Irfan Orga, author of Portrait of a Turkish Family, journeys to the centre of Turkey to stay with the Yürük nomads in the High Taurus mountains. He learns their traditions, listens to their legends and lives to feel that heroes dead a thousand years and abducted princesses turned mad by grief are still palpably alive. Orga enters a world untouched by politics or the march of world events. He reconnects us with a once-ubiquitous emotional landscape – a visceral place underpinned by elementa...

This new biography is a fascinating account of the period in which Chopin lived, and the way in which the political scene helped shape his music. The important people and places in the composer's life are brought vividly to life by the use of contemporary engraving, paintings and lithographs. The author has made extensive use of contemporary accounts, letters and notebooks, and reproduces little known caricatures drawn by Chopin. This is an ideal book for the music lover who has no special...

This new biography is a fascinating account of the period in which Chopin lived, and the way in which the political scene helped shape his music. The important people and places in the composer's life are brought vividly to life by the use of contemporary engraving, paintings and lithographs. The author has made extensive use of contemporary accounts, letters and notebooks, and reproduces little known caricatures drawn by Chopin. This is an ideal book for the music lover who has no special...

This excellent ebook introduces the reader to a wide range of the world's greatest composers, including interesting facts about not only their musical styles but the men themselves. This edition has been specially formatted for today's e-readers, and will appeal to all those looking for a fascinating read about the history of classical music.

What is rhetorical music? In The Pathetick Musician, Bruce Haynes and Geoffrey Burgess illustrate the vital place of rhetoric and eloquent expression in the creation and performance of Baroque music. Through engaging explorations of the cantatas of J.S. Bach, the authors explode the conventional notion of historical authenticity in music, proposing adventurous new directions to reinvigorate the performance of early music in the modern setting. Along the way, Haynes and Burgess investigate ...

J. S. Bach's sonatas and partitas for solo violin have been central to the violin repertoire since the mid-eighteenth century. This engaging volume is the first comprehensive exploration of the place of these works within Bach's music: it focuses on their structural and stylistic features as they have been perceived since their creation. Joel Lester, a highly regarded scholar, teacher, violinist, and administrator, combines an analytical study, a full historical guide, and an insightful in...

Robert Schumann was far ahead of his time, not least in his attitude to children and young people; his 'Advice for Young Musicians', originally created to accompany his famous 'Album for the Young', remains as relevant today as when it was written.Celebrated cellist Steven Isserlis adds his own extensive commentary to Schumann's words of wisdom. The advice is by turns practical, humorous, and profound, making this volume a must for all aspiring musicians of all ages and standards.

The B-minor Mass has always represented a fascinating challenge to musical scholarship. Composed over the course of Johann Sebastian Bach's life, it is considered by many to be the composer's greatest and most complex work. The fourteen essays assembled in this volume originate from the International Symposium 'Understanding Bach's B-minor mass' at which scholars from eighteen countries gathered to debate the latest topics in the field. In revised and updated form, they comprise a thorough...

Simultaneously the memoir of a famed composer, conductor, and music educator, and an important historical sourcebook on the American musical scene during the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, the autobiography of Gunther Schuller chronicles the first thirty-five years of this multifaceted and expansive figure's life and work.Schuller began composing music at an early age and joined the Cincinnati Symphony as its principal French horn player at seventeen. Since then he has...

'Idiosyncratic, humorous, enlightening and written by one of the finest conductors alive ... This is the book to buy if you are going to see Wagner or listen to him at home' LITERARY REVIEWOver a distinguished career conducting some of the world's finest orchestras, Christian Thielemann has earned a reputation as the leading modern interpreter of Richard Wagner. MY LIFE WITH WAGNER chronicles his ardent personal and professional e...

Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) is the world's most frequently performed operatic composer, yet he is only beginning to receive serious scholarly attention. In Giacomo Puccini and His World, an international roster of music specialists, several writing on Puccini for the first time, offers a variety of new critical perspectives on the composer and his works. Containing discussions of all of Puccini’s operas from Manon Lescaut (1893) to Turandot (1926), this volume ai...

Lies and Epiphanies offers case studies of "inspiration" in five composers -- Richard Wagner, Gustav Mahler, Wilhelm Furtwängler, Richard Strauss, and Alban Berg. Their own tales of their epiphanies played a determining role in the reception history of their works: the finale of Mahler's Second Symphony was supposedly born of a "lightning bolt" of inspiration at the funeral of Hans von Bülow, while Alban Berg's Violin Concerto was purportedly his direct response to the tragic earl...