These two fascinating works are combined into one volume that includes an interesting biography, background information on the writing of the music, indispensable performance suggestions and a listing of recommended readings and recordings.

The Beatles are the biggest band there has ever been. James Bond is the single most successful movie character of all time. They are also twins. Dr No, the first Bond film, and 'Love Me Do', the first Beatles record, were both released on the same day - Friday, 5 October 1962. Most countries can only dream of a cultural export becoming a worldwide phenomenon on this scale. For Britain to produce two on the same windy October afternoon is unprecedented. Bond and the Beatles present us with opposing values, visions of Britain and ideas about male identity. LOVE AND LET DIE is the story of a clash between working-class liberation and establishment control, and how it exploded on the global stage. It explains why James Bond hated the Beatles, why Paul McCartney wanted to be Bond and why it was Ringo who won the heart of a Bond Girl in the end. Told over a period of sixty dramatic years, this is an account of how two outsized cultural monsters continue to define our aspirations and fantasies and the future we are building. Looking at these touchstones in this new context will forever change how you see the Beatles, the James Bond films and six decades of British culture.

Donald Mitchell's second book on the life and work of Gustav Mahler examines the fruitful years of the First to the Fourth Symphonies, as well as the earlier song cycles from the Gesellen lieder to the magical Ruckert songs. A work of painstaking and imaginative scholarship presented in eminently readable language. MUSICAL QUARTERLY Mitchell has amassed and processed an imposing amount of material, most of it new... It includes a section on Mahler and Freud, discusses Bach's influence on Mahler, and reproduces contemporary criticism... Invaluable for Mahler scholars and lovers. ECONOMIST Donald Mitchell's second book on the life and work of Gustav Mahler focuses principally on Mahler's first settings of Wunderhorn texts, volumes I and II of the Lieder und Gesaenge; his first song-cycle, the Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen; and the later orchestral settings of Wunderhorn poems. The central section of the book explores the extraordinary and often eccentric chronology of the First, Second and Third Symphonies' composition, an often minute exploration which reveals the interpenetration of song and symphony in this period of Mahler's art, emphasizes the significance for these works of imagery drawn from the Wunderhorn anthology, and calls attention to the ambiguous position occupied by much of Mahler's music atthis time, suspended as it was between the rival claims - and forms - of symphony and symphonic poem. The final section of the book not only looks at the Fourth Symphony as the final, perhaps most perfect, flowering of Mahler's Wunderhorn symphonies, but also investigates such fascinating topics as the relationship between Mahler and Berlioz, and the influence of Bach on Mahler's later masterpieces. This new edition of the book offers an entirelynew preface, in which Mitchell gives a unique account of the influence of politics, nationalism and fascism on the reception and rejection of Mahler's music, after the composer's death until the Mahler Renaissance of the 1950s and 1960s. It also includes extensive corrigenda and amplifying addenda, making it clear that the Wunderhorn influence persisted beyond the end of the period during which the Wunderhorn anthology was a constant sourceof inspiration. It is completed by an international bibliography which documents chronologically the reception and study of his music both in the past, and the prodigiously different circumstances of the present. DONALD MITCHELL was Founder Professor of Music at the University of Sussex. He is well known for his major studies of Mahler, among his many other books and studies. He was awarded the CBE in 2000.

