New Publications,
New Music Book Publications - 18th March 2019
Welcome to our latest selection of new music books. Our picks this time round include biographies of composers and performers as diverse as Jonas Kaufmann, Elton John, Rudolf Nureyev, Stephen Sondheim, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Arnold Schoenberg, an introduction to the world of opera, a study of Saint-Saëns's music for the stage, and a discussion of Liszt's piano transcriptions of orchestral music.
Classical Composers & Music History
Mark Berry tells the story of Schoenberg's remarkable life and work, situating his tale within the wider context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century history. Introducing all of Schoenberg's major musical works, from his very first compositions to his invention of the twelve-tone method, Berry explores how Schoenberg's revolutionary approach to musical composition incorporated Wagnerian late Romanticism and the brave new worlds of atonality and serialism.
Available Format: Book
A comprehensive survey of Liszt's reworking of instrumental music on the piano, illustrating his diverse approaches to the integrity of the music in a detailed, vivid, and insightful manner through close study of his arrangements of Beethoven's symphonies and Rossini's Guillaume Tell Overture, arrangements of his own symphonic poems such as Mazeppa and Hunnenschlacht, and his Hungarian Rhapsodies.
Available Format: Book
Now available in paperback, this book examines in depth one of Thomas Adès's most significant works so far, his orchestral Asyla from 1997. Its blend of virtuosic orchestral writing, allusions to various idioms (including rave music), and a musical rhetoric encompassing both high modernism and lush romanticism, is always compelling and utterly representative of Adès's distinctive compositional voice.
Available Format: Book
Music, Myth and Story in Medieval and Early Modern Culture
Samantha Bassler & Katherine Butler (editors)
Myths and stories offer a window into medieval and early modern musical culture. Such myths were cited in support of arguments about the uses, effects, morality and preferred styles of music in sources as diverse as theoretical treatises, critiques of music, sermons, and books of moral conduct. Looking beyond the well-known figure of Orpheus, this collection explores the myriad stories that shaped not only musical thought, but also its styles, techniques and practices.
Available Format: Book
Musical performance was a driving force behind theatrical and poetic movements of the early modern period, yet its importance to literary history has long been ignored. This book explores the media through which songs of the period were made. It provides a new approach to Renaissance poetry and drama that is grounded in a synthetic media history.
Available Format: Book
Opera, Music Theatre, and Dance
With his musicality, his vocal technique and his expressive powers, Jonas Kaufmann is widely regarded as the greatest tenor of today. Thomas Voigt's intimate biography (written in collaboration with Kaufmann and with contributions from Antonio Pappano, Plácido Domingo, Anja Harteros, and others) reflects on the singer's artistic development in recent years; his work in the recording studio; his relationship to Verdi and Wagner; the sacrifices of success; and much more.
Available Format: Book
This guide to one of Mozart's most popular operas includes a discussion of the background and genesis of the work, a detailed analysis of the score with numerous musical examples, and a survey of the different permutations that the opera has undergone on stage. It also contains the complete German libretto with a new English translation by Kenneth Chalmers, sixteen pages of illustrations, a musical thematic guide, a discography, a bibliography, and DVD and website guides.
Available Format: Book
Vivien Schweitzer offers a lively introduction to opera, spanning from Monteverdi's L'Orfeo in 1600, generally considered the first successful opera, to Dead Man Walking and Anna Nicole in recent decades. Along the way, she introduces readers to the genre's most important composers, performers, and conductors, and to its key terminology, from coloratura to recitative.
Available Format: Book
With the exception of Samson et Dalila, Saint-Saëns's twelve operas have lain in the shadows since his death in 1921, until now. With four 21st-century revivals as a backdrop, this book is the first study of his works for the stage. Hugh Macdonald's wide knowledge of French music gives a powerful understanding of the different conventions and expectations that governed French opera at the time.
Available Format: Book
This book is a collection of interviews and conversations in which Stephen Sondheim expounds in great depth and detail on his craft. The entire scope of his career is covered here, including shows such as Assassins, Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George, Sweeney Todd, Pacific Overtures, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, A Little Night Music, and more. This new paperback edition features a revised introduction and a postlude with an additional conversation.
Available Format: Book
Andrew Lloyd Webber has reigned over the musical theatre world for nearly five decades, with hit shows including Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera, and many more. In Unmasked, written in his own inimitable, quirky voice, the award-winning composer takes stock of his achievements, the twists of fate and circumstance which brought him both success and disappointment, and the passions that inspire and sustain him.
Available Format: Book
Born on a train in Stalin's Russia, Rudolf Nureyev was ballet's first pop icon. No other dancer has generated the same excitement - both on and off stage. His achievements became legendary: he rose out of peasant poverty to become the Kirov's thrilling maverick star, defected to the West in 1961, and established the most rhapsodic partnership in dance history with Margot Fonteyn.
Available Format: Book
Popular Music
Meticulously researched and drawing on many original interviews with close friends and associates, this is a serious and weighty, but also page-turningly entertaining, biography of one of the most important musical icons of the twentieth century. His enormous influence on the music business is hard to quantify, and the work he has done over the years for LGBT rights is just as important.
Available Format: Book
Packed full of insightful stories from Springsteen's long career, this is a detailed look at each and every one of his album tracks, including many anecdotes and insights into the great American singer/songwriter. This is the first book to cover every officially released track, from 1974's Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. to 2014's High Hopes.
Available Format: Book
What happens when we fall in love with a voice; the siren call of someone singing? The history of post-war popular music is traditionally told sociologically or in terms of musicological influence and innovation in style. This book takes a different approach: tackling the arc of that history as if it were an emotional experience with real psychological consequences - as chaotic, random, challenging and unpredictable as life itself.
Available Format: Book
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