Human beings are restless souls, ever driven by an insistent inner force not only to have more but to be more&—to be infinitely more. Various philosophers have emphasized this type of ceaseless striving in their accounts of humanity, as in Spinoza&’s notion of conatus and Hobbes&’s identification of &“a perpetual and restless desire of power after power.&” In this book, Laurence Cooper focuses his attention on three giants of the philosophic tradition for whom this inner force was a major preoccupation and something separate from and greater than the desire for self-preservation. Cooper&’s overarching purpose is to illuminate the nature of this source of existential longing and discontent and its implications for political life. He concentrates especially on what these thinkers share in their understanding of this psychic power and how they view it ambivalently as the root not only of ambition, vigorous virtue, patriotism, and philosophy, but also of tyranny, imperialism, and varieties of fanaticism. But he is not neglectful of the differences among their interpretations of the phenomenon, either, and especially highlights these in the concluding chapter.

The Harpsichord and Clavichord, An Encyclopedia includes articles on this family of instruments, including famous players, composers, instruments builders, the construction of the instruments, and related terminology. It is the first complete reference on this important family of keyboard instruments. The contributors include major scholars of music and musical instrument history from around the world. It completes the three-volume Encyclopedia of Keyboard Instruments.

The book, which was published early this year and is available unbundled from the CD-ROM for $69.95, contains information on more than 800 composers and examines some 1,500 operas in detail. Each composer's musical career is outlined, with an assessment of his or her overall contribution to opera. Opera entries include cast lists and orchestral forces, a commentary on the background of the work, a synopsis of the plot, and a musical analysis identifying musical highlights and points of interest. Recording and edition information is included. For those who don't like to turn pages, prefer to read from the screen, or just like the click-click of the mouse, the CD-ROM provides computer access via Windows to the information and pictures (small black and whites) of the book. The CD-ROM holds some enhancements: notably, three hours of music excerpts (unheard by this reviewer who lacks the needed 16-bit sound card; some, according to the press release, are as long as three to five minutes). Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This volume explores all aspects of the relations of Church and State including the wealth of the clergy, their role in official life, in the Court at Versailles and on the scaffold.

Christoph Willibald Gluck composed for operas in such a way that served the story and related the poetic quality of music. He possessed a gift for creating unity between the art forms that comprise a ballet or opera. This bibliography and guide ties together the different writings on this artist, providing faster access to the information on his life and work.

'...discusses virtually all the musical writings which figure in this tome of the Oeuvres completes and may even be read as a companion volume, providing a key to the understanding of its various texts...O'Dea's vividly textured and finely nuanced reading of Rousseau's musical imagination plainly does complement the Pleiade collection in two striking ways...it offers a general interpretation of the place of the philosophy of music in Rousseau's thought that is addressed to concepts which flit in and out of particular works, articulated in a voice whose clarity of tone is unmatched by a chorus of editors. Second, it pursues its case across a range of texts spread far beyond the limits of any collection of Rousseau's essays on music.' - Robert Wokler, French Literature This new study of Jean-Jacques Rousseau suggests that his early articles on music for the Encyclopidie give a unique insight into his thinking on aesthetics, affectivity and desire. Rousseau is shown as moving subsequently between two opposed tendencies. He celebrates the voice as the vehicle for the most intense moments of human experience but also frequently attacks the surrender to passion implicit in that celebration, denouncing the arts and arguing that women must be confined to the domestic sphere.