Abby Whiteside on Piano Playing: Indispensables of Piano Playing and Mastering the Chopin Etudes and Other Essays By Abby Whiteside But music is sound. It is hearing -- not seeing -- that should determine the beauty of a musical performance. We have no right, really, to criticize on any other basis.... Read excerpt... | Table of Contents

Alma Rosé: Vienna to Auschwitz By Richard Newman In a light vein, Alma sometimes treated fellow prisoners to impromptu serenades.... Read excerpt... | Table of Contents

Alternative Strings: The New Curriculum By Julie Lyonn Lieberman Those of us already teaching alternative styles have had the wonderful opportunity to see students come alive with interest, become more deeply involved in rehearsals, and practice with greater stimulation at home.... Read excerpt... | Table of Contents

The Amadeus Book of the Violin: Construction, History, and Music By Walter Kolneder In early times, builders soon saw the need for preserving instruments with the help of varnish, to protect the wood from hand perspiration, from dust, humidity, and very hot and cold temperatures. When a white (unvarnished) violin is played as soon as it has been completed, it reveals its optimal volume and tone quality.... Read excerpt... | Table of Contents

Arturo Toscanini: The NBC Years By Mortimer H. Frank Admittedly, certain features of the NBC Symphony presentations departed from concert norms. This is because the network thought of them primarily as broadcasts and only secondarily as concerts, many of the details affecting their production being rooted in standards and customs that radio had generated. Paramount among them was the distribution of tickets... Read excerpt... | Table of Contents

Astor Piazzolla: A Memoir By Natalio Gorin From Chapter 11, Self Portrait I discovered music when I was eleven years old. The apartment building where we lived in New York City was very big. In the back there was a hall and a window. One summer afternoon I was hanging out, without much to do, and I heard a piano playing Bach, although that was something I learned later. Read excerpt...

The Blue Piano and Other Stories By Carol Montparker She finished her mini-recital and got up, unprepared to see three teary listeners dabbing at their eyes. She, too, was overcome with emotion and stepped behind her husband, putting her hand on his shoulder. He got up and hugged her, and it was a mighty pretty sight. In a world full of stress and misery, encounters with true enduring love are rare and precious. Read excerpt...

Britten and Barber: Their Lives and Their Music By Daniel Felsenfeld In the academy, where most of our composers cut their teeth, they teach the development of Western concert music as a cut-and-dried progression: chant begets polyphony, which gives way to sonata form, romanticism, atonality, and eventually the radicalism and hijinks of the twentieth century. Often, if a composer's work does not suit this continuum, it is simply left out, which has been largely the case with both Benjamin Britten and Samuel Barber... Read excerpt...

Chopin: A Listener's Guide to the Master of the Piano By Victor Lederer Piano students today would do well to consider the reports of Chopin’s methods and priorities... Read excerpt...

Choral Music in the Twentieth Century By Nick Strimple A most exciting confluence of styles, cultures, and trends was achieved in the century-ending commissions awarded by the Stuttgart International Bach Academy to honor the coincidental juxtaposition of the year 2000 with the 250th anniversary of Bach's death... Read excerpt... | Table of Contents

Classical Destinations: An Armchair Guide to Classical Music By Wendy McDougall Most of Milos Forman’s film Amadeus was shot in Prague, in the studio but also in the city, much of which was exactly as it had been in the 18th century... Read excerpt...

Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau: A Biography By Hans A. Neunzig Love and music were the themes of that three-month stay in Freiburg. If the joy of being with his fiancée again was complicated by the admixture of nearness and distance, of getting to know each other again in all ways, the world of music opened itself up to the young singer without any resistance. Nothing seemed too difficult, nothing too risky. ... Read excerpt...

Efrem Zimbalist: A Life By Roy Malan Efrem Zimbalist's impact was manifold: influential, brilliant solo violinist bringing to countless people (notably throughout Asia) artistry of a kind never before experienced; intuitive teacher molding many fine violinists to occupy key positions for further dissemination of his principles; head of one of the finest and most productive of music schools, adding again to the diffusion of his ideals.... Read excerpt...

Evenings with Horowitz: A Personal Portrait By David Dubal Horowitz—finicky as a cat, enigmatic, and neurotic—was always waiting for the exact moment to do anything, especially to play in public.... Read excerpt...