October 21, 1982. Three singers stand on the steps of the High Court with large cheques and broken dreams. The women are Annie (Annabel Leventon, the book's author), GB (Gaye Brown), and Di-Di (Diane Langton). Their dream was of a British three-woman rock band, unique and different from anything that had gone before. They called themselves Rock Bottom. They were raunchy, rude and hilarious - the contemporary media described them as 'a cross between the female Rolling Stones and the female Marx Brothers' - and they nearly made it. Until Thames Television stole everything and made a major award-winning series called Rock Follies, about them, based on them, but without them. It made stars of the three lookalikes playing them. And they lost everything. A common enough tale of showbiz betrayal. Except that they fought back. At the offset of the Court trial, the Head of Drama at Thames TV sarcastically quipped, 'three little actresses against the might of EMI?' Forget it, the three ladies were told. Move on. They didn't. They took the case to the High Court and won. Breach of Confidence is now on the Statute Books and it has become one of the defining cases in Intellectual Property. The Real Rock Follies is a real-life story of youthful trust betrayed, dreams of stardom dashed and cruel lessons learnt. The three girls, then in their late twenties, learned too late that in the harsh showbiz world you can hardly trust anyone, not even your friends. However, despite everything, they got the last laugh. Their promising career couldn't be returned to them but they enjoyed the huge satisfaction (both emotional and financial) that the ruling confirmed that the creative concept behind Rock Follies was fully theirs.

Half a century after three teenage brothers decided to give a career in music a go, the Bee Gees are among the most successful and enduring names in popular music history. Trailblazing their way across pop music since the 1960s, Barry, Robin, and Maurice Gibb have made their songs Stayin' Alive, How Deep is Your Love, To Love Somebody, and I Started a Joke, timeless. Filled with staggering highs - especially as they became the definitive band of the disco era - The Little Guide to the Bee Gees is packed with quotes perfect for the music-lover in your life and just might help you stay alive. 'Contrary to popular belief, we have no leader. We call it a democratic dictatorship.' - Maurice Gibb 'We are brothers first, a pop group second.' - Barry Gibb 'Show business is something you have to have in you when you're born.' - Robin Gibb

Spanning over decades, this is the remarkable, heartfelt memoir from Abdul 'Duke' Fakir, the last surviving member of The Four Tops. Amidst a backdrop of Detroit, I'll Be There features revealing anecdotes from the group's formation, their early days as backup singers for the likes of Jackie Wilson, and their years working with Berry Gordy at the legendary Motown Records. With era-defining number ones like 'I Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie Honey Bunch)' and 'Reach Out I'll Be There' came stardom and also a more enduring reward: the love of four men who become tighter than brothers. Together they comprise one of the most celebrated R&B groups of all time. But remarkable musical success didn't spare Fakir the pain of marital distress, soured investment deals, struggles with sobriety and the sudden loss of his brothers, all of which he covers in this confessional, unmissable book.

The definitive study of the LaSalle Quartet, for forty years the premier exponent of 'the new music' for string quartet. The LaSalle Quartet (1946-1987) was the premier exponent of 'the new music' for string quartet. Founded in 1946 at the Julliard School in New York, it became famous for its performances of works by the Second Viennese School and its commissioning of many new pieces by contemporary post-war composers. As a result, the quartets by Lutoslawski, Ligeti and Nono have since entered the standard repertory, sitting comfortably next to those by Schoenberg, Berg andWebern. The LaSalle Quartet's brilliant advocacy of the quartets by Alexander Zemlinsky resulted in best-selling recordings for Deutsche Grammophon. In an informative and critical dialogue between new and old, the LaSalleQuartet was also an incisive interpreter of the classical quartet repertory; many of its recordings are still in print. Its record as a teaching quartet is equally impressive, numbering among its students at the University of Cincinnati the Alban Berg, Brahms, Prazak, Artis, Buchberger, Ponche and Vogler Quartets. The LaSalle Quartet's founder and first violinist, Walter Levin, is himself a highly influential teacher whose students have included the conductor James Levine and the violinist Christian Tetzlaff, as well as many third-generation string quartets. This book, based on extensive interviews with Walter Levin conducted by Robert Spruytenburg over five years, is in equal measure autobiography, history of the Quartet, reminiscences of the contemporary composers who figured so prominently in its career, and penetrating commentary on the LaSalle Quartet's wide-ranging repertory. All these aspectsare artfully woven into a uniquely valuable, informative and entertaining document of musical life in the twentieth century. ROBERT SPRUYTENBURG lives in Basel. He was introduced to Walter Levin in 1988 and took part inhis chamber music courses. Since 2003, Spruytenburg has been working on the LaSalle Quartet's archives located at the Paul Sacher Foundation in Basel. He is a frequent contributor to classical music programmes for Swiss radio.

