George Frederic Handel wrote his most famous oratorio, Messiah, in a little over three weeks. There is little doubt that this work is one of the most famous and often performed choral pieces in history. Handel conducted many performances in his day and there never seemed to have been a period when the work was not played. This is a duet for tuba and trumpet.

ELeading TonesE is a glimpse into several aspects of the musical world. There are portions devoted to Leonard Slatkin's life as a musician and conductor portraits of some of the outstanding artists with whom he has worked as well as anecdotes and stories both personal and professional. Much of the book discusses elements of the industry that are troubling and difficult during this first part of the 21st century. Auditions critics fiscal concerns and labor negotiations are all matters that today's conductors must be aware of and this book provides helpful suggested solutions. ELeading TonesE is intended not only for musicians but also for the music lover who wishes to know more about what goes into being a conductor.

Domenico Cimarosa's Three Sonatas (No.12, No.23 and No.29) have been arranged here for solo guitar by Julian Bream. Originally written for harpsichord, they feature expressive melodies characteristic of the Neapolitan style.

Why do so many of us listen to classical music, and how can you get the most from listening to it? In this unpretentious and instructive book, internationally celebrated conductor and teacher John Mauceri brings to bear his lifetime of experience and profound knowledge. A protege of Leonard Bernstein and an artist who has performed and recorded all over the world, Mauceri is the guide par excellence to the joys of classical music. Mauceri illuminates our understanding of what it is we hear when we listen; how each piece bears the traces of its history; and how the concert experience allows us constantly to discover music anew. 'Wonderful' Marilyn Horne 'This delightful book is not so much the opening of a door as an affectionate hand on the arm, guiding the reader with enthusiasm and intelligence into a world of beauty' Stephen Hough

(BH Piano). Six sonatas by prominent Boosey & Hawkes composers, including: Sonata (Bartok) * Sonata (Bernstein) * Piano Sonata (Copland) * Sonata No. 1, Op. 22 (Ginastera) * Sonata No. 3, Op. 28 (Prokofiev) * and Sonata (Stravinsky). Accessible to the advanced high school and college level pianist.

Featuring all 29 pieces from the album Lang Lang Piano Book, this is a collection of the most significant pieces from Lang Lang's personal musical journey. It is beautifully presented as a high-end cased book, featuring marbled endpapers, page-finder ribbon and sewn binding. It includes exclusive photographs, comments from Lang Lang on every piece and an edition of Fur Elise annotated with Lang Lang's own performance notes. This is a book for all pianists to treasure and revisit again and again.

Mozart's music has enthralled listeners for centuries. In this brilliant biography, acclaimed historian Paul Johnson draws upon his expert knowledge of the era and Mozart's own private letters to conjure Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's life and times in rich detail.

Johnson charts Mozart's life from age three through to his later years - when he penned "The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni." Along the way, Johnson challenges some of the popular myths that cloud Mozart's image: his allegedly tempestuous personal relationships and supposedly bitter rivalry with Salieri, as well as the notion that he was desperately impoverished when he died.

The result - a bold, invigorating portrait of one of the most popular and influential composers of all time - is a welcome addition to Johnson's extraordinary body of work and makes a perfect gift for classical music lovers and fans of biographies.

Expression and truth are traditional opposites in Western thought: expression supposedly refers to states of mind, truth to states of affairs. "Expression and Truth" rejects this opposition and proposes fluid new models of expression, truth, and knowledge with broad application to the humanities. These models derive from five theses that connect expression to description, cognition, the presence and absence of speech, and the conjunction of address and reply. The theses are linked by a concentration on musical expression, regarded as the ideal case of expression in general, and by fresh readings of Ludwig WittgensteinOCOs scattered but important remarks about music. The result is a new conception of expression as a primary means of knowing, acting on, and forming the world.Recent years have seen the return of the claim that musicOCOs power resides in its ineffability. In "Expression and Truth," Lawrence Kramer presents his most elaborate response to this claim. Drawing on philosophers such as Wittgenstein and on close analyses of nineteenth-century compositions, Kramer demonstrates how music operates as a medium for articulating cultural meanings and that music matters too profoundly to be cordoned off from the kinds of critical readings typically brought to the other arts. A tour-de-force by one of musicologyOCOs most influential thinkers.OCoSusan McClary, "Desire and Pleasure in Seventeenth-Century Music."

The Castrato is a nuanced exploration of why innumerable boys were castrated for singing between the mid-sixteenth and late-nineteenth centuries. It shows that the entire foundation of Western classical singing, culminating in bel canto, was birthed from an unlikely and historically unique set of desires, public and private, aesthetic, economic, and political. In Italy, castration for singing was understood through the lens of Catholic blood sacrifice as expressed in idioms of offering and renunciation and, paradoxically, in satire, verbal abuse, and even the symbolism of the castrato's comic cousin Pulcinella. Sacrifice in turn was inseparable from the system of patriarchy - involving teachers, patrons, colleagues, and relatives - whereby castrated males were produced not as nonmen, as often thought nowadays, but as idealized males. Yet what captivated audiences and composers - from Cavalli and Pergolesi to Handel, Mozart, and Rossini - were the extraordinary capacities of castrato voices, a phenomenon ultimately unsettled by Enlightenment morality. Although the castrati failed to survive, their musicality and vocality have persisted long past their literal demise.