Discoveries from the Fortepiano meets the demand for a manual on authentic Classical piano performance practice that is at once accessible to the performer and accurate to the scholarship. Uncovering a wide range of eighteenth-century primary sources, noted keyboard pedagogue Donna Gunn examines contemporary philosophical beliefs and principles surrounding Classical Era performance practices. Gunn introduces the reader to the Viennese fortepiano and compares its sonic and technical capabilities to the modern piano. In doing so, she demonstrates how understanding Classical fortepiano performance aesthetics can influence contemporary pianists, paying particular focus to technique, dynamics, articulation, rhythm, ornamentation, and pedaling. The book is complete with over 100 music examples that illustrate concepts, as well as sample model lessons that demonstrate the application of Gunn's historically informed style on the modern piano. Each example is available on the book's companion website and is given three recordings: the first, a modern interpretation of the passage on a modern piano; the second, a fortepiano interpretation; and the third, a historically informed performance on a modern piano. With its in-depth yet succinct explanations and examples of the Viennese five-octave fortepiano and the nuances of Classical interpretation and ornamentation, Discoveries from the Fortepiano is an indispensable educational aid to any pianist who seeks an academically and artistically sound approach to the performance of Classical works.

The Russian school of violin playing produced many of the twentieth century's leading violinists - from the famed disciples of Leopold Auer such as Jascha Heifetz, Nathan Milstein, and Mischa Elman to masters of the Soviet years such as David Oistrakh and Leonid Kogan. Though descendants of this school of playing are found today in every major orchestra and university, little is known about the pedagogical traditions of the Russian, and later Soviet, violin school. Following the revolution of 1917, the center of Russian violin playing and teaching shifted from St. Petersburg to Moscow, where violinists such as Lev Tseitlin, Konstantin Mostras, and Abraham Yampolsky established an influential pedagogical tradition. Founded on principles of scientific inquiry and physiology, this tradition became known as the Soviet Violin School, a component of the larger Russian Violin School. Yuri Yankelevich (1909 - 1973), a student and assistant of Abraham Yampolsky, was greatly influenced by the teachers of the Soviet School and in turn he became one of the most important pedagogues of his generation. Yankelevich taught at the Moscow Conservatory from 1936 to 1973 and produced a remarkable array of superb violinists, including forty prizewinners in international competitions. Extremely interested in the methodology of violin playing and teaching, Yankelevich contributed significant texts to the pedagogical literature. Despite its importance, Yankelevich's scholarly work has been little known outside of Russia. This book includes two original texts by Yankelevich: his essay on positioning the hands and arms and his extensive research into every detail of shifting positions. Additional essays and commentaries by those close to him examine further details of his pedagogy, including tone production, intonation, vibrato, fingerings and bowings, and his general approach to methodology and selecting repertoire. An invaluable resource for any professional violinist, Yankelevich's work reveals an extremely sophisticated approach to understanding the interconnectivity of all components in playing the violin and is complete with detailed practical suggestions and broad historical context.

THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER 'A virtuosic memoir . . . elegant, frank and well-structured, that entirely resists cliche . . . The concert pianist's account of striving for musical mastery sits alongside a stirring coming of age narrative . . . readable for both diehard classical music fans and complete newcomers alike . . . A rare feat.' The Guardian A uniquely illuminating memoir of the making of a musician, in which renowned pianist Jeremy Denk explores what he learned from his teachers about classical music: its forms, its power, its meaning - and what it can teach us about ourselves. In this searching and funny memoir, based on his popular New Yorker article, renowned pianist Jeremy Denk traces an implausible journey. Life is difficult enough as a precocious, temperamental, and insufferable six-year-old piano prodigy in New Jersey. But then a family meltdown forces a move to New Mexico, far from classical music's nerve centers, and he has to please a new taskmaster while navigating cacti, and the perils of junior high school. Escaping from New Mexico at last, he meets a bewildering cast of college music teachers, ranging from boring to profound, and experiences a series of humiliations and triumphs, to find his way as one of the world's greatest living pianists, a MacArthur 'Genius,' and a frequent performer at Carnegie Hall. There are few writers working today who are willing to eloquently explore both the joys and miseries of artistic practice. Hours of daily repetition, mystifying early advice, pressure from parents and teachers who drove him on - an ongoing battle of talent against two enemies: boredom and insecurity. As we meet various teachers, with cruel and kind streaks, Denk composes a fraught love letter to the act of teaching. He brings you behind the scenes, to look at what motivates both student and teacher, locked in a complicated and psychologically perilous relationship. In Every Good Boy Does Fine, Denk explores how classical music is relevant to 'real life,' despite its distance in time. He dives into pieces and composers that have shaped him - Bach, Mozart, Schubert, and Brahms, among others - and gives unusual lessons on melody, harmony, and rhythm. Why and how do these fundamental elements have such a visceral effect on us? He tries to sum up many of the lessons he has received, to repay the debt of all his amazing teachers; to remind us that music is our creation, and that we need to keep asking questions about its purpose. 'Denk . . . has written a book that shows what it's like to be a pianist, but also what it's like to be Jeremy Denk. As if that were not enough, it is also about the elements of music, and beyond that an account of the ways in which music and life mirror each other. It is a book like none other . . . Denk weaves invisible threads connecting life and art into something very close to musical form.' Simon Callow, The New York Review of Books

The International Who's Who in Classical Music 2007 is an unparalleled source of biographical information on singers, instrumentalists, composers, conductors and managers. The directory section lists orchestras, opera companies and other institutions connected with the classical music world. Each biographical entry comprises personal information, principal career details, repertoire, recordings and compositions, and full contact details where available. Appendices provide contact details for national orchestras, opera companies, music festivals, music organizations and major competitions and awards. Entries include individuals involved in all aspects of the world of classical music: composers, instrumentalists, singers, arrangers, writers, musicologists, conductors, directors and managers. Among those listed in this new edition are Philip Glass, Lang Lang, George Crumb, Evelyn Glennie, Yo-Yo Ma and Inga Nielsen. Over 8,000 detailed biographical entries. Covers the classical and light classical fields. Includes both up-and-coming musicians and well-established names. This book will prove invaluable for anyone in need of reliable, up-to-date information on the individuals and organizations involved in classical music.

A slight condensation of Hanon's first exercises. The simplification in layout and range make the exercises appear less difficult to a young student.

Nino Rota is one of the most important composers in the history of cinema. Both popular and prolific, he wrote some of the most cherished and memorable of all film music - for The Godfather Parts I and II, The Leopard, the Zeffirelli Shakespeares, nearly all of Fellini and for more than 140 popular Italian movies. Yet his music does not quite work in the way that we have come to assume music in film works: it does not seek to draw us in and identify, nor to overwhelm and excite us. In itself, in its pretty but reticent melodies, its at once comic and touching rhythms, and in its relation to what's on screen, Rota's music is close and affectionate towards characters and events but still restrained, not detached but ironically attached. In this major new study of Rota's film career, Richard Dyer gives a detailed account of Rota's aesthetic, suggesting it offers a new approach to how we understand both film music and feeling and film more broadly. He also provides a first full account in English of Rota's life and work, linking it to notions of plagiarism and pastiche, genre and convention, irony and narrative. Rota's practice is related to some of the major ways music is used in film, including the motif, musical reference, underscoring and the difference between diegetic and non-diegetic music, revealing how Rota both conforms to and undermines standard conceptions. In addition, Dyer considers the issue of gay cultural production, Rota's favourte genre, comedy, and his productive collaboration with the director Federico Fellini.

What is the point of reading about the music written before 1600? There are two good reasons. First, much of it is very beautiful and most enjoyable. The timeless dignity of plainchant, the mellow consonance of Dufay's chansons, and the dramatic delights of the Renaissance madrigals - these count among life's great pleasures to those who know them. Second, during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, European musicians, theorists and craftsmen laid the technical foundations for their successors, the foundations of the classical music that is enjoyed across the world today.