Woodrow Wilson Guthrie (1912-67) has had an immense impact on popular culture throughout the world. His folk music brought traditional song from the rural communities of the American southwest to the urban American listener and, through the global influence of American culture, to listeners and musicians alike throughout Europe and the Americas. Similarly, his use of music as a medium of social and political protest has created a new strategy for campaigners in many countries. But Guthrie's music was only one aspect of his multifaceted life. His labour-union activism helped embolden the American working class, and united such distinct groups as the rural poor, the urban proletariat, merchant seamen and military draftees, contributing to the general call for workers' rights during the 1930s and 1940s. As well as penning hundreds of songs (both recorded and unrecorded), Guthrie was also a prolific writer of non-sung prose, writing regularly for the American communist press, producing volumes of autobiographical writings and writing hundreds of letters to family, friends and public figures. Furthermore, beyond music Guthrie also expressed his creative talents through his numerous pen-and-ink sketches, a number of paintings and occasional forays into poetry. This collection provides a rigorous examination of Guthrie's cultural significance and an evaluation of both his contemporary and posthumous impact on American culture and international folk-culture. The volume utilizes the rich resources presented by the Woody Guthrie Foundation.

Check out Little Voice on Apple TV+! Little Voice is inspired by a lost song from Sara Bareilles's first studio album. This updated New York Times bestselling collection of essays by seven-time Grammy nominated singer songwriter Sara Bareilles "resonates with authentic and hard-won truths" (Publishers Weekly)-and features new material on the hit Broadway musical, Waitress. Sara Bareilles "pours her heart and soul into these essays" (Associated Press), sharing the joys and the struggles that come with creating great work, all while staying true to yourself. Imbued with humor and marked by Sara's confessional writing style, this essay collection tells the inside story behind some of her most popular songs. Well known for her chart-topper "Brave," Sara first broke through in 2007 with her multi-platinum single "Love Song." She has since released seven albums that have sold millions of copies and spawned several hits. "A breezy, upbeat, and honest reflection of this multitalented artist" (Kirkus Reviews), Sounds Like Me reveals Sara Bareilles, the artist-and the woman-on songwriting, soul searching, and what's discovered along the way.

The Times Book of the Year 'There's no tougher a mind, no more tender a voice than Paul Simon, and there's no better man than Robert Hilburn to decipher the hardwiring of this hyperintellect...great songs can never be fully explained, but the great man on his way to find those songs surely can.' - Bono Through such hits as "The Sound of Silence," "Bridge Over Troubled Water," "Still Crazy After All These Years," and "Graceland," Paul Simon has spoken to us in songs for a half-century about alienation, doubt, survival, and faith in ways that have established him as one of the most honoured and beloved songwriters in American pop music history. Yet Simon has refused to talk to potential biographers and urged those close to him to also remain silent. But Simon not only agreed to talk to biographer Robert Hilburn for what has amounted to more than sixty hours, he also encouraged his family and friends to sit down for in-depth interviews. Paul Simon is a revealing account of the challenges and sacrifices of artistry at the highest level. He has also lived a roller-coaster life of extreme ups and downs. We not only learn Paul's unrelenting drive to achieve artistry, but also the subsequent struggles to protect that artistry against distractions - fame, wealth, marriage, divorce, drugs, complacency, public rejection, self-doubt - that have frequently derailed pop stars and each of which he encountered. From dominating the charts with Art Garfunkel and a successful reinvention as a solo artist, to his multiple marriages and highly publicized second divorce from Carrie Fisher, this book covers all aspects of this American icon. 'When it comes to writing songs, no one does it better than Paul Simon. Robert Hilburn's is a wise and winning account of our most nimble, nuanced, and numinous poet-musician.' -Paul Muldoon 'A tantalizing look into the mind and writing process of the man who is arguably the finest craftsman of the American popular song since the Gershwin brothers, this book will delight any Paul Simon fan or student of popular culture.' -Linda Ronstadt

