Profiles thirteen musicians who achieved high honors and fame before the age of twenty-five, representing many different time periods and musical styles.

The beautiful and tragic saga of the Louvin Brothers - one of the most legendary country duos of all time - is one of America's great untold stories. Charlie Louvin was a good, god-fearing, churchgoing singer, but his brother Ira had the devil in him and was known for smashing his mandolin to splinters onstage, cussing out Elvis Presley, and trying to strangle his third wife with a telephone cord. "Satan is Real" is the incredible tale of Charlie Louvin's sixty-five-year career, the timeless murder ballads of the Louvin Brothers, and the epic tale of two brothers bound together by love, hate, alcohol, blood, and music.

Born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, George Michael was raised in a family of Greek Cypriot immigrants in North London, and dreamed of stardom when he was a little boy. At just twelve years old he met Andrew Ridgeley and the two of them went on to achieve stunning success in the early 1980s with Wham!, creating music that remains popular to this day. Yet despite the enormous success of Wham!, George wanted more, and so set about recreating himself as a serious solo artist, reaching heights of even greater success. Ironically, however, even from the early days he was plagued with insecurity about his sexuality, which, combined with the calamity of losing his first lover to AIDS and his mother to cancer, plunged him into a lifelong struggle with drug addiction. He died, at the tragically early age of just fifty-three, on Christmas Day 2016. George Michael's life and career brought him international fame, and his sudden and unexpected death shocked the world. His unrivalled popularity as an artist, however, and the music he made, have turned him into one of the immortal greats of pop music. As Emily Herbert shows in this new biography, his legacy is not just his music, but his many extraordinary, and often anonymous, acts of charity.

Following the second World War, Olivier Messiaen, previously known primarily for his religious music, composed three works inspired by the medieval love story of Tristan and Iseult: "Harawi," "Turangal DEGREESD"la-symphonie," and "Cinq rechants." Though the song cycle, symphony, and choral work each consider their source story in a different way, the three compositions are tied closely together by theme and musical technique. This new study is the only full-length consideration of this most significant work, applying literary techniques of stylistic analysis and source study as well as musical analysis of Messiaen's aesthetics and form.

As Audrey Ekdahl Davidson shows, Messiaen's work was informed by more than just the mythic tale at its center. The twelve songs in "Harawi" are indebted to Peruvian melodies, and rhythmically they reveal the influence of the Hindu musical theory that the composer encountered at the Paris Conservatory. "Turangal DEGREESD"la-symphonie" continues and expands the use of these complex rhythmic structures to create a form that expresses elements of the Tristan story as filtered through Wagner's famous operatic depiction. And in "Cinq rechants," Messiaen produced a set of choral pieces that use surrealistic texts joined to music that is related structurally to the "rechants" of the sixteenth-century composer Claude le Jeune. Davidson's examination of these works reveals both their interrelatedness and their many layers of musical and textual meaning.

An influential twentieth-century Spanish composer, Manuel de Falla continues to generate interest as well as controversy. This biography and guide to the available literature on Falla presents the complexities of Falla while underscoring the importance of careful investigation into the often conflicting evidence surrounding his life and his musical compositions. The author has compiled a substantial amount of biographic material, much of it from primary sources housed in the Archivo Manuel de Falla at Granada. The comprehensive bibliographical material provides valuable new musicological discoveries and previously unknown compositions. Musicologists, Falla researchers, and those with an interest in Spanish contemporary music will appreciate the wealth of information researched and presented in this one volume. Included are bibliographic material from around the globe, doctoral dissertations, expositions, and press clippings. The biography offers excerpts from Falla's contemporaries. The discography includes important performances by Falla and others, as well as the most recent recordings. Falla is presented in his varied, complex guises.

This work puts together in one volume all the book and scholarly materials related to jazz lives and organizes them in such a way that the reader, at a glance, can see the entire sweep of writings on a given artist and grasp the nature of their contents. The bibliography includes many different kinds of biographical source material published in all languages from 1921 to the present, such as biographies, autobiographies, interview collections, musical treatises, bio-discographies, anthologies of newspaper articles, Master theses, and Ph.D. dissertations. With few exceptions, a work of at least 50 pages in length merits inclusion, providing it has a substantive biographical component or aids jazz research. The main section of the work is an alphabetical listing of sources on individual jazz artists and ensembles. Jazz artists, as defined by Carner, are those who have made their mark as jazz performers and who have led the "jazz life," playing the clubs and "joints," not the "legitimate" concert stage, Broadway, Las Vegas, or the like. Thus, musicians such as Ray Charles or Frank Sinatra, who have recorded and performed with jazz ensembles, do not qualify for inclusion. Each bonafide jazz musician is given a separate section with birth, death, and primary instrumentation provided. Biographical sources about the artist or ensemble follow. Each entry is annotated to differentiate it from another and to present basic data on the source's content, such as the inclusion of a discography, bibliography, music examples and transcriptions, footnotes, indexes, illustrations, filmographies, and glossaries. An invaluable tool for jazz researchers and historians, Jazz Performers will also appeal tojazz enthusiasts in general.

