After his escape from Hungary during the Revolt, Verga Caszar seeks to find freedom as a nomad, eventually wandering through the halls of the Akademischer Musikverein, a music school in Graz. His musical talent sends him to Vienna to compete in the Young Pianist International Talent Competition, where he experiences his first taste of true love and true vengeance. Verga must decide what he wants more: his dream of becoming a famous pianist or the well-being of his lover; but what happens when he isnt given the opportunity to choose? Verga finds himself in another desperate escape plan reminiscent of his fleeing from his home country, this time to America, the melting pot of freedom and democracy. In a nation founded on choices, Verga will have to comply, discovering a world and a direction he has never expected, a reevaluation of prior passions and affections.

Liszt's B minor Sonata is now regarded as his finest work for piano, and one of the pinnacles of Romantic piano music. This handbook opens with a survey of Liszt's early attempts at sonata composition - which include some well-known pieces that, hitherto, have been unrecognised as sonata forms - and clears away some of the persistent myths regarding programme music in Liszt's output. In the central chapters, built around an analysis of the B minor Sonata, Kenneth Hamilton discusses various interpretative approaches, arguing that the contradictory writings on the subject stem from the deliberate formal ambiguity of the piece itself - one reason for its perennial fascination, perhaps. The book concludes with a chapter on the performance practice and the performing history of the work, which should be of particular interest to pianists.

Publisher Description

You want to write songs, and you want to write them on guitar. This updated twentieth-anniversary third edition of the bestselling songwriting handbook shows you how. Learn the techniques and tricks used in two thousand great songs by everyone from the Beatles, Bob Dylan, and David Bowie to Kings of Leon, U2, Amy Winehouse, and Ed Sheeran. Explore and understand the four main elements of a song—melody, harmony, rhythm, and lyrics—and learn how to use them in exciting new ways. Master song structure, intros, bridges, chord sequences, and key changes. Make the most of your guitar, with innovative chords, scales, modes, tunings, and recording techniques. Use the skills and insights of the great songwriters to create better, more memorable songs. The book gives many examples of classic chord sequences that can be used straight off the page. It explains the basic architecture of most songs. It contains an effective two-part chord dictionary for guitar, providing a set of basic shapes. A second section provides some chords for altered tunings. There are some examples of finger-picking patterns and strumming rhythms. There are chapters on lyric writing, rhythm, melody, and making a demo recording. There are inspirational quotes from famous songwriters, and a gallery of thirty notable albums from which much can be learned. It is everything you need to get started.

Fanny Hensel (1805-1847) was an extraordinary musician and astute observer of European culture. Previously she was known mainly as the granddaughter of philosopher Moses Mendelssohn and the sister of composer Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy, yet Hensel is now recognized as the leading woman composer of the nineteenth century. She produced well over four hundred compositions and excelled in short, lyrical piano pieces and songs of epigrammatic intensity, but the expressive range of her art also accommodated challenging virtuoso piano and chamber works, orchestral music, and cantatas written in imitation of J.S. Bach. Her gender and position in society restricted her from opportunities afforded her brother, however, who himself quickly rose to an international career of the first rank. Hensel's own sphere of influence revolved around her Berlin residence, where she directed concerts that attracted such celebrities as Franz Liszt, Clara Schumann, Clara Novello, and her brother Felix. In this semi-public space, shared with exclusive audiences drawn from the elite of Berlin society, Hensel found her own voice as pianist, conductor and composer. For much of her life, she composed for her own pleasure, and her brother ranked her songs among the very best examples of the genre. Felix silently incorporated several of the songs into his own early publications, while a few other songs were published anonymously. Hensel began releasing her works under her own name in 1847, only to die of a stroke as the first reviews of her music began to appear. Tragically, the vast majority of her music was forgotten for a century and a half before its recent rediscovery. Renowned Mendelssohn scholar R. Larry Todd now offers a compelling, full account of Hensel's life and music, her extraordinary relationship with her brother, her position in one of Berlin's most eminent families, and her courageous struggle to define her own public voice as a composer [Publisher description].