A tribute to the life and work of one of the great musical icons of the twentieth century, reflected through the lenses of the world's greatest photographers. Published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of the release in 1964 of her groundbreaking debut single "As Tears Go By," this is the definitive book on Faithfull, one of the most beloved singers of the twentieth century. As a folk singer in London, Marianne Faithfull was discovered in a coffeehouse in 1964 by the manager of the Rolling Stones. Over the five decades since, her work as a musician, her performances as an actress on stage and screen, and her presence as an icon of style have made Faithfull an undisputed icon of pop culture. Edited by the artist herself, with accompanying handwritten captions, this book represents a personal collection of images that tell the stories of her life--from her explosive success in London in the 1960s and her infamous relationships with Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones, to her rise as an actress and her collaborations with artists as diverse as David Bowie and Nick Cave. Including never-before-seen snapshots from Faithfull's collection, specially commissioned photographs of her home in Paris, and iconic images by many of the world's best-known photographers--Steven Meisel, David Bailey, and Anton Corbijn, among many others--this is a revealing celebration of an extraordinary life in popular culture.

A philosophical look at heavy metal's dark masters of reality, Black Sabbath

Black Sabbath is one of the world's most influential and enduring rock bands. Dubbed "the Beatles of heavy metal" by "Rolling Stone," they helped to define a genre with classic songs like "Paranoid," "Iron Man," and "War Pigs," songs whose lyrics reveal hidden depth and philosophical insight. Their songs confront existential despair, social instability, political corruption, the horrors of war, and the nature of evil. This book explores the wide range of profound ideas in the band's music and lyrics to help you understand Black Sabbath as never before.Discusses and debates essential Black Sabbath topics and themes, such as the problem of evil, "War Pigs" and the nature of just war theory, whether or not Sabbath is still Sabbath without Ozzy, and whether "evil is in the ear of the beholder"Gives you new perspectives on Black Sabbath's music and lyricsProvides a deeper appreciation and understanding of Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Bill Ward, and Ronnie James DioBrings some of history's heaviest thinkers to bear on the band's music, from Aristotle and Nietzsche to Schopenhauer and Marx

So . . . "can you help me, occupy my brain?" Yes Start reading "Black Sabbath and Philosophy."

A moving story of hope, faith, persistence and the power of dreams. A piano prodigy, a nineteen-year-old college grad, a Marshall scholar, and an American Idol finalist. This guy had it made. He could sing. He could ski blind. What couldn't he do? Even if you saw him in concert, you might not believe that Scott MacIntyre is blind, and you'd never guess that at nineteen, he faced a diagnosis that rocked his family and nearly took his life. So how did he do it? How did he overcome the odds? This is Scott's story, but he'd be the first to tell you that it's not really about him. This is the story of how God used a dedicated family, a selfless acquaintance, hardship, and a host of characters to give him life, faith, determination, and experiences most can only imagine. Peek behind the scenes to see how he learned to overcome his disability, how he made it in the music industry, how he found the love of his life, and how God taught him that in all things, we can truly achieve our dreams By Faith, Not by Sight.

