Synopses & Reviews
Celebrating its 100th anniversary, this extraordinary series continues to amaze and captivate its readers with detailed insight into the lives and work of music's geniuses. Unlike other composer biographies that focus narrowly on the music, this series explores the personal history of each composer and the social context surrounding the music. In a precise, engaging, and authoritative manner, each volume combines a vivid portrait of the master musicians' inspirations, influences, life experiences, even their weaknesses, with an accessible discussion of their work all in roughly 300 pages. Further, each volume offers superb reference material, including a detailed life and times chronology, a complete list of works, a personalia glossary highlighting the important people in the composer's life, and a select bibliography. Under the supervision of music expert and series general editor Stanley Sadie, Master Musicians will certainly proceed to delight music scholars, serious musicians, and all music lovers for another hundred years.
Review
"The life and music blend revealingly, with keen intelligence applied to both, in this wonderfully human and refreshingly written new biography. I will read it again and wish it twice as long." Arts Beat
Table of Contents
Preface
List of Illustrations
Prelude, in Canon
1. Young Kreisler (1833-54)
2. The Romantic foreground
3. Storm and stress (1854-60)
4. Fully armed like Minerva: the music to 1860
5. Not quite a Viennese (1860-72)
6. The sense of the past
7. The music of the middle years, 1860-75
8. 'Frei aber froh'
9. The music of the middle years, 1876-82
10. The final phase
11. The later music, 1883-96
12. Music and [Menschenbild]
13. A Music of the Future
Appendices
Index