The Extraordinary Operatic Adventures of Blanche Arral By Blanche Arral At that moment the door opened and Rasputin entered... Read excerpt... | Table of Contents

A Guide to the Harpsichord By Ann Bond The harpsichord is best played with the lid open; with the lid closed, the tone is stifled.... Read excerpt...

Gustav Mahler: The Symphonies By Constantin Floros The nineteenth century viewed the artist as a kind of prophet who predicted and anticipated future developments... Read excerpt...

How to Succeed in an Ensemble: Reflections on a Life in Chamber Music By Abram Loft The ensemble, constantly on the move, has to learn how to live with the realities of train travel. Luggage is always in hand. Hotel-to-hotel baggage service is available from the railroads at nominal cost between many points, but concerts do not always take place in such cities, and the necessities of concert life . . . Read excerpt... | Table of Contents

Irvine's Writing about Music By Demar Irvine Journalists speak of "slant." The skillful writer attempting anything more than dull reporting views the subject from some particular angle of point of view. Scholarly writing, despite its reputation for cold objectivity, is just as likely to be slanted as any other kind of writing... Read excerpt...

Jean Langlais: The Man and His Music By Ann Labounsky The folk songs of Brittany impressed Jean at a very early age.... Read excerpt...

The John Adams Reader: Essential Writings on an American Composer By Thomas May In 1997, the year John Adams turned fifty, it was already tempting to call him America's leading composer... Read excerpt...

The Mahler Symphonies: An Owner's Manual By David Hurwitz This book is about the experience of hearing music; about what you as a listener are going to encounter if you take the time to sit down, either at home or in concert, and immerse yourself in one of Mahler's extraordinary compositions... Read excerpt...

The Mahler Symphonies: An Owner's Manual By David Hurwitz Read excerpt...

Mastering Piano Technique: A Guide for Students, Teachers, and Performers By Seymour Fink Piano technique is more than the physical ability to render the printed page of music accurately; it is the vehicle for interpretation, the key to musical expression... Read excerpt...

Michael Rabin: America's Virtuoso Violinist By Anthony Feinstein It is helpful to pause at this point in Michael’s life, to stand back a little from the heady rush of success and his escalating concert commitments and take stock of his young life. He was fourteen years old. He had made a successful Carnegie Hall debut, was known nationally through his Bell Telephone Hour broadcast, and had cut his first disc for Columbia Records.... Read excerpt...

Morton Gould: American Salute By Peter W. Goodman Married to his true love. His star rising. Links with powerful musicians. Financial security. By the end of 1936 until 1945, he was on the air at least once a week presenting a remarkable variety of music and performers coast to coast... Read excerpt...

Music for Piano: A Short History By F. E. Kirby More than any other leading composer, Chopin devoted himself to the piano, to the virtual exclusion of all other media; of symphonies, operas, and oratorios he composed none... Read excerpt...

Musical Prodigies: Perilous Journeys, Remarkable Lives By Claude Kenneson My earliest musical memories are from the time when I was a baby and crawled around under my dad’s piano. While he played I remember lying there looking up at the struts and sounding board, and the sound would come down and envelop me. I loved being there under the piano while he practiced.... Read excerpt...

People and Pianos By Theodore E Steinway During World War II, the company was forbidden to make pianos for three years. Also, when World War II began, my brothers and I were all in uniform, which added to the strain for my father.... Read excerpt...

The Perfect Wrong Note: Learning to Trust Your Musical Self By William Westney Musical experiences—so accessible in childhood—are among the most integrative a person can have. It is quite striking how many musical terms appear in general descriptions of creativity: harmony, rhythm, shape, orchestrating the senses, dance, metaphor, abstract patterns, felt sense, and so on. Read excerpt... | Table of Contents

Pierre Monteux, Maître By John Canarina Murmurs of discontent could be heard soon after the start of the piece, that high-pitched, strained, and torturous bassoon solo. (Stravinsky once said that if he had known how easy that solo would become for bassoonists, every ten years he would have raised it half a step.) Soon catcalls and other imprecations were heard... Read excerpt...

Playing Bach on the Keyboard: A Practical Guide By Richard Troeger Indeed, for any serious player, some knowledge of style and early performance practice provides many shortcuts to solving musical and even technical problems. There is also a romantic aspect to this kind of study... Read excerpt... | Table of Contents

Polly and the Piano By Carol Montparker I am a black and tan puppy who waited a long time in the dog shelter for someone to adopt me. One day a nice lady stopped in front of my cage, P.8. She started singing a tune, and I cocked my head to listen, because I love music.... Read excerpt...

