Today Georges Bizet is most immediately recognized as the composer of the acclaimed opera Carmen. One of the most frequently performed operas for over a century, Carmen explores concepts such as the femme fatale and murderous jealousy with vivacity, color, and a wealth of melody. Yet it is only one act in Bizet's story. In Bizet, renowned musicologist Hugh Macdonald goes beyond the composer's most famous opera to take an in-depth look at his entire life and oeuvre. In so doing, Macdonald identifies a number of previously unknown pieces by Bizet, assembling the first comprehensive catalogue of the composer's work. Incorporating these little-known pieces with a thorough reading of primary sources, Macdonald considers the latest in Bizet scholarship to create a complete biography of the composer. Revealing the true extent of Bizet's work as arranger and transcriber, Macdonald sheds light on the composer's complex relationships with his contemporaries, and traces the strange misrepresentation of Bizet's work by French publishers and opera houses in the 1880s, when Carmen rose to worldwide popularity ten years after the composer's early death. The first biography of Bizet in the Master Musicians series in nearly four decades, Bizet will be essential reading for students and scholars of nineteenth-century opera, as well as for Carmen devotees and opera fans.

Louis Vierne (1870-1937), a student of C�sar Franck and Charles-Marie Widor, was organist of the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris for 37 years, until his death at the console during a recital. Widor's successor as the organ's great French symphonist - an assessment the passage of time has proved correct - Vierne's music has remained in the repertoire of organists throughout the world, never undergoing the periodic eclipses experienced by his contemporaries. Vierne's autobiography, Mes Souvenirs, originally published serially in the 1930s, is here available in a profusely illustrated, extensively annotated English translation. Rollin Smith's Louis Vierne: Organist of Notre Dame Cathedral is the first major study of the great organist of Notre-Dame and includes chapters on his American tour, recordings, contemporary reminiscences, definitive textual corrections, the organ symphonies, his death and succession, and a thematic catalogue of his organ works.

An indispensable resource on Samuel Barber's complete oeuvre-more than 100 published and nearly twice as many unpublished compositions-with an abundance of information on song texts, first performances, genesis of composition, duration, revisions, editions, arrangements, selected discography of historical and contemporary recordings, and detailed description of the hundreds of holograph manuscripts, sketches, drafts, and significant publisher's proofs founded in libraries and private collections throughout the United States. Illuminating quotations drawn from Barber's letters and diaries will be of special interest not only to scholars but conductors, composers, performers, and the general music enthusiast.