'In what is the most comprehensive biography of the group to date, Browne compiles a fun and fast-paced music history.... an authoritative chronicle.' --Publishers Weekly The first and most complete narrative biography of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, by acclaimed music journalist and Rolling Stone senior writer David Browne Even in the larger-than-life world of rock and roll, it was hard to imagine four more different men. David Crosby, the opinionated hippie guru. Stephen Stills, the perpetually driven musician. Graham Nash, the tactful pop craftsman. Neil Young, the creatively restless loner. But together, few groups were as in sync with their times as Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. Starting with the original trio's landmark 1969 debut album, the group embodied much about its era: communal musicmaking, protest songs that took on the establishment and Richard Nixon, and liberal attitudes toward partners and lifestyles. Their group or individual songs--'Wooden Ships,' 'Suite: Judy Blue Eyes,' 'After the Gold Rush,' 'For What It's Worth' (with Stills and Young's Buffalo Springfield), 'Love the One You're With,' 'Long Time Gone,' 'Just a Song Before I Go,' 'Southern Cross'--became the soundtrack of a generation. But their story would rarely be as harmonious as their legendary and influential vocal blend. In the years that followed, these four volatile men would continually break up, reunite, and disband again--all against a backdrop of social and musical change, recurring disagreements and jealousies, and self-destructive tendencies that threatened to cripple them both as a group and as individuals. In Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young: The Wild, Definitive Saga of Rock's Greatest Supergroup, longtime music journalist and Rolling Stone writer David Browne presents the ultimate deep dive into rock and roll's most musical and turbulent brotherhood on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. Featuring exclusive interviews with David Crosby and Graham Nash along with band members, colleagues, fellow superstars, former managers, employees, and lovers-and with access to unreleased music and documents--Browne takes readers backstage and onstage, into the musicians' homes, recording studios, and psyches, to chronicle the creative and psychological ties that have bound these men together--and sometimes torn them apart. This is the sweeping story of rock's longest-running, most dysfunctional, yet pre-eminent musical family, delivered with the epic feel their story rightly deserves.

A compelling portrait of composer-performer Julius Eastman's enigmatic and intriguing life and music. Composer-performer Julius Eastman (1940-90) was an enigma, both comfortable and uncomfortable in the many worlds he inhabited: black, white, gay, straight, classical music, disco, academia, and downtown New York. His music, insistent and straightforward, resists labels and seethes with a tension that resonates with musicians, scholars, and audiences today. Eastman's provocative titles, including Gay Guerrilla, Evil Nigger, Crazy Nigger, and others, assault us with his obsessions. Eastman tested limits with his political aggressiveness, as reflected in legendary scandals like his June 1975 performance of John Cage's Song Books, which featured homoerotic interjections, and the uproar over his titles at Northwestern University. These episodes are examples of Eastman's persistence in pushing the limits of the acceptable in the highly charged arenas of sexual and civil rights. In addition to analyses of Eastman's music, the essays in Gay Guerrilla provide background on his remarkable life history and the era's social landscape. The book presents an authentic portrait of a notable American artist thatis compelling reading for the general reader as well as scholars interested in twentieth-century American music, American studies, gay rights, and civil rights. This Life of Sounds: Evenings for New Music inBuffalo received an ASCAP Deems Taylor Award for excellence. Mary Jane Leach is a composer and freelance writer, currently writing music and theatre criticism for the Albany Times-Union.

Samuel Barber (1910-1981) is one of the most admired and honored American composers of the twentieth century. An unabashed Romantic, largely independent of worldwide trends and the avant-garde, he infused his works with poetic lyricism and gave tonal language and forms new vitality. His rich legacy includes every genre, including the famous Adagio for Strings, Knoxville: Summer of 1915, three concertos, a plethora of songs, and two operas, the Pulitzer prize-winning Vanessa, and Antony and Cleopatra, the commissioned work that opened the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in 1966. Generously documented by letter, sketches, autograph manuscripts, and interviews with friends, colleagues, and performers with whom he worked, this ASCAP-Award winning book is still unquestionably the most authoritative biography on Barber, covering his entire career and interweaving the events of his life with his compositional process. This second edition benefits from many new discoveries, including a Violin Sonata recovered from an artist's estate, a diary Barber kept his seventeenth year, a trove of letters and manuscripts that were recovered from a suitcase found in a dumpster, documentation that dispels earlier myths about the composition of Barber's Violin Concerto, and research of scholars that was stimulated by Heyman's work. Barber's intimate relations are discussed when they bear on his creativity. A testament to the lasting significance of Romanticism, Samuel Barber stands as a model biography of an important musical figure.