In the past five decades, Ulysses Kay has produced more than 135 compositions, representing divergent musical forms. His works include five operas, over 20 large orchestral works, more than 30 choral compositions, over 15 chamber works, a ballet suite, and numerous other compositions for voice, solo instruments, film, and television. His compositions, part of the mainstream concert repertory, have received extensive performances by major orchestras and ensembles throughout the world and have earned for him a prodigious number of awards, fellowships, grants, and commissions. This volume includes his biography, a chronological listing of his works, a complete discography to Spring 1994--each with selected performance notes--and an annotated bibliography, all of which will be of interest to music students and scholars, as well as the general reading public.

Ulysses Kay, one of America's well-published and frequently performed composers, has worked closely with most of the renowned conductors of this century. In addition, he is probably the most published and most frequently commissioned composer living today: As Oliver Daniel descriptively stated, Kay has been heard from Kiev to Kennebunkport. The composer acknowledges that almost all of his compositions have been performed, more than half published, and a large number recorded. His quiet, soft-spoken demeanor reflects a deep reverence and humility which belies the intensity and drive he brings to his craft. Kay is a product of American institutions--a graduate of the University of Arizona and the Eastman School of Music, among others--and his long tenure at the Herbert H. Lehman College of the City University of New York was honorably recognized when he was named Distinguished Professor. This volume includes excerpts from a personal interview with Kay, which provides insight into the composer's musical views and memorable experiences.

The full, tragic story of Puccini's great rival, now available in English for the first time. Born in Lucca four years before Puccini, Alfredo Catalani (1854-93) was the main hope of Italian opera in the 1880s. Alarming conservative critics with the sophisticated modernism of his music, he nonetheless won steadily increasing popularity with the opera-going public. But Catalani's entire adult life was a grim and increasingly hopeless battle with tuberculosis; the year after his greatest triumph with La Wally (1892), he died at just 39, leaving the future of Italian opera to other men, all of whom had been influenced by his innovations. This is the story of the man and his music, as told by friends and contemporaries. Revised 2nd edition.

This book (published in German by Bärenreiter in 1988 and now available in English translation for the first time) is a comprehensive guide to the genesis, transmission, structure, meaning, and performance considerations of Bach's St John Passion. One of Bach's most fascinating works, its text demonstrates a profound understanding of St John's Gospel. The musical design of the choruses with their numerous interrelationships is quite unique and demands some explanation. The fact that the Passion exists in four different versions leads Dürr to ask which changes were intentional and which were the result of practical constraints or of orders issued by church authorities.

Drawing on key elements from musical thought in inter-war Hungary, this 2007 book provides a unique perspective on the nation's musical heritage both inside and outside Hungary's borders during the Cold War. Although Ligeti became part of the Western avant-garde after he left Hungary in 1956, archival sources illuminate his ongoing contact with Hungarian musicians, and their shifting perspective on his work. Kurtag's music was more obviously involved with Hungarian traditions, was entangled with the Soviet occupation, and was a contributing part of the city's diverse musical culture. However, from the mid-1960s onwards, critics identified his music as an artistic and moral 'truth' distinct from the broader musical life of Budapest: it was an idealized symbol of life beyond the everyday in Hungary. Grounding her interpretations of works in these complex political circumstances, Beckles Willson is nonetheless sympathetic to arguments by Ligeti, Kurtag and Budapest music critics that their music might have a life beyond nationalist and Cold War ideology.

In October, 1975, the International Haydn Conference was held in Washington, D.C., during the last eight days of the Haydn Festival at Kennedy Center. Scholars and musicians from all over the world were brought together for the conference, participating in panel discussions, round tables, and workshops. This collection of Haydn studies is the meticulously edited result of those activities.

Originally written in Danish in 1980, Pink Moon was the first biography of Nick Drake, and remains the only one to include exclusive interviews with the singer's parents, Rodney and Molly Drake. In this new, significantly updated edition, available in English for the first time, author and poet Gorm Henrik Rasmussen reveals more from his visits to the Drakes in their home Far Leys - the first, just five years after the death of their troubled son. Rasmussen includes new interviews with Nick's friends and collaborators plus extracts taken from his eight-year correspondence with the Drakes, and from telephone conversations he had with Rodney every month over four years. Full of intimate detail about the last three years of Nick's life spent at his childhood home, Pink Moon - A Story about Nick Drake is a personal, original, and moving retelling of the life, death, and posthumous rise of a poet and guitarist who was strangely unsuited for his own time, and is more popular now than he ever was in life. -- .

