The thirty-two Piano Sonatas of Ludwig van Beethoven form one of the most important segments of piano literature. In this accessible, compact, and comprehensive guidebook, renowned performer and pedagogue Stewart Gordon presents the pianist with historical insights and practical instructional tools for interpreting the pieces. In the opening chapters of Beethoven's 32 Piano Sonatas, Gordon illuminates the essential historical context behind common performance problems, discussing Beethoven's own pianos and how they relate to compositional style and demands in the pieces, and addressing textual issues, performance practices, and nuances of the composer's manuscript inscriptions. In outlining patterns of structure, sonority, keyboard technique, and emotional meaning evident across Beethoven's compositional development, Gordon provides important background and technical information key to understanding his works in context. Part II of the book presents each sonata in an outline-chart format, giving the student and teacher ready access to essential information, interpretive choices, and technical challenges in the individual works, measure by measure, all in one handy reference source. In consideration of the broad diversity of today's Beethoven interpreters, Gordon avoids one-size-fits-all solutions or giving undue weight to his own tastes and preferences. Instead, he puts the choices in the hands of the performers, enabling them to create their own personal relationship with the music and a more powerful performance.

This biography of Minna Planer, Richard Wagner's wife of 30 years, reveals her as a self-assured woman and artist who was vital to her husband's creative life. When Richard Wagner first met Minna Planer in 1834, he was an unknown conductor, she a popular actress. His hectic pursuit of her affections culminated in marriage in 1836. Minna endured poverty with him, nursed him through chronic illness, followed him across Europe as he fled from creditors and pursued his artistic goals, and sought to provide him with the stable domestic and erotic life that he craved. He played his works to her as he wrote them, up to Tannhauser and Lohengrin, and set store by her opinions. But when he went on the run as a wanted revolutionary, Minna only reluctantly followed him into Swiss exile. Domestic peace tentatively prevailed, but was ultimately destroyed by Wagner's passion for Mathilde Wesendonck. In 1858, he and Minna separated, she returned home to Germany, and subsequent efforts at reconciliation proved ultimately impossible. They remained married, however, until Minna's death in 1866. Despite having been at Richard's side as he matured into the composer of the Ring and Tristan, Minna has been given short shrift by most Wagner commentators. In Eva Rieger's acclaimed biography, translated into English by Chris Walton, the author reveals Minna as a self-assured woman and artist who played a crucial role in the creative life of her husband.

A pathbreaking study of the Parisian press's attempts to claim Richard Wagner's place in French history and imagination during the unstable and conflict-ridden years of the Third Reich. Richard Wagner was a polarizing figure in France from the time that he first entered French musical life in the mid nineteenth century. Critics employed him to symbolize everything from democratic revolution to authoritarian antisemitism. During periods of Franco-German conflict, such as the Franco-Prussian War and World War I, Wagner was associated in France with German nationalism and chauvinism. This association has led to the assumption that, with the advent of the Third Reich, the French once again rejected Wagner. Drawing on hundreds of press sources and employing close readings, this book seeks to explain a paradox: as the German threat grew more tangible from 1933, the Parisian press insisted on seeing in Wagner a universality that transcended his Germanness. Repudiating the notion that Wagner stood for Germany, French critics attempted to reclaim his role in their own national history and imagination. Claiming Wagner for France: Music and Politics in the Parisian Press, 1933-1944 reveals how the concept of a universal Wagner, which was used to challenge the Nazis in the 1930s, was gradually transformed into the infamous collaborationist rhetoric promoted by the Vichy government and exploited by the Nazis between 1940 and 1944. Rachel Orzech's study offers a close examination of Wagner's place in France's cultural landscape at this time, contributing to our understanding of how the French grappled with one of the most challenging periods in their history.

