A New York Times Notable Book

"This brilliant and magisterial book is a very good bet to...become the definitive study of Johannes Brahms."--The Plain Dealer

Judicious, compassionate, and full of insight into Brahms's human complexity as well as his music, Johannes Brahms is an indispensable biography.

Proclaimed the new messiah of Romanticism by Robert Schumann when he was only twenty, Johannes Brahms dedicated himself to a long and extraordinarily productive career.  In this book, Jan Swafford sets out to reveal the little-known Brahms, the boy who grew up in mercantile Hamburg and played piano in beer halls among prostitutes and drunken sailors, the fiercely self-protective man who thwarted future biographers by burning papers, scores and notebooks late in his life.  Making unprecedented use of the remaining archival material, Swafford offers richly expanded perspectives on Brahms's youth, on his difficult romantic life--particularly his longstanding relationship with Clara Schumann--and on his professional rivalry with Lizst and Wagner.  

"[Johannes Brahms] will no doubt stand as the definitive work on Brahms, one of the monumental biographies in the entire musical library."--London Weekly Standard

"It is a measure of the accomplishment of Jan Swafford's biography that Brahms's sadness becomes palpable.... [Swafford] manages to construct a full-bodied human being."--The New York Times Book Review

Now in its third edition, Latin American Classical Composers: A Biographical Dictionary provides a singular English-language resource for biographical information on hundreds of composers from Central and South America and the Hispanic Caribbean. Painstakingly gathered from a wide variety of sources, the information updates and expands previous editions and fills in the gaps left by the other major English-language music dictionaries and encyclopedias. Entries provide biographical data comprising full names, birth and death dates and locations, background, education, and training, as well as selective works lists more than 2,300 composers. An index of composers by country and women composers of Latin America complement the volume. An essential part of any music library, Latin American Classical Composers is an invaluable reference for librarians, musicologists, ethnomusicologists, researchers, and music students.

(Schott). The three volumes of The Art of Baroque Trumpet Playing are a summary by the renowned author and performer of his pioneering efforts and many years of experience as lecturer and teacher of this historical brass instrument at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. Though conceived mainly for players of Baroque or natural trumpets, they are also essential reading for players of modern valve instruments who aim for an enlightened approach to Baroque performance practice. The varied exercises and pieces, some taken from 19th-century methods, add up to a systematic course of tuition helping to solve all technical and musical problems, particularly those connected with ensemble playing. Text in German and English

(Schott). Marcel Moyse has become one of the legendary great flautists of the 20th century. As a pupil of Tannanel and successor to Gaubert at the Conservatoire National de Paris, he stands in the direct tradition of the 'French School'. How I Stayed in Shape is his last book of studies (1974), presented here for the first time in a trilingual edition (French, German, English). His pedagogic and artistic experiences are set out in their entirety with the aim of helping professional flute players who have little time to practise, and also 'everyone who loves the flute, while not forgetting the music'. This volume aims to improve the basic aspects of flute playing (formation of tone, intonation, articulation, phrasing) using examples from the repertoire and Moyse's own detailed comments.

Tonality and Transformation is a groundbreaking study in the analysis of tonal music. Focusing on the listener's experience, author Steven Rings employs transformational music theory to illuminate diverse aspects of tonal hearing - from the infusion of sounding pitches with familiar tonal qualities to sensations of directedness and attraction. In the process, Rings introduces a host of new analytical techniques for the study of the tonal repertory, demonstrating their application in vivid interpretive set pieces on music from Bach to Mahler. The analyses place the book's novel techniques in dialogue with existing tonal methodologies, such as Schenkerian theory, avoiding partisan debate in favor of a methodologically careful, pluralistic approach. Rings also engages neo-Riemannian theory-a popular branch of transformational thought focused on chromatic harmony-reanimating its basic operations with tonal dynamism and bringing them into closer rapprochement with traditional tonal concepts. Written in a direct and engaging style, with lively prose and plain-English descriptions of all technical ideas, Tonality and Transformation balances theoretical substance with accessibility: it will appeal to both specialists and non-specialists. It is a particularly attractive volume for those new to transformational theory: in addition to its original theoretical content, the book offers an excellent introduction to transformational thought, including a chapter that outlines the theory's conceptual foundations and formal apparatus, as well as a glossary of common technical terms. A contribution to our understanding of tonal phenomenology and a landmark in the analytical application of transformational techniques, Tonality and Transformation is an indispensible work of music theory.