Maria Callas, the singing actress, returned to the stage in 1971 to teach master classes at Julliard. Outspoken in her artistic beliefs, uncompromising in the musical understanding that she sought to communicate to 25 students, Callas worked through her arias from Mozart, Verdi, Rossini, Puccini and others.

Chris Sheridan presents a major discographical study of an American jazz giant, Cannonball Adderley, whose career had a significant impact on jazz's development. At the same time, Sheridan stretches the boundaries of discography in two important ways: In scope and in presentation.

In scope, the session listings not only include every known commercially recorded issue--a factor neglected by growing numbers of discographers covering a single artist--but also all known recorded sessions, particularly from film, and broadcasts on radio and television. The latter are providing a quickly growing market for issues on independent record labels, especially by artists no longer alive. The main discographical text also includes a narrative aiming to place the recorded music in context, both in Adderley's own career and in the development of jazz. Sheridan also continues a unique section, pioneered in his earlier "Count Basie: A Bio-Discography"--the day-by-day diary of the musician's musical activities. This is not only significant in its own right, it also serves to authenticate the chronology of the sessions listed in the main discography. In terms of presentation, Sheridan aims to present a more stylish face by using a variety of related fonts to enhance clarity and by a radical rearrangement of the information given in each session listing. A definitive work essential for all researchers of jazz.

'You want it all? There's not much missing here. 9/10.' - Classic Rock 'An engaging mix of humour and detailed critical analysis ... great fun. 4/5.' - Mojo From award-winning author Mark Blake comes Magnifico! The A to Z of Queen. Addressing the phenomenal cinematic success of Bohemian Rhapsody, acclaimed music journalist Mark Blake builds on the legend of Queen and their enduring audience appeal. Providing a fresh, unparalleled take on Queen's music, story and legacy, Blake's complete portrait covers not only the major hits and bestselling albums, but also the inside stories behind the music. Via a series of essays, interviews and biographies, the author shares a wealth of lesser-known details - gained from over thirty years of original material - and explores what the songs of Queen say about their creators.

Olivier Messiaen: A Research and Information Guide, Second Edition presents researchers with the most significant and helpful resources on Olivier Messiaen, one of the twentieth century's greatest composers. With multiple indices, this annotated bibliography will serve as an excellent tool for librarians, researchers, and scholars sorting through the massive amount of material in the field. The second edition has been fully revised and updated.

Contents Include: Childhood and Youth In Search of a Career The Teaching of Experience Marriage and Artistic Progress Growing Mastery Gradual Recognition and Fame Full Maturity Continued Creative Activity Fame at Home and Abroad The Elgar Festival and Knighthood Honours Continue Violin Concerto and Second Symphony 'Falstaff' and the War Music Chamber Music and Cello Concerto Music of the Last Phase Last Days and Unfinished Works Conclusion.'It is difficult to imagine that any one could draw a more intimate and helpful picture of a great man than Mr. Reed has done of Elgar. Even to those who knew Elgar's works well this book will be instructive and helpful' Manchester Evening NewsKeywords: Cello Music Music Chamber Chamber Music War Music Cello Concerto Violin Concerto Elgar Manchester Evening News Mr Reed Creative Activity Artistic Progress Knighthood Falstaff Great Man Mastery Maturity

From the late 1950's, Mancunians have had a passion for creating and following great music. Be it live or via recordings, the city centre has been a magnet for generations of locals - and in recent years music fans from all over the country and beyond - to enjoy. Whilst cities such as Liverpool and Memphis turned their musical heritage into a tourist attractions, Manchester kept looking forward, developing new scenes and tastes. Yet the 2002 film "Twenty-Four Hour Party People" was probably the point at which Manchester music fans started to look back at the rich musical history of their city. This coincided with the publication of the book "Morrissey's Manchester" by Phill Gatenby, also in 2002 and numerous other publications penned by luminaries of the Manchester scene. Following the success of "Morrissey's Manchester", a guide book dedicated to locations associated with The Smiths, author Phill Gatenby has put together several tours featuring other world famous Manchester bands from the Buzzcocks via Joy Division to Oasis, Elbow and Doves as well as the various scenes from beat to acid house or even lo-fi. An interesting guide for anyone with an interest in British music, the guide documents the various clubs and venues that have influenced Manchester based musicians over the last 50 years.

(Amadeus). This collection of brief essays covers such performers as Bjorling, Callas, Domingo, Pavarotti, Tibbett, Terfel, and te Kanawa.