'How refreshing, to read a book about music written for a music lover and not a musicologist. In clear, lucid, entertaining prose, Jane Glover makes those of us who lack musical literacy better understand and appreciate Handel’s divinity.' - Donna Leon, author of Handel's Bestiary and the Inspector Brunetti mysteries.

Handel in London tells the story of a young German composer who in 1712, followed his princely master to London and would remain there for the rest of his life. That master would become King George II and the composer was George Frideric Handel.

Handel, then still only twenty-seven and largely self-taught, would be at the heart of musical activity in London for the next four decades, composing masterpiece after masterpiece, whether the glorious coronation anthem, Zadok the Priest, operas such as Giulio Cesare, Rinaldo and Alcina or the great oratorios, culminating, of course, in Messiah.

Here, Jane Glover, who has conducted Handel’s work in opera houses and concert halls throughout the world, draws on her profound understanding of music and musicians to tell Handel’s story. It is a story of music-making and musicianship, of practices and practicalities, but also of courts and cabals, of theatrical rivalries and of eighteenth-century society. It is also, of course, the story of some of the most remarkable music ever written, music that has been played and sung, and loved, in this country – and throughout the world – for three hundred years.

After he died in the back seat of a Cadillac at the age of twenty-nine, Hank Williams-a frail, flawed man who had become country music's first real star-instantly morphed into its first tragic martyr. Having hit the heights with simple songs of despair, depression and tainted love, he would become in death a template for the rock generation to follow. Mark Ribowsky weaves together the first fully realised biography of Williams in a generation. Examining his music while re-creating days and nights choked in booze and desperation, he traces the rise of this legend-from the dirt roads of Alabama to the immortal stage of the Grand Ole Opry and to a lonely end on New Year's Day, 1953. This original work uncovers the real Hank beneath the myths that have long enshrouded his legacy.

Jarvis Cocker is widely regarded as one of the most original and memorable lyricists and performers of the last three decades. Here, for the first time, is a selection of sixty-six lyrics, presented with commentary and an introduction by the man himself. In this volume, readers (and Pulp fans) will find such classic Jarvis lyrics as 'Common People', 'Disco 2000', 'Babies', 'This is Hardcore' and 'Do You Remember the First Time?' The selection, assembled by the author, reveals a sensibility that is unmistakeably Jarvis: a sometimes visceral, sometimes everyday take on love, relationships and the things we do to each other when the lights get low. Mother, Brother, Lover takes the reader on a thirty-year tour into the life, art and preoccupations of one of the great British artists of the late twentieth century. Shocking, sharp, clever and funny, it is a beautiful collection of lyrics and commentary.

Without an understanding of the conflicts of Mahler's youth one cannot truly appreciate the impulses behind the major symphonies and song cycles of his later years. Available again for a new generation of Mahlerians, Donald Mitchell's famous study of the composer's early life and music was greeted as a major advance on its first appearance in 1958. Revised and updated in the early 1980s, thispaperback edition includes a new introduction by the author to bring this classic work once again to the forefront of Mahler studies. From his birth in Bohemia, then part of the mighty Austro-Hungarian empire, to a surveyof his early works, many now lost, Gustav Mahler: The Early Years forms an indispensable prelude to the period of the great compositions. The conflicts which came to mark Mahler's music and personality had their beginningsin his childhood and youth. Without understanding the territorial, social and familial conflicts of this time one cannot truly appreciate the impulses behind the major symphonies and song cycles of his later years. DONALD MITCHELL was born in 1925. Two composers have been central to his writings on music, Gustav Mahler and Benjamin Britten. His three studies of Mahler, The Early Years (1958), The Wunderhorn Years (1975), and Songs and Symphonies of Life and Death (1985), are among the enduring monuments of postwar Mahler literature. He was founder Professor of Music at the University of Sussex (1971-76), was visiting Professor atKing's College, London, and is currently a visiting Professor at the Universities of Sussex and York.

