BOOKS OF MUSIC - Page 11

Luigi Russolo
Edizioni Futuriste di Poesia

Robert Rowe
The MIT Press

Otto Karolyi
Cygnus Arts

In this, Otto Karolyi's fourth book, he explores the rich traditions of twentieth-century American music which have helped to forge the country's artistic identity and to establish a canon of important American works. He begins by tracing the history of popular folk songs, Negro spirituals, psalms and hymns which together created an independent music with a distinct character. But it was the free pioneering spirit and inventiveness of Charles Ives which mark him as the first great American composer of the century. At the same time, popular styles such as Gospel, blues, ragtime, jazz and Tin Pan Alley were exerting an enormous influence on the national consciousness. A new breed of composer who blended these disparate ideas followed, notably George Gershwin.

Chris Charlesworth
Omnibus Press

A consumer's critical guide to the music of Paul Simon, both as a solo artist and as part of Simon & Garfunkel, examining every song released. Part of a series, the book is specially designed to sit alongside a CD collection.

Felix Meyer, Heidy Zimmermann
Schott

Howard Pollack
University of Illinois Press

One of America's most beloved and accomplished composers, Aaron Copland played a crucial role in American music's coming of age. Indeed, Copland masterworks like Appalachian Spring and A Lincoln Portrait only begin to tell the epic story of a career spent composing a wealth of music for opera, ballet, chorus, orchestra, chamber ensemble, band, radio, and film.

Howard Pollack's expansive biography examines Copland's long list of accomplishments while also telling the story of the composer's musical development, political sympathies, personal life, relationships as an openly gay man, and tireless encouragement of younger composers. A winner of the Pulitzer Prize and an Academy Award, Copland played a vital role in the Yaddo Festival and as a beloved teacher at Tanglewood, Harvard, and the New School for Social Research. He turned to conducting later in life and via tours promoted American classical music overseas while taking it to appreciative audiences across the United States.

Bryan Magee
Henry Holt and Company

A profoundly searching investigation that reveals for the first time the philosophical foundations of Wagner's art

Richard Wagner's devotees have ranged from the subtlest minds (Proust) to the most brutal (Hitler). The enduring fascination of his works arises from his singular fusion of musical innovation and theatrical daring, but also from his largely overlooked engagement with the boldest investigations of modern philosophy.

Now, in this radically clarifying book, Bryan Magee traces the Wagner's involvement in the intellectual quests of his age, from his youthful embrace of revolutionary socialism, to a Schopenhauerian rejection of the world as illusion, to the near-Buddhist resignation of his final years. Mapping the influence of ideas on Wagner's art, Magee shows how abstract thought can permeate musical work and stimulate creations of great power and beauty. And he unflinchingly confronts the Wagner whose paranoia, egocentricity, and anti-Semitism are as repugnant as his achievements are glorious.

At once a biography of the composer, an overview of his times, an account of 19th century opera, and an insight into the intellectual and technical aspects of music, Magee's lucid study offers the best explanation of W. H. Auden's judgment that Wagner, for all his notorious difficulties, was "perhaps the greatest genius that ever lived.

Dom Anselm Hughes, Gerald Abraham
Feltrinelli - Garzanti

Elke Mascha Blankenburg
Europäische Verlagsanstalt

Philippe Girard, Alain Rochat
Éditions Slatkine

Contient les textes suivants: Le déserteur et le diable / Alexandre N. Afanassiev (p. 261-263) ; Le soldat et le diable / C.F. Ramuz (p. 266-270) ; Le soldat, le violon, le diable / C.F. Ramuz (p. 271-327).

Giuseppe Valdengo
Casa Editrice Pietro Cairoli

Giorgio Blasco
Campanotto Editore

Gabriele Laguzzi
Arktos - Oggero editore

Gabriella Biagi Ravenni
Maria Pacini Fazzi Editore

Adriana Lyanowa
Edizioni Suvini Zerboni

Curt von Westernhagen
Edizioni Accademia

Renee De Saussine
Edizioni Accademia

Ornella Volta
Éditions Francis Van de Velde

Anna Maria Siena Chianese
Guida editori

Il Cavaliere il cui nome è sinonimo di esuberante vitalità amorosa è divenuto, nei secoli, protagonista di una scena senza spazio e senza tempo. È cittadino del mondo, la sua storia è stata scritta in prosa, in versi e in lingue e tempi diversi su partiture musicali che trovano la loro più alta espressione in quella che 'trabocca' dall'opera di Mozart, incarnandone il mito. Per vie temporali e logistiche al sivigliano - e già un po'napoletano - Don Giovanni spetta di diritto la cittadinanza onoraria di Napoli, dalla cui musica il genio di Mozart si lasciò volentieri suggestionare nel suo soggiorno napoletano. Dopo Tirso de Molina, in lingua napoletana scrisse il suo Don Giovanni il Perrucci e Il Convitato di Pietra, musicato dal napoletano Giacomo Tritto, fu eseguito a Napoli nel 1783, quattro anni prima della nascita del capolavoro di Mozart. Questo nostro piccolo divertissement cede alla tentazione di reinterpretare la cittadinanza napoletana di Don Giovanni con la musica che 'trabocca' dalle nostre canzoni, dalla loro verità fatta di pianto e riso, vita e morte, amore e tradimento, felicità e dolore e dalle quali traluce la vitalità di un popolo appassionato, trasgressivo talvolta fino al peccato, circondato da una bellezza che gli fa ancora credere nei miracoli e che, in ispirazione reciproca con musica e parole, ha creato un mondo poetico-musicale rimasto insuperato: le nostre eterne canzoni. A queste varie tentazioni, troppo allettanti per resistevi, dobbiamo il nostro Don Giovanni napoletano.

Sergio Bestente, Isabella Maria
EDT

Francesco Maria Piave
Tipografia "La Nazionale"

Francesco Maria Piave
Tipografia "La Nazionale"

Francesco Maria Piave
Nuova Editoriale

Giovanni Gavazzeni
Edizioni Pendragon