Chapel Royal meets country choir in this collection of eleven strophic psalm-settings, one anthem and two Christmas hymns, for four-part choir without organ. These elaborate settings with fugal passages are suitable for a reasonably competent choir and could provide useful material for evensongs and concerts. The introduction attempts to explain how this London composer, who was trained in the Chapel Royal, came to write music for a country church in Hertfordshire.

'A really great book.' Bruce Springsteen With a foreword by Billy Bragg. Few artists have captured the American experience of their time as wholly as folk legend Woody Guthrie. Singer, songwriter and political activist, Guthrie drew a lifetime of inspiration from his roots on the Oklahoma frontier in the years before the Great Depression. His music -- scathingly funny songs and poignant folk ballads -- made heard the unsung life of field hands, migrant workers, and union organisers, and showed it worthy of tribute. Though his career was tragically cut short by the onset of a degenerative disease that ravaged his mind and body, the legacy of his life and music had already made him an American cultural icon, and has resounded with every generation of musician and music lover since. In this definitive biography, renowned journalist Joe Klein creates an unforgettable portrait of a man as gifted, restless and complicated as the American landscape he came from.

In Search of Real Music gives a new perspective on the history of classical music from 1600 to 2000 AD. Written for anyone who enjoys classical music and wants to know more about how it developed, it presents a profile of the music produced in each 50-year period, with additional sections describing the progress of musical instruments, the orchestra, publishing and recording, and the buildings designed for operas and concerts. This book sets out the recollections and research of one amateur listener. As a schoolboy, Clive Bate played the violin in the National Youth Orchestra under Walter Susskind and Hugo Rignold. Later he played in Bryan Fairfax's Polyphonia for the celebrated first performance of Havergal Brian's Gothic Symphony. Although he became immersed in a career in I.T. and management consultancy, music remained his principal interest. With retirement he turned his attention to writing this concise history. It is neither an encyclopedia nor a set of biographies, but explores the crucial events, traditions and changes that shaped the course of the art form that is one of Europe's greatest contributions to civilization. In Search of Real Music will allow you to make connections between strands of history that are rarely brought together, and thus enrich your understanding of the music you love.

Conversations with Igor Stravinsky is the first of the celebrated series of conversation books in which Stravinsky, prompted by Robert Craft, reviewed his long and remarkable life. The composer brings the Imperial Russia of his childhood vividly into focus, at the same time scanning what were at the time the brave new horizons of Boulez and Stockhausen with extraordinary acuity.

Stravinsky answers searching questions about his musical development and recalls his association with Diaghilev and the Russian Ballet. There are sympathetic and extraordinarily illuminating reminiscences of such composers as Debussy and Ravel ('the only musicians who immediately understood "Le Sacre du Printemps'"), while mischievous squibs are directed at others, most notably perhaps against Richard Strauss, all of whose operas Stravinsky wished 'to admit ... to whichever purgatory punishes triumphant banality'.

The conversations are by no means confined to musical subjects, ranging uninhibitedly across all the arts: Stravinsky gives unforgettable sketches of Ibsen, Rodin, Proust, Giacometti, Dylan Thomas and T S Eliot.

'The conversations between Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft are unique in musical history. The penetration of Craft's questions and the patience and detail of Stravinsky's answers combine to produce an intimate picture of a man who has sometimes puzzled, often delighted, and always intrigued ...' "The Sunday Times"

A photographic journey, including a selection of previously unpublished images, that reveal the man 'behind the scenes' at work and play. A new and often surprising portrait of this major musical genius. Benjamin Britten was one of the most important cultural figures in England in the twentieth century. Internationally renowned as a composer, performer, and founder of the Aldeburgh Festival and English Opera Group, he had a careerspanning nearly five decades, producing a series of works such as Peter Grimes and the War Requiem that caught the public imagination, and becoming a familiar figure to worldwide concert and TV and radio audiences through his conducting and song recitals with his partner, the tenor Peter Pears. Behind this public face, however, Britten was an intensively private man, who valued perhaps more than anything the time he spent at home on the Suffolk coast, composing and enjoying a settled domestic life. Britten in Pictures celebrates the many facets of Britten's life in a major new photographic treatment timed to coincide with the composer's centenary in 2013. Using the wealth of images housed in the collections of The Britten-Pears Foundation at Aldeburgh, the book charts the curve of Britten's life, using a selection of rare and previously unpublished images to reveal him anew in all phases of his career, catching a multitude of informal glimpses of the man 'behind the scenes' at work and play as well as in more familiar formal settings. The result is a new and often surprising portrait of this major musical genius. Published in association with The Britten-Pears Foundation.