Scott Walker is undoubtedly one of the most brilliant, serious and intelligent of artists today. As one of the greatest lyricists of the 20th century and front man of globally loved pop trip, The Walker Brothers, Walker commands huge devotion. A major event, Sundog is the first ever selection of Walker's lyrics curated by the artist himself, published for the first time with a stunning introduction by Eimear McBride. Walker's iconic lyrics will proudly follow in the footsteps of other famous musicians who have been published by Faber & Faber, including Jarvis Cocker, Billy Bragg, and Van Morrison.

These never-before-published poems by Johnny Cash make the perfect gifts for music lovers and fans alike. Edited and introduced by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Paul Muldoon with a foreword by John Carter Cash, this poetry collection is illustrated with facsimile reproductions of Cash's own handwritten pages. Now an album with music by Rosanne Cash, Brad Paisley, Willie Nelson, Kacey Musgraves, Elvis Costello, and more. Since his first recordings in 1955, Johnny Cash has been an icon in the music world. In this collection of poems and song lyrics that have never been published before, we see the world through his eyes and view his reflection on his own interior reality, his frailties and his strengths alike. In his hallmark voice, he pens verses about love, pain, freedom, and mortality, and expresses insights on culture, his family, his fame, even Christmas. Forever Words confirms Johnny Cash as a brilliant and singular American literary figure. His music is a part of our collective history, and here the depth of his artistry and talent become even more evident.

In this book, Andy Gill assesses the circumstances behind Dylan's most famous songs, tracing the artist's progress from young tyro folkie to acclaimed protest singer, and through the subsequent changes which saw him invent folk-rock and transform rock 'n' roll with symbolist poetry, before retreating into country-tinged conservatism just as his followers were engaged in the great psychedelic freak-show of the late 1960s. Even then, he couldn't help but innovate, introducing the world to another strain of popular music-country-rock-which would come to dominate the American charts through the next decade. Always one step ahead of the crowd, always pushing himself to extend the boundaries of his art, the Dylan of the 1960s remains a beacon of integrity to which fans and fellow musicians keep returning.

The career of Gabriel Faure as a composer of songs for voice and piano traverses six decades (1862-1921); almost the whole history of French melodie is contained within these parameters. In the 1860s Faure, the lifelong protege of Camille Saint-SaA"ns, was a suavely precocious student; he was part of Pauline Viardot's circle in the 1870s and he nearly married her daughter. Pointed in the direction of symbolist poetry by Robert de Montesquiou in 1886, Faure was the favoured composer from the early 1890s of Winnarretta Singer, later Princesse de Polignac, and his songs were revered by Marcel Proust. In 1905 he became director of the Paris Conservatoire, and he composed his most profound music in old age. His existence, steadily productive and outwardly imperturbable, was undermined by self-doubt, an unhappy marriage and a tragic loss of hearing. In this detailed study Graham Johnson places the vocal music within twin contexts: Faure's own life story, and the parallel lives of his many poets. We encounter such giants as Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine, the patrician Leconte de Lisle, the forgotten Armand Silvestre and the Belgian symbolist Charles Van Lerberghe. The chronological range of the narrative encompasses Faure's first poet, Victor Hugo, who railed against Napoleon III in the 1850s, and the last, Jean de La Ville de Mirmont, killed in action in the First World War. In this comprehensive and richly illustrated study each of Faure's 109 songs receives a separate commentary. Additional chapters for the student singer and serious music lover discuss interpretation and performance in both aesthetical and practical terms. Richard Stokes provides parallel English translations of the original French texts. In the twenty-first century musical modernity is evaluated differently from the way it was assessed thirty years ago. Faure is no longer merely a 'Master of Charms' circumscribed by the belle epoque. His status as a great composer of timeless