As both composer and critic, Peggy Glanville-Hicks contributed to the astonishing cultural ferment of the mid-twentieth century. Her forceful voice as a writer and commentator helped shape professional and public opinion on the state of American composing. The seventy musical works she composed ranged from celebrated operas like Nausicaa to intimate, jewel-like compositions created for friends. Her circle included figures like Virgil Thomson, Paul Bowles, John Cage, and Yehudi Menuhin. Drawing on interviews, archival research, and fifty-four years of extraordinary pocket diaries, Suzanne Robinson places Glanville-Hicks within the history of American music and composers. "P.G.H." forged alliances with power brokers and artists that gained her entrance to core American cultural entities such as the League of Composers, New York Herald Tribune, and the Harkness Ballet. Yet her impeccably cultivated public image concealed a private life marked by unhappy love affairs, stubborn poverty, and the painstaking creation of her artistic works. Evocative and intricate, Peggy Glanville-Hicks clears away decades of myth and storytelling to provide a portrait of a remarkable figure and her times.

Schoenberg's quartets and trio, composed over a nearly forty-year period, occupy a central position among twentieth-century chamber music. This volume, based on papers presented at a conference in honor of David Lewin, collects a wide range of approaches to Schoenberg's pieces.

The first part of the book provides a historical context to these works, examining Viennese quartet culture and traditions, Webern's reception of Schoenberg's Second Quartet, Schoenberg's view of the Beethoven quartets, and the early reception of Schoenberg's First Quartet. The second part examines musical issues of motive, text setting, meter, imitative counterpoint, and closure within Schoenberg's quartets and trio.

Once Verdi had become Italy's preeminent opera composer, he wrote only a few instrumental compositions, most notably the "String Quartet in E Minor" of 1873. He originally wanted to keep this quartet - first performed in his hotel for a few friends - private, but he eventually allowed its publication. Following its 1876 public premiere in Paris with the celebrated violinist Camillo Sivori, it soon became well known all over Europe and the United States. Though several recordings are available and the piece is regularly performed, all of these performances use later editions that do not live up to the composer's intentions. In contrast, this critical edition is based on his autograph score, preserved at the Naples conservatory, as well as contemporary manuscript parts, early editions, and Verdi's own instructions for performance.Verdi wrote as gifts for admirers the three piano works - "Romance sans paroles," "Valzer," and an album leaf for Francesco Florimo - also included here. Editor Gundula Kreuzer traces their origins, sources, and performance questions - as well as the string quartet's - in her introduction. Her critical commentary details editorial problems and solutions.

"Reading "The Beethoven Quartet Companion made me want to listen to the quartets again from a new sociological as well as musical perspective. It is an invaluable guide not only for professional and amateur musicians but also for anyone who is curious about culture and wants to find out more."--Yo-Yo Ma

"These essays are the most readable, useful, and well-informed commentary available today on these masterworks. Michael Steinberg's 'program notes' to each quartet, directed at once to the musical beginner and to the expert, are as eloquent and persuasive as popular writing about music can get. . . . His essays are followed by equally expert and accessible contributions by other masters on The Master, providing literate music lovers with the context and equipment for a richer enjoyment and clearer understanding of these sixteen unique conversations among two violins, a viola, and a cello."--David Littlejohn, author of "The Ultimate Art: Essays Around and About Opera

"A fine collection of essays to assist the music lover in the seemingly endless quest to illuminate the Beethoven string quartets."--Arnold Steinhardt, The Guarneri String Quartet

"This book delivers on the implied promise of its title--it provides a lively, readable, and wide-ranging introduction to the quartets. Readers at many levels of experience will find it profitable."--Lewis Lockwood, author of "Beethoven: Studies in the Creative Process