Titles in The Listener s Companion: A Scarecrow Press Music Series provide readers with a deeper understanding of key musical genres and the work of major artists and composers. Aimed at nonspecialists, each volume explains in clear and accessible language how to listen to works from particular artists, composers, and genres. Looking at the context in which the music appeared as well as its form, authors explore with readers the environments in which key musical works were written and performed from a 1950s bebop concert at the Village Vanguard to a performance of Handel s Messiah in eighteenth-century Germany. Along with his contemporaries Chopin and Wagner, Verdi is among the few composers whose place in the musical pantheon is based almost entirely upon the mastery of a single genre. This is largely owing to his staggering output in a career that lasted over fifty years. Several of his operas occupy the nucleus of the modern repertoire, and Verdi almost single-handedly maintained the Italian lyric tradition against the tide of Wagnerian music drama. In his final years, he virtually reinvented Italian opera. Indeed, Verdi s life and music came to be so intimately associated with the Italian unification movement known as the Risorgimento that he is still revered as a great national figure in his homeland. In Experiencing Verdi: A Listener s Companion, Donald Sanders combines biography with simple, concise musical analysis. Summarizing the evolution of Italian opera and the bel canto tradition that prevailed at the beginning of Verdi s career, Sanders takes readers on a leisurely tour of eleven of Verdi s most important operas and of the Manzoni Requiem and concludes with a look at Verdi s influence on later composers like Giacomo Puccini, his place in the modern repertoire, and his role as an Italian patriot. With a timeline, glossary of basic musical terms, and selected reading and listening recommendations, Experiencing Verdi will engage opera lovers at all levels, from those just starting to listen, learn, and enjoy to musical devotees."

During his lifetime and for at least a century after his death, Robert Schumann and his music were commonly misunderstood. His long struggle with mental illness was well known, and as a result some of the most original and innovative features of his work were often dismissed as bizarre and irrational. In recent years, however, the rhythmic complexities and unorthodox harmonic practices that lovers of his piano music and lieder have found so appealing are now being received with more objective treatment in critical and scholarly circles. His influence on the music of Brahms and other later composers now seems obvious. The refinement of Schumann's literary taste is evident not only in his songs, but also in the marvelous fantasy world of his piano pieces. Experiencing Schumann: A Listener's Companion combines a concise biography of Robert Schumann with an analysis of works from the most important genres in which he worked. The music is discussed in the frame of Schumann's eventful and ultimately tragic life, and the important influence of his brilliant and adoring-but strong-willed-wife, Clara Wieck Schumann, is also examined. A selected listening discography lists outstanding recorded performances of the featured compositions. Delving into Schumann's most famous pieces in engaging and accessible style, Donald Sanders provides insightful analysis for dedicated lovers of Schumann as well as newcomers to his musical innovations.

Beginning in the second half of the fifteenth century, under the patronage of the Gonzaga family, the northern Italian city of Mantua became a vibrant center for visual art, theatre, and music. The performance at the Gonzaga court of Poliziano's Fabula di Orfeo, around 1480, marked the beginning of secular music theatre. The use of musical numbers within the drama anticipated the beginnings of opera at Florence a century later, as well as the first masterpiece of the genre, Monteverdi's La favola d'Orfeo at Mantua in 1607. Mantua reached the zenith of its artistic distinction during the reign of Duke Vincenzo I, between 1587 and 1612. During this time, Wert and Gastoldi were joined at the court by the important Jewish composer Salamone Rossi and, most notably, by Monteverdi. The premieres of his Orfeo and Arisanna made the Gonzaga court, for that brief period, the most important center in the development of opera. In Music at the Gonzaga Court in Mantua, Donald C. Sanders discusses musical composition at the court in the context of the brilliant visual art that provided such a conducive environment. Sanders also traces the history of this very colorful family and their relationships with the emperors, kings, and popes who shaped modern Europe. Part history, part musicology, Sanders' analysis spans the fifteenth century through the seventeenth century, filling informative gaps with details essential for students in courses on Renaissance or Baroque music, or in more specialized courses on madrigal, opera, or liturgical music. Music at the Gonzaga Court in Mantua is also important reading for knowledgeable musical amateurs and anyone with interest in Italian history and arts.