Redeemer Reborn,The: Parsifal as The Fifth Opera of Wagner's Ring By Paul Schofield Read excerpt...

Redeemer Reborn,The: Parsifal as The Fifth Opera of Wagner's Ring By Paul Schofield Traditionally Wagnerian scholarship has always treated the Ring and Parsifal as two separate works. Redeemer Reborn: Parsifal as the Fifth Opera of Wagner’s Ring shows how Parsifal is in fact actually the fifth opera of the Ring. Schofield explains in detail how these five musical dramas portray a single, unbroken story which begins at the start of Das Rheingold when Wotan breaks a branch from the World Ash-tree and Alberich steals the gold of the Rhine, thus separating Spear and Grail, and ends with the reunion of the Spear and Grail in the temple of Monsalvat at the end of Parsifal. Schofield explains how and why the four main characters of the Ring are reborn in the opera Parsifal, needing to complete in Parsifal the spiritual journey begun in the Ring. He also shows how the redemption that is not attained in the process of the Ring is finally realized in the events of Parsifal. Read excerpt...

Schumann: A Chorus of Voices By John C. Tibbetts Read excerpt...

Score Reading: A Key to the Music Experience By Michael Dickreiter It would be difficult to compose polyphonic music (music having two or more parts) without writing it down in a way that shows the relation of the parts to each other.... Read excerpt...

Singers of the Century, Volume III By J. B. Steane If a doubt about greatness may arise with Renée Fleming in view, how much more insidious and insistent are the whisperings or, worse, the indulgent silences that may now attend the name of Enrico Caruso.... Read excerpt...

So When Does The Fat Lady Sing?: Questions and Answers About Life, Sex, Love, and - oh yes - Opera By Michael Walsh Read excerpt...

Song of the Outcasts: An Introduction to Flamenco By Robin Totton Abstract. If flamenco is abstract, what does it express? "The mood of the song" is a short answer, but not an adequate one. Most (but not all) of the best dancers dance to the words of the song, so such basic emotions as happy and unhappy, grief... Read excerpt... | Table of Contents

Tanglewood: A Group Memoir By Margaret Daniels The story of Tanglewood – the summer home of the Boston Symphony since 1935 – as told in first-person accounts by such Tanglewood luminaries as Leonard Bernstein, Serge Koussevitzky, Aaron Copland, Erich Leinsdorf, Phyllis Curtin, Seiji Ozawa, Yo-Yo Ma, Dawn Upshaw, John Harbison, James Levine, and many of the leading musicians, critics, and music professionals who consider Tanglewood a second home. A “documentary” coffee-table book including letters, speeches, interviews, vintage newspaper articles, and a treasure trove of photographs from the BSO's archvies, woven together by a narrative thread and commented on by the author. Among the dozens of stories included: • Student Lenny Bernstein writes the folks back home about “Koussie” and the “Boiks”; ten years later, conductor Leonard Bernstein inspires the students with his own brand of oratory • Boris Goldovsky reminisces about the glory days of the Tanglewood Opera Department where he discovered Leontyne Price, Sherrill Milnes, and an amazing number of soon-to-become-famous young American singers • Gunther Schuller's 1979 Tanglewood manifesto is the talk of the music world • Oliver Knussen relates how Rostopovich told the Shed audience of the death of Shostakovich after conducting the composer's Fifth Symphony • Seiji Ozawa remembers his student trip to Tanglewood on a Bonanza bus with only a few phrases of English at his command and very few dollars in his pocket • The transformation of Tanglewood under the orchestra's new Music Director, James Levine Read excerpt...

Teaching Genius: Dorothy DeLay and the Making of a Musician By Barbara Lourie Sand The secret of DeLay's success seems obvious to me now, but it was a long time before I saw it. DeLay is basically in the business of teaching her pupils how to think, and to trust their ability to do so effectively. This is a much more difficult undertaking than telling them to copy what she does, or to repeat a passage over and over until it—at least in theory—gets better. To DeLay, learning and thinking are inextricably connected, and the core of her philosophy lies in continually challenging her students to look for their own answers... Read excerpt... | Table of Contents

Tim Page on Music: Views and Reviews By Tim Page Throughout much of the 1980s I was the host of a radio program on New York’s WNYC-FM. My emphasis was on contemporary music; however, one afternoon I devoted an entire show to works by the 12th-century composer Perotin---spare, ethereal, yet startlingly intense vocal compositions based on the sound (still fairly rare in Western music) of stark parallel fourths... Read excerpt... | Table of Contents