Ronald Stevenson is one of Britain's leading composers, and almost certainly its most prolific. He is best known for his massive 'Passacaglia on DSCH' - at 80 minutes long, the biggest single-movement work in the piano literature. But he has an enormous number of other fine works to his credit: a vast corpus of original and exciting works for the piano, the instrument of which he is an acknowledged master, a number of innovative and impressive scores for orchestra (including four concertos), many attractive pieces of chamber music, and over two hundred songs. Indeed, the sheer size of Stevenson's output is staggering: the worklist in this book fills some 75 pages - a body of music which both testifies to Stevenson's enduring belief in the value of melody and show him to be alert to the more important developments of the twentieth century. This collection of essays covers virtually all of Stevenson's enormous output. It features contributions from a number of leading authorities: Malcolm MacDonald on the orchestral music, Ates Orga on the piano works, Alistair Chisholm on the chamber music, Derek Watson on the songs, Harold Taylor on Stevenson's pianism, James Reid Baxter on Stevenson's position in Scottish culture. It also reproduces a selection of Stevenson's exquisite piano miniatures, in facsimiles of the composer's calligraphic script.

(Book). This is the most comprehensive and insightful study ever published on the pioneers of electric blues guitar including the great Chicago, Mississippi Delta, Louisiana, Texas and West Coast bluesmen. Rollin' and Tumblin' offers extensive interviews with some of the world's most famous blues guitarists, and poignant profiles of historical blues figures. Following a sweeping portrait of blues guitar history, the book features such players as T-Bone Walker, Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Lightnin' Hopkins and many more.

Moira Bennett casts her perceptive, wry and amused eye over a childhood and adolescence in South Africa and her years raising sponsorship for the Aldeburgh Festival, the Barbican Centre and the London Symphony Orchestra. In her early fifties, Moira Bennett was widowed with a school-age son and in need of a job. With virtually no previous working experience but full of energy and determination, she found herself working at the Britten-Pears Schoolat Snape, helping to run masterclasses for young professional musicians studying with artists such as Peter Pears, Galina Vishnevskaya, Mstislav Rostropovich, Hugues Cuenod and William Pleeth. Her gift for arts administration - understanding the needs of performers and audiences - was soon to become highly valued at Aldeburgh, as she became the Registrar at the Britten-Pears School and went on to create the post of Development Director in the early days ofcommercial sponsorship of the arts. She was later invited to take on a similar role at the Barbican Centre, supporting a series of international arts festivals, before going on to work with the London Symphony Orchestra. In 2012 the Bittern Press published Moira Bennett's history of the Britten-Pears School, Making Musicians, which Classical Music magazine made one its Books of the Year. Now in her early nineties, Moira Bennett has written an extraordinary autobiography, casting an astute eye over her childhood and adolescence in South Africa, the impact of the Second World War and the Apartheid years on the country, and her second, 'unexpected', life in the arts.

The first thorough examination of the most renowned and influential organist in early twentieth-century Germany and of his complex relationship to his country's tumultuous and shifting sociopolitical landscape. In the course of a multifaceted career, Karl Straube (1873-1950) rose to positions of immense cultural authority in a German musical world caught in unprecedented artistic and sociopolitical upheaval. Son of a German harmonium-builder and an intellectually inclined English mother, Straube established himself as Germany's iconic organ virtuoso by the turn of the century. His upbringing in Bismarck's Berlin encouraged him to develop intensive interests in world history and politics. He quickly became a sought-after teacher, editor, and confidante to composers and intellectuals, whose work he often significantly influenced. As the eleventh successor to J. S. Bach in the cantorate of St. Thomas School, Leipzig, he focused the choir's mission as curator of Bach's works and, in the unstable political climate of the interwar years, as international emissary for German art. His fraught exit from the cantorate in 1939 bore the scars of his Nazi affiliations and issued in a final decade of struggle and disillusionment as German society collapsed. Christopher Anderson's book presents the first richly detailed examination of Karl Straube's remarkable life, situated against the background of the dynamic and sometimes sinister nationalism that informed it. Through extensive examination of primary sources, Anderson reveals a brilliant yet deeply conflicted musician whose influence until now has been recognized, even hailed, but little understood.

