This volume is a greatly expanded version of the classic 1956 anthology by Sam Morgenstern. The editor has added 30 composers to the roster, mostly in the pre-Baroque and contemporary eras, and has taken advantage of recent scholarship to prune and update the entries. The result is a glimpse into the writings of 103 major composers, from Marchetto of Paduo (14th century) on the definition of musician, to the contemporary British composer Oliver Knussen on much the same topic, and Bach's famous memorandum to the Town Council of Leipzig, as well as new discoveries, such as the elegant, cryptic prose of Toru Takemitsu.

German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen was arguably the most influential figure of the European postwar avant-garde and unquestionably the most elusive and enigmatic musical thinker of a generation that includes Pierre Boulez, John Cage, and Luciano Berio. His radically new electronic and instrumental music converted Igor Stravinsky to serialism in the 1950s and has continued to inspire young composers for more than fifty years. Other Planets: The Complete Works of Karlheinz Stockhausen, 1950–2007 draws on more than fifty years of Maconie’s close study of Stockhausen and functions as a catalogue raisonee of Stockhausen’s complete output. With plentiful citations from the history of radio, film, and sound recording, as well as from contemporary science and technology, the book is laid out in chronological order and contains ample commentary on the composer’s sources of inspiration. Each composition is also fully documented within the text, giving full information of each work’s publisher, catalog number, instrumentation, duration, and authorized compact disc. The updated edition extends the range of the volume’s contents to include the twenty-five works Stockhausen composed between 2004 and his death in 2007. Stockhausen’s status in the history of music in the late twentieth century can now be appreciated with unprecedented clarity. All listeners will benefit from this work, and American music lovers in particular will find it an invaluable guide to the ongoing debate and rivalry over the sources of abstract expressionism and the avant-garde.

Basing his work on conversations with the composer, Karl Wörner puts into plain language the ideas behind Stockhausen's new musical forms, examines the development of electronic music and explains the spatial location in new music; the broader aspects of the composer's place in musical history and in the society in which he works are also considered. Particularly valuable is the section on Stockhausen's life, his friends and pupils; and the book includes the composer's own notes on his works. -- from back cover.

Schonberg brings the reader closer to an identification with the composers he discusses and thus closer to an understanding of their music. The book consequently places more emphasis on biographical details and less upon technical analysis of the music.

Afterword by Frank O'Hara Morton Feldman (1926-1987) is among the most influential American composers of the 20th Century. While his music is known for its exteme quiet and delicate beauty, Feldman himself was famously large and loud. His writings are both funny and illuminating, not only about his own music but about the entire New York School of painters, poets and composers that coalesced in the 1950s, including his friends Jackson Pollack, Philip Guston, Mark Rothko, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank O Hara, and John Cage.