An essential exploration of Nordic composers and musicians, and the distinctive culture that continues to shape them. Once considered a musical backwater, the Nordic region is now a musical powerhouse. Conductors from Denmark and Finland dominate th...

A funny, fierce, and uninhibited musical chronicle of the convulsive past six years from one of our finest cultural critics For the past thirty-five years, celebrated author Greil Marcus has applied his unmatched critical apparatus to everything fr...

A prominent conductor explores how aesthetic criteria masked the political goals of countries during the three great wars of the past century. This book offers a major reassessment of classical music in the twentieth century. John Mauceri argues tha...

Beethoven's piano sonatas are among the iconic cornerstones of the classical music repertoire. Jan Marisse Huizing offers an in-depth study of the sonatas using available autographs, first editions, recordings, and nearly three hundred musical exampl...

The first full biography of the fearless and brilliant Maria Yudina, a legendary pianist who was central to Russian intellectual life. Maria Yudina was no ordinary musician. An incredibly popular pianist, she lived on the fringes of Soviet society a...

During his nearly forty years as a music journalist, Ralph J. Gleason recorded many in-depth interviews with some of the greatest jazz musicians of all time. These informal sessions, conducted mostly in Gleason's Berkeley, California, home, have neve...

This book is the first to explore the popularity and novelty of the guitar in Georgian England, noting its impact on the social, cultural, and musical history of the period. The instrument possessed an imagery as rich as its uses were varied; it emer...

Robert Philip, scholar, broadcaster, and musician, has compiled an essential handbook for lovers of classical music, designed to enhance their listening experience to the full. Covering four hundred works by sixty-eight composers from Corelli to Shos...

Francis Poulenc is a key figure in twentieth-century classical music, as well as an unorthodox and striking individual. Roger Nichols draws upon Poulenc's music and other primary sources to write an authoritative life of this great artist. Although...

Irving Berlin (1888-1989) has been called – by George Gershwin, among others – the greatest songwriter of the golden age of the American popular song. "Berlin has no place in American music", legendary composer Jerome Kern wrote; "he is American musi...