Life in ancient Greece was musical life. Soloists competed onstage for popular accolades, becoming centrepieces for cultural conversation and even leading Plato to recommend that certain forms of music be banned from his ideal society. And the music didn't stop when the audience left the theatre: melody and rhythm were woven into the whole fabric of daily existence for the Greeks. Vocal and instrumental songs were part of religious rituals, dramatic performances, dinner parties, and even military campaigns. Like Detroit in the 1960s or Vienna in the 18th century, Athens in the 400s BC was the hotspot where celebrated artists collaborated and diverse strands of musical tradition converged. The conversations and innovations that unfolded there would lay the groundwork for musical theory and practice in Greece and Rome for centuries to come. In this perfectly pitched introduction, Spencer Klavan explores Greek music's origins, forms, and place in society. In recent years, state-of-the-art research and digital technology have enabled us to decipher and understand Greek music with unprecedented precision. Yet many readers today cannot access the resources that would enable them to grapple with this richly rewarding subject. Arcane technical details and obscure jargon veil the subject - it is rarely known, for instance, that authentic melodies still survive from antiquity, helping us to imagine the vivid soundscapes of the Classical and Hellenistic eras. Music in Ancient Greece distills the latest discoveries into vivid prose so readers can come to grips with the basics as never before. With the tools in this book, beginners and specialists alike will learn to hear the ancient world afresh and come away with a new, musical perspective on their favourite classical texts.

For the wedding pianist, this comprehensive collection contains 44 piano solos of the most frequently requested wedding preludes, processionals, interludes, and recessionals; plus, other beautiful music to play at receptions. Lush arrangements of popular and standard romantic ballads complement a treasury of piano masterworks, and selected Christian wedding favorites. The wedding party and their guests will enjoy the beauty of these timeless favorites. Additionally, a 4-page guide will aid brides, grooms and pianists in choosing music for the ceremony. Titles: Adagio Cantabile (2nd Movement from Beethoven's "Grande Sonate Path?tique") * Andante, from Elvira Madigan (Mozart) * Be Thou My Vision (Traditional) * Beauty and the Beast, from Walt Disney's Beauty and the Beast * Bist Du Bei Mir (Be Thou With Me) (Bach) * Bridal Chorus, from Lohengrin (Wagner) * Canon in D (Pachelbel) * Clair De Lune, from Suite Bergamasque (Debussy) * Dream a Little Dream of Me (Standard) * Emily (Johnny Mandel) * First Gymnop?die (Satie) * The Flower Duet, from Lakm? (Delibes) * Household of Faith (Steve Green) * How Beautiful (Twila Paris) * I Will Be Here (Steven Curtis Chapman) * I'm in the Mood for Love (Standard) * Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring (Bach) * Laura (Standard) * La R?jouissance, from Music for the Royal Fireworks (Handel) * Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet (Tchaikovsky) * Love Theme from Scheherezade (Mendelssohn) * Love Will Be Our Home (Steven Curtis Chapman) * More Than You Know (Standard) * Nocturne in E-Flat Major (Chopin) * Notturno (Grieg) * O Mio Babbino Caro (Puccini) * O Perfect Love (Traditional) * Ode to Joy (Beethoven) * Panis Angelicus (Franck) * Plaisir D'Amour (Martini) * Polka Dots and Moonbeams (Standard) * The Prayer (Celine Dion and Andrea Bocelli) * Prelude in C Major, from The Well-Tempered Clavier, Book 1 (Bach) *Prelude in D-Flat Major (Chopin) * Prelude, from Te Deum (Charpentier) *