Well, The Mozart Companion is not really a biography, but its contributors are all great scholars of the past: Abraham, Blume, Deutsche, Engel, Geiringer, Hamburger, Hutchings, Keller, Robbins Landon, Larsen, Mitchell. (Rockliffe, London 1956)
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The doggiest dogeared dogofabook around here is probably Robert Simpson's Essence of Bruckner, but followed closely in the bent-and-creased stakes by Bruno Monsaingeon's Richter Notebooks and Conversations... Hans Keller's best is either "Criticism" or the anthology "Music, Closed Societies and Football" (or "1975(1984 minus 9)")... the Cambridge (ed. Wintle) Keller Essays on Music is full of ripe plums... Lebrecht's Companion to 20thC Music is too infuriating ever to pick up again...
Pleased to see Richard Stokes' handsome "JSBach: The Complete Cantatas" looking so well used by an atheist... really loved Motley Crue's The Dirt, typical rock epic of drug&drink fuelled selfdestruction, but that was then...(before such things became Career Moves)...
Useful tools: Simpson's Beethoven Symphonies, Robbins-Landon's Mozart Companion, Paul Griffiths' Stravinsky, Jonathan Cross's Harrison Birtwistle...
Don't think I ever had more fun than when I discovered something called The Penguin Stereo Record Guide in about 1973, walking halfway across Liverpool to greedily peruse all the earlier volumes in a prefab shack of a City Libraries annexe somewhere near the Pier Head. Then back to Rushworths and Beaver Radio to agonise over Solti or Karajan or Klemperer or Haitink...
...but CD arrived and it all got a bit apres moi le deluge and the Penguin Guides were drenched and lost their lustre....Last edited by jayne lee wilson; 20-10-13, 03:40.Comment
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Originally posted by Thropplenoggin View Post
... yours for the exchange of a single coin to propiciate said Mighty Water Snake (plus P&P).
This is pretty good, too:
[FONT=Comic Sans MS][I][B]Numquam Satis![/B][/I][/FONT]Comment
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Jayne LW #17 Lovely post!
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Great post jlw and amazing to find how many memories the name 'Rushworths' conjured upOriginally posted by jayne lee wilson View Post
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I had access to all the latest books at work, now I rely on googling etc for dates of worka or borrowing them from librarian cousin.
How everI treasure my old Penguin Music Magazines, running from 1947 to the mid 50sas I love reading concsrt reviews, hot off the press by people like Alec Robertson, Constant Lambert, Wiilam Mann, Trevor harvey, Hubert Foss or Ernest ChapmanComment
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Thanks, FHG. Should I be worried about dated research with Solomon? It seems that some of the biographies haven't aged well due to new discoveries about Mozart's compositional methods in recent years.Originally posted by ferneyhoughgeliebte View Posthttp://www.amazon.co.uk/Mozart-Life-...omon%2C+mozart
... yours for the exchange of a single coin to propiciate said Mighty Water Snake (plus P&P).
This is pretty good, too:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Beethoven-Ma...omon+beethovenIt loved to happen. -- Marcus AureliusComment
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My indispensible opera books are Ernest Newman's Wagner Nights, of which I have a precious and well worn first edition, and the New Grove Book of Operas, ed. Sadie. While Wagner Nights retains its value as a reference book, Newman's Opera Nights and More Opera Nights (also a first edn!) do not, other than as records of how things have changed, both in terms of his judgments and in the operas performed. It's OK when Newman likes someone (Wagner), but get him on someone he dislikes (da Ponte) and he becomes quite irrational.
Lots of great biogs and books by and about great musicians (inc. Robert Simpson/Bruckner) ....most precious of all, Diana Poulton's John Dowland, His Life and Work.
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When I worked for Gollancz one of the best-sellers was The New Musical Companion edited by A.L.Bacharach which was then brought up to date in the 70's. For a novice listener/researcher this was a handy - and extensive - guide across the musical spectrum. I see that I no longer have it on my shelves here at Bax Towers which would indicate that at some time I felt that it had done its work and was now superseded by more contemporary works - and hence disposed of.
But I have kept other more personal musical biographies: Gollancz's own Journey Towards Music which outlines in his own distinctive tangential style his wide musical knowledge and experience (dining with Stravinsky at the Langham) especially in the world of opera - Wagner particularly - during the first half of the 20th century. (The copy was previously owned by J.B.Priestley which is inscribed to him).
Peter Pirie's English Musical Renaissance was a book I bought to Gollancz for publication. He runs chronologically through the 20th century and picks up on many composers who normally only get a perfucntory inclusion in more general musical histories. He concludes with a chapter on the three composers that he believes were important in the 70's and who would bode well for the future of the art in England (UK): Brain Ferneyhough, Peter Maxwell Davies and Harrison Birtwistle.
Finally I have a run of biographies of Bax, Finzi, Arnold, Moeran (Lionel Hill's tender reminiscence in Lonely Waters), Tchaikovsky (Brown's 4 volume set) and John Ireland.O Wort, du Wort, das mir Fehlt!Comment
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I wonder if JBP used it when writing his novel Low Notes on a High Level which the author described as 'a frolic'.The copy was previously owned by J.B.Priestley which is inscribed to himComment
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If you have a library card can't you just go to the website on your computer (see the link I posted) and see whether entering the ID works?Originally posted by teamsaint View PostComment
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Sadly, no. Low Notes came out in 1954, the Gollancz memoir 10 years later.Originally posted by ardcarp View PostO Wort, du Wort, das mir Fehlt!Comment
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As a biography, Solomon's is the most readable and absorbing that I've read (I'd certainly recommend it to Mozza-sceptics) and the passages of analysis support his overall conception of the composer, which explores and explodes many of thye myths about the composer that accrued in the 19th Century. Solomon is, it's true, more concerned with the effect that the Music has on the listener than with investigating how the Music came to be written, but this leads to passages such as this:Originally posted by Thropplenoggin View Post
It is profoundly discomforting to be drawn by the power of the Music into empathetic collusion with murders, kidnappers, tyrants, seducers, rapists and mysogynists.
[ ... ] we often encounter in them a dysjunction between type and Music, a revelation of unexpected ambiguities and apparently misplaced feelings. [ ... ] As they slip away into the timeless dimension where Arias are sung, these characters strip away the limitations of their types; and when they re-emerge onto the stage, it is as though they are stepping from that timeless world into the "real" world of adventitious character. We are asked for the moment to forget their limitations and to forgive their sins - disturbing prospects that stir unaccustomed emotional responses in us. The Music upsets our composure, especially when it shows us redemptive qualities in scoundrels, desperate rage in an ordinarily accommodating manservant, the compulsion of an innocent to confess to a crime she never committed.
... if this sort of writing appeals, then the rest of the book is for you.
And it's more up-to-date (published in 1995) than the (splendid) Mozart Companion, but to get more recent discoveries you might wish to invest in this:
... although (as with most volumes in this series) the diversity of writers means that some chapters are more reliable (and better written) than others.
More readable (IMO) - andless of a strain on the wallet - is Robbins Landon's The Mozart Essays:
... and I wouldn't be without:
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FHG....I can feel the glow of your CD and book collection from just a few miles away....no need for central heating....bong chingComment
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No one has mentioned any of Charles Rosen's books yet - the one book which most fitted mercia's original criterion ofwould have been The Classical Style, for at least ten years after I first bought it (back in 1973, I see from my copy...).Which of your music books are so often used they never make it back onto the shelf ?
And a later book of his, The Romantic Generation, has spent more of the last 13 years off the shelf than any of my other books, I'd estimate.Comment
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