Topics are musical signs developed and employed primarily during the long eighteenth century. Their significance relies on associations that are clearly recognizable to the listener with different genres, styles and types of music making. Topic theory, which is used to explain conventional subjects of musical composition in this period, is grounded in eighteenth-century music theory, aesthetics, and criticism, while drawing also from music cognition and semiotics. The concept of topics was introduced into by Leonard Ratner in the 1980s to account for cross-references between eighteenth-century styles and genres. As the invention of a twentieth-century academic, topic theory as a field is comparatively new, and The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory provides a much-needed reconstruction of the field's aesthetic underpinnings. The volume grounds the concept of topics in eighteenth-century music theory, aesthetics, and criticism. Documenting the historical reality of individual topics on the basis of eighteenth-century sources, it traces the origins of topical mixtures to transformations of eighteenth-century musical life, and relates topical analysis to other methods of music analysis conducted from the perspectives of composers, performers, and listeners. Focusing its scope on eighteenth-century musical repertoire, The Oxford Handbook of Topic Theory lays the foundation for further investigation of topics in music of the nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first centuries.

(Amadeus). Everyone loves to laugh, to wonder, and to be amazed. High Notes and Low presents interesting and unusual anecdotal information about classical music and musicians in a down-to-earth, easily readable form. Free of technical jargon, the book is appealing not only to the musician but to the general reader as well, and offers information that all can enjoy. The book is divided into six sections that provide general categories of anecdotes Composers, Performers, Critics, Conductors, Compositions, and This and That and encompasses information from all periods of music history. Whether it's camels onstage during the performance of an opera, a conductor's faux pas with a queen, an enraged wife burning her husband's only copy of a symphony, or a look into the many complexities of the Metropolitan Opera building at Lincoln Center, readers will find a vast assortment of fascinating, unexpected, and often unusual facts to keep them enthralled. No other book on the market provides such a wide, enthusiastic, and all-encompassing look into the facts and foibles of classical music. Originally designed for broadcast on KLRE-FM, Arkansas' premier classical music station, High Notes and Low proves that the world of the classical musician is indeed a wonderful, and sometimes zany, place to visit

In this magisterial volume, Harvey Sachs, author of the highly acclaimed biography Toscanini, takes readers into the heart of ten great works of classical music-works that have endured because they were created by composers who had a genius for drawing music out of their deepest wellsprings. These masters-Mozart and Beethoven; Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz, Verdi and Brahms; Sibelius, Prokofiev and Stravinsky-communicated their life experiences through music and through music they universalised the intimate. By expanding our perceptions of these ten pieces-composed in the years between 1784 and 1966-Sachs, in lush, exquisite prose, invites us to consider why music stimulates, disturbs, exalts and consoles us. He has lived with these masterpieces for a lifetime and his descriptions of them and the dramatic lives of the composers who wrote them bring a heightened dimension to the musical perceptions of readers who may be casual listeners, students, professional musicians or anyone in between.

This volume offers an up-to-date overview of historical performance, surveying the various current issues (such as the influence of recording) and suggesting possible future developments. Its core comprises discussion of the period performer's myriad primary source materials and their interpretation, the various aspects of style and general technique that combine to make up a well-grounded, period interpretation, and a survey of performance conditions and practices, focusing on the period c. 1700-c. 1900. Many of the principles outlined are illustrated in case studies of works by Bach, Mozart, Berlioz and Brahms.

A celebration of music from the creator of Alan Partridge, The Thick of It, Veep and The Death of Stalin. All my days, I've felt pressurized by the anonymous Keepers of the Cool who tell us what we should be wearing this year, what digital boxsets we should bunker ourselves in to enjoy, what amazing app is the only one we should be shrieking emotions at our recently acquired friends with. Thankfully, I have the one consolation that if I don't quite fit into all of this, everyone else probably feels the same way. So, I say defiantly, I get more moved and excited by classical music than by any other musical genre. I believe that it is there for us all, inviting us to reach out and touch it. In Hear Me Out Armando Iannucci brilliantly conveys the joy of his musical exploration, each discovery suggesting a fresh direction of travel, another piece, another composer, another time.

Selected by piano teachers for piano teachers, EPTA Teachers' Choice Piano Collection 1 is a collection of the most popular pieces for Grade 1-4 level students, as voted for by members of the European Piano Teacher's Association (EPTA). Each piece is introduced with a comment from a teacher, providing first-hand insights, tips and technical advice.