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Ludwig van Beethoven (German: 17 December 1770 - 26 March 1827) was a German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers. His best-known compositions include 9 symphonies, 5 piano concertos, 1 violin concerto, 32 piano sonatas, 16 string quartets, his great Mass the Missa solemnis and an opera, Fidelio. Born in Bonn, then the capital of the Electorate of C...

Samuel Barber (1910-1981) is one of the most admired and honored American composers of the twentieth century. An unabashed Romantic, largely independent of worldwide trends and the avant-garde, he infused his works with poetic lyricism and gave tonal language and forms new vitality. His rich legacy includes every genre, including the famous Adagio for Strings, Knoxville: Summer of 1915, three concertos, a plethora of songs, and two operas, the Pulitzer prize-winning Vanessa, and Antony and Cleop...

Now appearing in an English translation, this book by Szymon Paczkowski is the first in-depth exploration of the Polish style in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Bach spent almost thirty years living and working in Leipzig in Saxony, a country ruled by Friedrich August I and his son Friedrich August II, who were also kings of Poland (as August II and August III). This period of close Polish-Saxon relations left a significant imprint on Bach's music. Paczkowski's meticulous account of this c...

The Rolling Stones: Sociological Perspectives, edited by Helmut Staubmann, draws from a broad spectrum of sociological perspectives to contribute both to the understanding of the phenomenon Rolling Stones and to an in-depth analysis of contemporary society and culture that takes The Stones a starting point. Contributors approach The Rolling Stones from a range of social science perspectives including cultural studies, communication and film studies, gender studies, and the sociology of popular m...

Hazel O'Connor has loved and been loved, but her generosity and spirit of adventure have often come back to bite her. She would not have it any other way. This is a story not just of the music business, its intense joys and spectacular lows: it is the story of a beautiful teenage runaway, a soldier's daughter who fought her own battles and those of people she cared for. Born inaA A Coventry to English-Irish parents, Hazel's early years were a mixture of adventure and tragedy, which included pe...

Recorded at Olympic Sound Studios, London, The Rolling Stones' seminal album of 1968, "Beggars Banquet", was regarded as marking a return to form for the group - going back to their rhythm and blues roots with tracks such as "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Street Fighting Man". The latest in a challenging series which focuses on the recording sessions that set new standards and changed the course of musical history, this is essential reading for any Stone fan.

This Futurist opera was presented in snowy Petrograd in December 1913 to a riotous audience. The atonal music composed by Mikhail Matiushin accompanied the alogical libretto by Aleksei Kruchenykh, the action taking place in the 10th Land where "the windows of houses all face inside" and "all the paths go up to the earth", while the hands of a clock "both go backwards immediately before dinner". The cardboard costumes by Kazimir Malevich were surfaces lit by his roving coloured spotlights, the c...

A biography of singer/songwriter James Brown comprising interviews with the singer and the people who knew him. The book is illustrated with rare photographs and includes a comprehensive discography.

The Beatles: The Band that Changed the World, an unofficial publication, tells the story of the Fab Four as never before. It shows in beautiful photographs and unique documents and memorabilia reproduced on-the-page, the group's journey from the backstreets of Liverpool and Hamburg to their sell-out concerts in Shea Stadium and their quest for musical perfection. In 1964 half of the American population watched the boys play live on The Ed Sullivan Show and 400 million TV viewers saw them recor...

A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press's Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Situated at the intersections of twentieth-century music history, historiography, and aesthetics, Middlebrow Modernism uses Benjamin Britten's operas to illustrate the ways in which composers, critics, and audiences mediated the "great divide" between modernism and mass culture. Reviving mid-century discussions of the middlebro...