What Makes It Great: Short Masterpieces, Great Composers

by Rob Kapilow

Overview

Using an innovative approach, Rob Kapilow in his refreshing trademark presents the history of music from Bach and Vivaldi to Debussy by focusing on short pieces by the major composers. The book operates on two levels, using each short piece of music as a way of grasping the essence of each composer's genius while also focusing on the way each piece transformed the musical language of its time, making something normally forbidding and difficult -- the history of music -- utterly manageable and easy to grasp. For example, for Vivaldi he considers one movement of the Four Seasons, for Handel the Hornpipe for The Water Music, for Mozart an aria from The Marriage of Figaro, for Chopin a mazurka, for Wagner the Tristan and Isolde prelude, for Puccini an aria from Madama Butterfly, and so on.

The book opens with an introductory chapter explaining what Kapilow is up to, what the reader will gain from it, and an overview of what is to come, creating a context for the book. Additionally, in the chapters on the composers, he discusses important topics that widen the focus at key moments and further develop the evolving story of the history of music.

Readers can hear and see all of the short works on the book's website so by the end they will have taken a unique, accessible, tour-in-microcosm through the history of music with all the mustiness removed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781118058169
Publisher:	Trade Paper Press
Publication date:	08/24/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	272
File size:	22 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Rob Kapilow is a composer, conductor, pianist, author, and music commentator. His What Makes It Great? programs, which began on NPR, have been developed into full-length concert evenings that are a mainstay of Lincoln Center's Great Performers series and are also presented on a recurring basis in Boston, Washington, D.C., and Kansas City, in California at Cerritos, and in Canada at the Toronto Symphony. They have also been turned into CD recordings and video podcasts. He appears regularly throughout the United States and Canada, both with What Makes It Great? and FamilyMusik, and has been featured in print and on television, including on NBC's Today show and Live from Lincoln Center on PBS. In 2008, his first book, All You Have to Do Is Listen, was selected as the Best Book in Music & the Performing Arts by the Association of American Publishers. In 2009, he was the subject of Summer Sun Winter Moon, a PBS documentary about his Lewis and Clark symphony in collaboration with a Blackfoot poet.

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS v

HOW TO USE THE WEBSITE vi

INTRODUCTION

“To Know One Thing Well” 1

1 Antonio Vivaldi (1678–1741) 5

“Spring” (Movement 1) from The Four Seasons

2 Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) 26

Invention No.1 from the Two-part Inventions

3 George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) 39

“Hallelujah Chorus” from Messiah

4 Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809) 59

String Quartet, Op.76, No. 1, Movement 3

5 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) 73

“Dove Sono” from The Marriage of Figaro

6 Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) 89

Waldstein Sonata, Movement 1

7 Franz Schubert (1797–1828) 117

“Erlkönig”

8 Frédéric Chopin (1810–1849) 140

A-Minor Mazurka, Op.17, No.4

9 Robert Schumann (1810–1856) 156

“Träumerei” from Kinderszenen

10 Franz Liszt (1811–1886) 166

Transcendental Étude in A Minor

11 Felix Mendelssohn (1809–1847) 182

Scherzo from the String Octet in E-flat Major, Op. 20

12 Richard Wagner (1813–1883) 206

Prelude to Tristan and Isolde

13 Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901) 223

“De’ Miei Bollenti Spiriti” from La Traviata

14 Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) 237

“Un Bel Di” from Madama Butterfly

15 Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) 249

A-Major Intermezzo, Op.118, No.2

16 Antonín Dvorˇák (1841–1904) 264

Slavonic Dance, Op.46, No.8

17 Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893) 283

“Trepak” from The Nutcracker Suite

18 Claude Debussy (1862–1918) 296

“Des Pas sur la Neige” from Preludes, Book I

GLOSSARY 307

INDEX 309