The Unknown Callas: The Greek Years By Nicholas Petsalis-Diomidis It is difficult to know, at this distance in time, whether Litsa's encouragement of her daughters' musical talents was prompted by genuine maternal interest or whether, as so many of her critics have alleged, it was really motivated by egotism. Most probably the truth of the matter is that, once Litsa had planted the idea of music (and opera in particular) in their minds and accustomed them to the sound of music in the home, they willingly and apparently spontaneously allowed themselves to be ensnared by its charms.... Read excerpt... | Table of Contents

Unsung: A History of Women in American Music By Christine Ammer If piano and harp were the only generally acceptable instruments for women in the mid-nineteenth century, the appearance of women violinists must have been startling indeed. Yet the Musical Gazette of April 26, 1847, states without further comment, perhaps dismissing them as amateurs, that "Messrs. Covert and Dodge have given several concerts in Boston and vicinity assisted by two Misses Macomber, from Maine. One of these ladies plays the violin and the other the violoncello." But only five years later, in 1852, a ten-year-old girl violinist inspired both New York and Boston critics to lavish praise on her performance of standard works by De Bériot and Grétry, Paganini and Viotti... Read excerpt... | Table of Contents

Valery Gergiev and the Kirov: A Story of Survival By John Ardoin There was a palpable air of excitement at the theater in late October during my stay, for the word spread quickly that an on-again, off-again Kirov dancer, Igor Zelensky, was taking class with the company. Although this major artist had not formally broken ties with the theater, it was rumored he had had disputes with members of the ballet's staff that had led him to be more active in the West, where he joined the New York City Ballet for a while. But Zelensky frequently returned to St. Petersburg to visit his family and friends. On this trip home, speculation was running high as to whether or not he would dance. When the posters went up announcing him for a single performance of Swan Lake and one of Le corsaire in early November, you could feel the tension double inside the theater... Read excerpt...

Wagner's Ring: A Listener's Companion and Concordance By J. K. Holman To explore The Ring as Wagner created it does not necessarily engage us in the interpretive debates. Even revisionist Rings are more fairly judged and sometimes better appreciated against a strict-constructionist background... Read excerpt... | Table of Contents

Working With Bernstein By Jack Gottlieb As they engage with one of the 20th century's most provocative musical personalities, studies of the multifaceted Leonard Bernstein will always proffer new insights into the human condition. But this is the first book on Bernstein to be written by a composer, and the first by a colleague and friend who worked intimately with the maestro for more than three decades. Jack Gottlieb has been described as Bernstein's amanuensis and as the preeminent Bernstein scholar. This memoir presents fresh, sensitive, and revealing information about the everyday life of the maestro in Part One, featuring reminiscences peppered with anecdotes, humor, and stories by others. Part Two includes Gottlieb's commentaries and analyses of Bernstein's works, which have appeared in program notes for concerts by many of the world's orchestras, as jacket notes for recordings, and as articles in journals and elsewhere, beginning with the New York Philharmonic tribute “A Valentine for Leonard Bernstein” on February 13, 1961. Preceded by updated remarks, this collection allows those seeking firsthand information on Bernstein's compositions to find all of Gottlieb's valuable scholarship in one place. Read excerpt...

Working With Bernstein By Jack Gottlieb As they engage with one of the 20th century's most provocative musical personalities, studies of the multifaceted Leonard Bernstein will always proffer new insights into the human condition. But this is the first book on Bernstein to be written by a composer, and the first by a colleague and friend who worked intimately with the maestro for more than three decades. Jack Gottlieb has been described as Bernstein's amanuensis and as the preeminent Bernstein scholar. This memoir presents fresh, sensitive, and revealing information about the everyday life of the maestro in Part One, featuring reminiscences peppered with anecdotes, humor, and stories by others. Part Two includes Gottlieb's commentaries and analyses of Bernstein's works, which have appeared in program notes for concerts by many of the world's orchestras, as jacket notes for recordings, and as articles in journals and elsewhere, beginning with the New York Philharmonic tribute “A Valentine for Leonard Bernstein” on February 13, 1961. Preceded by updated remarks, this collection allows those seeking firsthand information on Bernstein's compositions to find all of Gottlieb's valuable scholarship in one place. Read excerpt...