The Polish composer Henry Górecki (born 1933) achieved world-wide renown in 1992 when his Third Symphony, written in 1976, was recorded on CD and became an international bestseller. It is now one of the best known musical compositions of recent years, yet Górecki's other music is still relatively little known. This study, the first detailed account of his works in any language, provides biographical information as background to the music, and is by a leading enthusiast of Górecki's music. Adrian Thomas discusses Górecki's position as leader of the Polish avant-garde in the late 1950s, and his subsequent discovery of the folk and church music of Old Poland, notably that of the Podhale region in southern Poland. He describes Górecki's unmistakable musical world, from the large orchestral scores (Scontri, Refrain, the Symphonies) and the choral works (Beatus Vir, commissioned by and dedicated to Pope John Paul II), to the more modest church songs and folk-song arrangements. There is a complete list of works since 1955 with details of instrumentation and recordings, and a select bibliography.

The Text and the World is a study of an exceptionally interesting primary source - the Henryków Book - and of the local and regional world which that source reflected and helped shape. The source is a history of the Cistercian monastery in Henryków, about forty kilometers to the south of Wroclaw, in the duchy of Silesia, produced in the monastery in two sections-one completed soon after 1268, the other soon after 1310-and redacted into a single codex in the second or third decade of the fourteenth century. The earlier part of the Book is the work of Peter, the third abbot of the monastery, while the continuation was written by an anonymous monk at the same community, possibly a later abbot by the same name. The Henryków Book offers an exceptionally rich introduction to a number of subjects currently of major interest to medieval historians. It is interesting as a literary work, as an instance of forensic rhetoric, and as a type of legal argument; as an instance of biography and (implicit) autobiography. It draws on and is an example of the relationship between memory and writing, and acts as a record of lordship, power, economy, the law, social groups, communities, and institutions, in the local and regional world of the time. The Text and the World explores each of these major subjects, contextualized with the Henryków Book's contemporary diplomatic evidence.

Music lovers, researchers, students, librarians, and teachers can trace the personal and artistic influences behind music makers from Elton John to Leontyne Price. Individual entries on over 400 of the world's most renowned and accomplished living performers, composers, conductors, and band leaders in musical genres from opera to hip-hop. Also includes an in-depth Index covering musicians of all eras, so that readers can learn which artists, alive or dead, influenced the work of today's most important figures in the music industry.