MAKE A SOUND INVESTMENT IN CLASSICAL MUSIC Who are the ten most important classical composers? Who in the world was Palestrina? Why did Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" cause a riot? Which five of each important composer's works should you buy? What is a concerto and how does it differ from a sonata? Maybe you don't know the answers to these questions; author Phil Goulding certainly didn't. When Goulding first tried to learn about classical music, he found himself buried in an avalanche of technical terms and complicated jargon--so he decided to write the book he couldn't find. The result is a complete classical music education in one volume. Comprehensive, discriminating, and delightfully irreverent, Classical Music provides such essential information as: * Rankings of the top 50 composers (Bach is #1. Borodin is #50) * A detailed and anecdotal look at each composer's life and work * The five primary works of each composer and specific recommended CDs for each. * Further great works of each composer--if you really like him * Concise explanations of musical terminology, forms, and periods * A guide to the parts and history of the symphony orchestra "This book uses every conceivable gimmick to immerse readers in the richness of classical music: lists, rankings, sidebars devoted to lively anecdotes, and catchy leads." --The Washington Post "One terrific music appreciation book...The information is surprisingly detailed but concisely presented. Goulding's writing style is breezy yet mature....[He] has raised music appreciation from a racket to a service." --The Arizona Daily Star

Fully revised and updated, this book provides an introduction to 800 years of classical music and recommends key recordings for a complete understanding of each era.

A collection of 170 biographies which profile the lives and music of some of history's finest classical composers.

The Dictionary of American Classical Composers covers over 650 composers active from the 18th century to today. Covering all classical styles, it offers the most comprehensive overview of key composers in the United States available. Entries include basic biographical information and critical analysis of each composer's key works and ideas. Entries also include worklists and bibliographic information. Whenever possible, the entries will have been checked by the composers themselves to assure greatest possible accuracy. This new edition, completely updated and expanded from the 1984 edition, also includes over 200 historic photographs.

Donald Francis Tovey Born in 1 875, Donald Francis Tovey was a British musicologist and composer. He took classical honors with his B. A. at Ox ford in 1898, and became a pianist of the first rank, though he never sought a virtuoso career. From 1914 to 1940 he was Reid Professor of Music at Edinburgh University. He died in 1 940. His other books include Normality and Freedom in Music, The Main Stream of Music, A Musician Talks, Essays in Musical Analysis, and Beethoven. ivx Meridian Books edition first published October 1956 First printing September 1956 Second printing June 1957 Third printing July 1958 Fourth printing April 1959 Fifth printing December 1959 Reprinted by arrangement with Oxford University Press Originally published 1944 as Musical Articles from the Encyclopaedia Britannica Library of Congress catalog card number 56-10015 Manufactured in the United States of America EDITORIAL PREFACE THE desire to set down upon paper a comprehensive system of musical education was present in the mind of Donald Tovey for the greater part of his life. In 1896, when he was 21, he wrote in a letter to a friend that he had begun a great work quot on the means of Expression in Music quot If ever I finish the thing, into print it shall go. Thirty years later, he was talking about a series of four text-books on music. But into print neither the one scheme nor the other went the final expression of his ideas on music was never written. It never could be written, because it was never final in the mind of that incessant discoverer in music. Nor was his method of writing that of finality. The nearest point to finality which Tovey ever reached in his expression of a formal philosophy in music is tobe found in the articles on technique and aesthetics of music as he called them himself in the list of his writings supplied to Who s Who which he contributed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. Those articles, written from 1906 onwards for the eleventh edition of the Ency clopaedia, and revised again, almost rewritten, for the fourteenth edition in 1929, were necessarily cast in the imposed form of treatises under word-headings. Yet they coalesce very firmly into a clear and coherent testament, almost into a text-book of the art of music in its widest meaning. Like the Glossary to the Essays in Musical Analysis, the entries are unconnected, the whole comprehensive, and while not attempting completeness, afford the reader a wider range of musical thought and a fuller discussion of technical problems than most of the exhaustive and laborious theses now available. Tovey himself set great store by these articles. They formed for him the basis of his teaching at the University of Edinburgh. They are the background to those fuller considerations of musical compositions which are his Essays in Musical Analysis. It was his own proposal that these articles should be gathered together into one volume, an idea expressed to me as long ago as 1926. Means were then taken towards the end of publishing, and it was agreed that Tovey should in his own time make any alterations or correc tions necessary for the new method of presentation. But many other fresh and no doubt more important ideas and schemes came bubbling up into that wonderfully fertile brain, and nothing was done about the book of musical articles. I say more important because, though he was in life so fully occupied, it has now been foundpossible to publish these articles after the author s death. This book contains all the articles which Tovey wrote for the VI EDITORIAL PREFACE Encyclopaedia Britannica, as they now appear there, with the exception of one on Modern Music and the biographies. The book was set up from printed slips, and thus follows the text finally approved and corrected by the author. The very long musical examples are printed in full...

Discover little-known stories from music history—including murder, riots, and heartbreak—in this entertaining tour through the fascinating (and surprising) lives of classical music masters With outrageous anecdotes about everyone from Gioachino Rossini (draft-dodging womanizer) to Johann Sebastian Bach (jailbird) to Richard Wagner (alleged cross-dresser), Secret Lives of Great Composers recounts the seamy, steamy, and gritty history behind the great masters of international music. Here, you’ll learn that Edward Elgar dabbled with explosives; that John Cage was obsessed with fungus; that Berlioz plotted murder; and that Giacomo Puccini stole his church’s organ pipes and sold them as scrap metal so he could buy cigarettes. This is one music history lesson you’ll never forget!