 10
Malcolm Arnold 12
Grazyna Bacewicz 14
C.P.E. Bach 16
J.S. Bach 18
Samuel Barber 33
Agustin Pio Barrios 35
Bela Bartok 37
Arnold Bax 42
Ludwig van Beethoven 46
Vincenzo Bellini 64
George Benjamin 66
Alban Berg 68
Luciano Berio 72
Hector Berlioz 75
Leonard Bernstein 79
Heinrich Biber 80
Harrison Birtwistle 82
Georges Bizet 84
Luigi Boccherini 85
Alexander Borodin 87
Lili Boulanger 89
Pierre Boulez 90
Johannes Brahms 94
Benjamin Britten 103
Max Bruch 109
Anton Bruckner 111
Antoine Brumel 119
Ferruccio Busoni 120
Dietrich Buxtehude 122
William Byrd 124
John Cage 127
Marie-Joseph Canteloube 128
Giacomo Carissimi 129
Elliott Carter 130
Francesco Cavalli 132
Emmanuel Chabrier 134
Marc-Antoine Charpentier 135
Frederic Chopin 137
Muzio Clementi 142
Aaron Copland 143
Archangelo Corelli 147
Francois Couperin 149
Luigi Dallapiccola 151
Claude Debussy 152
Leo Delibes 158
Frederick Delius 159
Gaetano Donizetti 161
John Dowland 163
Guillaume Dufay 165
Paul Dukas 166
John Dunstable 167
Henri Duparc 168
Maurice Durufle 170
Henri Dutilleux 172
Antonin Dvorak 173
Hanns Eisler 180
Edward Elgar 181
Manuel de Falla 187
Gabriel Faure 190
Morton Feldman 192
Cesar Franck 193
Giovanni Gabrieli 196
Roberto Gerhard 197
George Gershwin 199
Carlo Gesualdo 202
Orlando Gibbons 204
Umberto Giordano 206
Philip Glass 207
Alexander Glazunov 209
Mikhail Glinka 210
Christoph Willibald Gluck 212
Henryk Gorecki 213
Charles Francois Gounod 215
Percy Grainger 216
Enrique Granados 218
Edvard Grieg 220
Sofia Gubaidulina 223
George Frideric Handel 226
Karl Amadeus Hartmann 235
Jonathan Harvey 237
Joseph Haydn 239
Hans Werner Henze 248
Hildegard of Bingen 250
Paul Hindemith 253
Gustav Holst 257
Arthur Honegger 258
Johann Nepomuck Hummel 260
Engelbert Humperdinck 262
Charles Ives 263
Leos Janacek 266
Josquin Desprez 270
Mauricio Kagel 272
Aram Khachaturian 274
Oliver Knussen 275
Zoltan Kodaly 277
Erich Wolfgang Korngold 279
Gyorgy Kurtag 283
Francesco Landini 286
Roland de Lassus 287
William Lawes 288
Franz Lehar 291
Ruggero Leoncavallo 292
Gyorgy Ligeti 293
Magnus Lindberg 297
Franz Liszt 298
Jean-Baptiste Lully 303
Witold Lutoslawski 304
Elisabeth Lutyens 307
Guillaume de Machaut 309
James MacMillan 311
Elizabeth Maconchy 313
Gustav Mahler 315
Frank Martin 323
Bohuslav Martinu 325
Pietro Mascagni 327
Jules Massenet 328
Nicholas Maw 330
Peter Maxwell Davies 332
Felix Mendelssohn 334
Olivier Messiaen 339
Darius Mihaud 343
Claudio Monteverdi 345
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 350
Tristan Murail 364
Modest Mussorgsky 360
Conlon Nancarrow 370
Carl Nielsen 372
Luigi Nono 375
Michael Nyman 378
Johannes Ockeghem 380
Jacques Offenbach 382
Carl Orff 383
Johann Pachelbel 385
Nicolo Paganini 386
Giovanni da Palestrina 389
Hubert Parry 391
Arvo Part 392
Krzysztof Penderecki 394
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi 396
Perotin 398
Francis Poulenc 400
Michael Praetorius 404
Sergey Prokofiev 408
Giacomo Puccini 415
Henry Purcell 418
Sergey Rachmaninov 424
Jean-Philippe Rameau 429
Einojuhani Rautavaara 431
Maurice Ravel 433
Max Reger 438
Steve Reich 439
Ottorino Respighi 441
Wolfgang Rihm 442
Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov 444
Joaquin Rodrigo 447
Gioacchino Rossini 448
Poul Ruders 451
Kaija Saariaho 453
Camille Saint-Saens 455
Erik Satie 457
Alessandro Scarlatti 459
Domenico Scarlatti 460
Giacinto Scelsi 462
Alfred Schnittke 464
Arnold Schoenberg 466
Franz Schreker 473
Franz Schubert 474
Robert Schumann 486
Heinrich Schutz 496
Alexander Scriabin 497
Dmitri Shostakovich 500
Jean Sibelius 508
Bedrich Smetana 514
Ethel Smyth 516
Karlheinz Stockhausen 518
Alessandro Stradella 522
The Strauss family 523
Richard Strauss 525
Igor Stravinsky 532
Barbara Strozzi 540
Josef Suk 543
Arthur Sullivan 544
Karol Szymanowski 545
Toru Takemitsu 549
Thomas Tallis 551
Giuseppe Tartini 554
John Tavener 557
John Taverner 558
Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky 559
Georg Philipp Telemann 568
Michael Tippett 569
Michael Torke 572
Mark-Anthony Turnage 575
Viktor Ullmann 577
Edgard Varese 579
Ralph Vaughan Williams 580
Giuseppe Verdi 586
Tomas Luis de Victoria 591
Heitor Villa-Lobos 592
Antonio Vivaldi 594
Richard Wagner 599
William Walton 606
Carl Maria von Weber 609
Anton Webern 610
Kurt Weill 613
Judith Weir 616
Silvius Leopold Weiss 617
Hugo Wolf 619
Iannis Xenakis 621
Alexander Zemlinsky 623
Glossary 624
Index 633
Feature Boxes
Tuning and Temperament 27
What is a Fugue? 31
Sonatas and Sonata Form 59
Famous First Words 113
The Bruckner "Versions" Problem 115
Rivals at the Piano 138
The Madrigal History Tour 203
Castrati 230
Gregorian Chant 251
Expressionism and After 254
Composers at the Movies 281
Consort Musick 289
Troubadours and Trouveres 210
The Cult of the Conductor 316
The Ondes Martinot 341
The Birth of Opera 347
Total Serialism and the Darmstadt School 376
The Rise of the Virtuoso 388
Notation 399
Jean Cocteau and Les Six 403
Luther and Music 405
St Cecilia - Patron Saint of Music 422
Development of the Keyboard 461
The Crisis of Tonality 468
Clara Schumann 487
Romanticism and the Austro-German Tradition 491
Electronic Music - The First 70 Years 521
Music and the Third Reich 526
Diaghilev and the Russian Ballet 535
Concerto di Donne 541
The English Reformation 552
There is nothing like a Strad 541
Postmodernism and After 574
The Concerto 595
The Leitmotif 601
The Strange Case of August Bungert 603
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