KYLIE is a major new biography, telling the life story of Kylie Minogue, a true pop icon, now back on our screens in hit show The Voice. Everybody loves Kylie. No popular figure in modern culture deserves the description 'iconic' more than the star whose name alone evokes more than twenty-five years of memories. KYLIE charts the incredible journey of a complex and misunderstood woman from the suburbs of Melbourne, who was never the girl next door. She captured our hearts as Charlene Mitchell in Neighboursbefore rising to her position today as a member of music royalty. She is more popular than ever thanks to her acclaimed role as a judge on The Voice. Her phenomenal success was threatened in 2005, when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. The world held its breath as she braved surgery and chemotherapy before she was given the all clear. Her honesty and dignity throughout gained her universal respect and improved awareness of the disease among young women - the Kylie Effect. KYLIE is the essential book for those wanting to learn more about how she has continually reinvented herself - as teen actress, chart star, creative musician, sex goddess, gay icon, style queen and female role model. It reveals her true loves, the men who have brought her disappointment and those that have helped her achieve the status of most popular female icon of our times. KYLIE is an inspirational celebration of a star we should never take for granted.

This first full biography of Edward J. Dent (1876-1957), Cambridge Professor of Music and foremost musicologist, tells the story of a remarkable man who played a crucial role in the formation of twentieth-century culture and cultural institutions. Operating at both personal and international levels, Dent knew and quietly influenced musicians, poets, artists, writers, politicians, theatrical producers and designers, including Busoni, E.M. Forster, Sassoon and Maynard Keynes. The book covers not only his pioneering music scholarship and cultural activities but also his personal crusades on behalf of music and opera, gays, refugees and the culturally destitute. Drawn from a wide variety of unpublished sources, from behind Dent's carefully constructed public persona of a cosmopolitan gentleman scholar the picture emerges of a more complex and fascinating human being: a lifelong pacifist and agnostic; a scion of the upper classes who voted Labour; 'the kindest heart and the wickedest tongue in Cambridge', who always helped friends in need; a natural rebel and iconoclast; an English internationalist. His seminal books and articles remain fresh and vital and his writing hugely entertaining, while his ideas on the importance of the arts in everyday life are as relevant as ever. Dent's fundamental belief in 'training the imagination' and in personal friendships, along with his lifelong quest to 'understand all music', kept music and the arts alive through the most dire periods in the last century and into our own.

In this memoir, iconic singer Linda Ronstadt weaves together a captivating story of her origins in Tucson, Arizona, and her rise to stardom in the Southern California music scene of the 1960s and '70s.
Tracing the timeline of her remarkable life, Linda Ronstadt, whose forty-five year career has encompassed a wide array of musical styles, weaves together a captivating story of her origins in Tucson, Arizona, and her rise to stardom in the Southern California music scene of the 1960s and '70s.
Linda Ronstadt was born into a musical family, and her childhood was filled with everything from Gilbert and Sullivan to Mexican folk music to jazz and opera. Her artistic curiosity blossomed early, and she and her siblings began performing their own music for anyone who would listen. Now, in this beautifully crafted memoir, Ronstadt tells the story of her wide-ranging and utterly unique musical journey.
Ronstadt arrived in Los Angeles just as the folkrock movement was beginning to bloom, setting the stage for the development of country-rock. As part of the coterie of like-minded artists who played at the famed Troubadour club in West Hollywood, she helped define the musical style that dominated American music in the 1970s. One of her early backup bands went on to become the Eagles, and Linda went on to become the most successful female artist of the decade.
In "Simple Dreams," Ronstadt reveals the eclectic and fascinating journey that led to her long-lasting success, including stories behind many of her beloved songs. And she describes it all in a voice as beautiful as the one that sang "Heart Like a Wheel"--longing, graceful, and authentic.

Heinrich Schutz (1585-1672) was the most important and influential German composer of the seventeenth century. Director of music at the electoral Saxon court in Dresden, he was lauded by his German contemporaries as "the father of our modern music," as "the Orpheus of our time." Yet despite the esteem in which his music is still held today, Schutz himself and the rich cultural environment in which he lived continue to be little known or understood beyond the linguistic borders of his native Germany.
Drawing on original manuscript and print sources, A Heinrich Schutz Reader brings the composer to life through more than 150 documents by or about Heinrich Schutz, from his earliest studies under Giovanni Gabrieli to accounts of his final hours. Editor and translator Gregory S. Johnston penetrates the archaic script, confronts the haphazard orthography and obsolete vocabulary, and untangles the knotted grammatical constructions and syntax to produce translations that allow English speakers, as never before, to engage the composer directly.
Most of the German, Latin and Italian documents included in this volume appear for the first time in English translation. A number of these texts have not even been printed in their original language. Dedications and prefaces of his printed music, letters and memoranda, poetry and petitions, travel passes and contracts, all offer immediate and unabridged access to the composer's life. To habituate the reader ever more in Schutz's world, the entries are richly annotated with biographical detail; clarifications of professional relationships and ancestral lines; information on geographic regions, domains, cities, courts and institutions; and references to biblical, classical and contemporary literary sources.
Johnston opens a door for researchers and scholars across a broad range of disciplines, and at the same time provides an historical complement and literary companion for anyone who has come to appreciate the beauty of Schutz's music."

