The Lives and Times of the Great Composers
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.84 (597 Votes) |
| Asin | : | B00KFEJKHU |
| Format Type | : | |
| Number of Pages | : | 106 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2017-01-24 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
'A glorious plum-pudding of a book, to be consulted, with pleasure and profit, over and over again' -- Sir Jeremy Isaacs 'Hugely informative and deliciously gossipy' -- Spectator 'Michael Steen's beautifully illustrated book packs an astonishing amount of biographical and cultural detail into nearly forty subjects.' -- Independent on Sunday
A lifetime's work and almost 1000 pages long, it has since become 'the' reference point and key read on the biographical backgrounds to classical music's biggest names.Authoritative and hugely detailed - but nonetheless a joy to read - this new edition will expand its readership further and capitalise on a newfound popular interest in classical music.Steen's book helps you explore the story of Bach, the respectable burgher much of whose vast output was composed amidst petty turf disputes in Lutheran Leipzig; or the ugly, argumentative
Beachbum 90A non fiction history book Beachbum 904 A big book filled with information. It was entertaining and very interesting. I first read Schubert’s life. After all, I like his inpromptus. It was a mistake: girls, parties, wine, night life, venereal disease…, but I discovered later that the whole book did not treat only of sex.Composers have always been good at finding the most beautiful, romantic, and lush places in Europe: Austrian forests, Russian villages, lake Como and Bellagio, islands in the Mediterranean Sea - the nicest in Italy, and even Vatican - all were frequented by composers.Politics: they did not have Internet, but they were well aware of the political move. said A non fiction history book. A big book filled with information. It was entertaining and very interesting. I first read Schubert’s life. After all, I like his inpromptus. It was a mistake: girls, parties, wine, night life, venereal disease…, but I discovered later that the whole book did not treat only of sex.Composers have always been good at finding the most beautiful, romantic, and lush places in Europe: Austrian forests, Russian villages, lake Como and Bellagio, islands in the Mediterranean Sea - the nicest in Italy, and even Vatican - all were frequented by composers.Politics: they did not have Internet, but they were well aware of the political move. "It reads like a novel- but the lives of these composers is anything but ordinary" according to Hal 9000. It read like a novel- As most musically trained people know is that the evolution classical music spanned about 150 years. An also that these musician were isolated primarily from Italy to Western Russia to the Baltics. What this book also teaches is how many of these composers knew each other or their families or were their instructors or pupils or who's wife ran off with who's husband. Of course there is talk of their individual approaches to music but more from a listeners POV. Great read. Stanley Hauer said Any lover of classical music might want to buy this book.. I am not a professional musicologist, just a passionate amateur. I read a lot of musical biography and such, so I was pleasantly surprised to see just how much I learned from this book. It is a real joy to read, the sort of book one doesn't want to end. In my view, it is generally balanced and fair (though the chapters on Wagner and R. Strauss come close to assassination at times). Rather like Edward Gibbon, Steen lives out his sex life in his footnotes, which are often hilarious. The book is elaborately, even tediously, documented; but the source notes are in the back, so as not to distract from the text notes. This is not a book on music
Michael Steen was born in Dublin, studied at the Royal College of Music, was organ scholar at Oriel College, Oxford and is currently chairman of the Royal College of Music Society.