A varied and wide-ranging collection in which the celebrated post-war composer Peter Maxwell Davies presents his work and his opinions.

Peter Maxwell Davies (1934-2016) was one of the leading international composers of the post-war period as well as one of the most productive. This book provides a global view of his music, integrating a number of resonant themes in the composer's work while covering a representative cross-section of his vast output - his work list encompasses nearly 550 compositions in every established genre. Each chapter focuses on specific major works and offers general discussion of other selected works connected to the main themes. These themes include compositional technique and process; genre; form and architecture; tonality and texture; allusion, quotation and musical critique; and place and landscape. Throughout, the book contends that Davies's works are not created in a vacuum but are intimately connected to, and are a reflection of, 'the past'. This deep engagement occurs on a number of levels, fluctuating and interacting with the composer's own predominantly modernist idiom and evoking a chain of historical resonances. Making sustained reference to Davies's own words, articles and programme notes as well as privileged access to primary source material from his estate, the book illuminates the composer's practices and approaches while shaping a discourse around his music. NICHOLAS JONES is Senior Lecturer in Musicology at Cardiff University. RICHARD MCGREGOR is Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Cumbria and part-time Lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland.

The contemporary music scene thus embodies a uniquely broad spectrum of activity, which has grown and changed down to the present hour. With new talents emerging and different technologies developing as we move further into the 21st century, no one can predict what paths music will take next. All we can be certain of is that the inspiration and originality that make music live will continue to bring awe, delight, fascination, and beauty to the people who listen to it. This book cover modernist and postmodern concert music worldwide from the years 1888 to 2018. This second edition of Historical Dictionary of Modern and Contemporary Classical Music contains a chronology, an introduction, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 500 cross-referenced entries on the most important composers, musicians, methods, styles, and media in modernist and postmodern classical music worldwide, from 1888 to 2018. This book is an excellent resource for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about modern and contemporary classical music.

Do today's composers draw inspiration from life experiences? What has influenced recent composers? How essential is it for a composer to develop a personal style? This book reveals the spontaneous thoughts of some of the most famous composers from around the world about their own development as composers and their reactions to the outside world.

A guide for professional musicians on how to succeed in joining an orchestra or ensemble, and how to survive as an orchestral musician during their career.

Winner of the 2007 National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism A New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book of the Year Time magazine Top Ten Nonfiction Book of 2007 Newsweek Favorite Books of 2007 A Washington Post Book World Best Book of 2007 In this sweeping and dramatic narrative, Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker, weaves together the histories of the twentieth century and its music, from Vienna before the First World War to Paris in the twenties; from Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to downtown New York in the sixties and seventies up to the present. Taking readers into the labyrinth of modern style, Ross draws revelatory connections between the century's most influential composers and the wider culture. The Rest Is Noise is an astonishing history of the twentieth century as told through its music.

Shortlisted for the 2022 Gordon Burn Prize • Shortlisted for the 2022 Ned Kelly Awards • Longlisted for the 2022 Booker Prize • Longlisted for the 2022 HWA Gold Crown Award The Booker-shortlisted author of His Bloody Project blurs the lines between patient and therapist, fiction and documentation, and reality and dark imagination. London, 1965. 'I have decided to write down everything that happens, because I feel, I suppose, I may be putting myself in danger,' writes an anonymous patient, a young woman investigating her sister's suicide. In the guise of a dynamic and troubled alter-ego named Rebecca Smyth, she makes an appointment with the notorious and roughly charismatic psychotherapist Collins Braithwaite, whom she believes is responsible for her sister's death. But in this world of beguilement and bamboozlement, neither she nor we can be certain of anything. Case Study is a novel as slippery as it is riveting, as playful as it is sinister, a meditation on truth, sanity, and the instability of identity by one of the most inventive novelists of our time.