A love letter to Harry Styles, a pop star who's a sign of the times. Now with stickers! The world may have had to say goodbye to One Direction, but that hasn't stopped Harry Styles from stealing our hearts. From the swoop of his boy band bangs to his sheer Gucci look on the runway, the singer, actor and all-around dreamboat is a tour de force of a cultural icon. But our love is deeper than his great choices in fashion. Did you know that Shania Twain is one of his idols? That he knows how to knit? That he's bffs with Stevie Nicks? And that he's generous with his money, donating to a long list of charities? This book is packed with 50 tidbits of Harry Styles trivia and some very serious collages. Billie Oliver can only pray that he one day sees it and graces her with a DM. (A girl can hope.) This Special Edition now includes totally heartable stickers!

The first major biography of the award winning Scottish singer/songwriter. John Dingwall has talked to Emeli, her parents, her sister, schoolteachers and those who have been involved with her career to bring the first biography of Britain's hottest female singer/songwriter at the moment.

The global icon, award-winning singer, songwriter, producer, actress, mother, daughter, sister, storyteller and artist finally tells the unfiltered story of her life in The Meaning of Mariah Carey. It took me a lifetime to have the courage and the clarity to write my memoir. I want to tell the story of the moments - the ups and downs, the triumphs and traumas, the debacles and the dreams - that contributed to the person I am today. Though there have been countless stories about me throughout my career and very public personal life, it's been impossible to communicate the complexities and depths of my experience in any single magazine article or a ten-minute television interview. And even then, my words were filtered through someone else's lens, largely satisfying someone else's assignment to define me. This book is composed of my memories, my mishaps, my struggles, my survival and my songs. Unfiltered. I went deep into my childhood and gave the scared little girl inside of me a big voice. I let the abandoned and ambitious adolescent have her say, and the betrayed and triumphant woman I became tell her side. Writing this memoir was incredibly hard, humbling and healing. My sincere hope is that you are moved to a new understanding, not only about me, but also about the resilience of the human spirit. Love, Mariah

Focusing his studies on the organ fugues, the 48, the Art of Fugues, and the choral fugues, Dickinson analyzes the polyphonic musical compositions before and after Bach.

'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.

An enlightening, revised edition of the definitive biography on celebrated organist and composer, Dieterich Buxtehude. This book is a new edition of the most comprehensive life-and-works study of the great Baroque-era organist and composer Dieterich Buxtehude (ca. 1637-1707), released to celebrate the tercentenary of the composer's death. Originally published in 1987 and long out of print, Dieterich Buxtehude: Organist in Lubeck is considered by most musicologists to be the definitive biography. It also includes close description of Buxtehude's compositional output, from trio sonatas to the famed Abendmusiken: Buxtehude's yearly oratorio presentations. The young J. S. Bach traveled to Lubeck on foot in 1705 to learn as much as he could from the great master of the organ and of Lutheranchurch music. The revised edition contains new information on the organs that Buxtehude played in Scandinavia and Lubeck, excerpts from the newly available account books from St. Mary's in Lubeck, a discussion of newly discovered sources, including one written by J. S. Bach, an evaluation of recent scholarship on Buxtehude, and an extensive bibliography. Written for both the casual reader and the serious scholar. The accompanying music CD (this material is now provided on a companion website) provides examples of all genres discussed in the book -- vocal works, a trio sonata, harpsichord music, and organ music newly recorded on the North German meantone organ in Gothenburg, Sweden, by a noted specialist in this repertoire, Hans Davidsson, who is professor of organ at the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music and the founder of the Goeteborg Organ Art Center (GOArt). Kerala J.Snyder is Professor Emerita of Musicology, Eastman School of Music (University of Rochester).