Best Classical Musician Biographies Books
Here you will get Best Classical Musician Biographies Books For you.This is an up-to-date list of recommended books for you.
1. Writing Better Lyrics
Author: by Pat Pattison
Writer's Digest Books
English
304 pages
The Must-Have Guide for SongwritersWriting Better Lyrics has been a staple for songwriters for nearly two decades. Now this revised and updated 2nd Edition provides effective tools for everything from generating ideas, to understanding the form and function of a song, to fine-tuning lyrics.
Perfect for new and experienced songwriters alike, this time-tested classic covers the basics in addition to more advanced techniques. Songwriters will discover: How to use sense-bound imagery to enhance a song’s emotional impact on listeners Techniques for avoiding clichs and creating imaginative metaphors and similes Ways to use repetition as an asset How to successfully manipulate meter Instruction for matching lyrics with music Ways to build on ideas and generate effective titles Advice for working with a co-writer And much moreFeaturing updated and expanded chapters, 50 fun songwriting exercises, and examples from more than 20 chart-toppings songs, Writing Better Lyrics gives you all of the professional and creative insight you need to write powerful lyrics and put your songs in the spotlight where they belong.
2. Mozart: The Reign of Love
Author: by Jan Swafford
B08425FRNN
Harper (December 8, 2020)
December 8, 2020
From the acclaimed composer and biographer Jan Swafford comes the definitive biography of one of the most lauded musical geniuses in history, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. At the earliest ages it was apparent that Wolfgang Mozart’s singular imagination was at work in every direction.
He hated to be bored and hated to be idle, and through his life he responded to these threats with a repertoire of antidotes mental and physical. Whether in his rabidly obscene mode or not, Mozart was always hilarious. He went at every piece of his life, and perhaps most notably his social life, with tremendous gusto.
His circle of friends and patrons was wide, encompassing anyone who appealed to his boundless appetites for music and all things pleasurable and fun. Mozart was known to be an inexplicable force of nature who could rise from a luminous improvisation at the keyboard to a leap over the furniture.
He was forever drumming on things, tapping his feet, jabbering away, but who could grasp your hand and look at you with a profound, searching, and melancholy look in his blue eyes. Even in company there was often an air about Mozart of being not quite there.
3. Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music
Author: by Alex Ross
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
English
784 pages
Alex Ross, renowned New Yorker music critic and author of the international bestseller and Pulitzer Prize finalist The Rest Is Noise, reveals how Richard Wagner became the proving ground for modern art and politicsan aesthetic war zone where the Western world wrestled with its capacity for beauty and violence.
For better or worse, Wagner is the most widely influential figure in the history of music. Around 1900, the phenomenon known as Wagnerism saturated European and American culture. Such colossal creations as The Ring of the Nibelung, Tristan und Isolde, and Parsifal were models of formal daring, mythmaking, erotic freedom, and mystical speculation.
A mighty procession of artists, including Virginia Woolf, Thomas Mann, Paul Czanne, Isadora Duncan, and Luis Buuel, felt his impact. Anarchists, occultists, feminists, and gay-rights pioneers saw him as a kindred spirit. Then Adolf Hitler incorporated Wagner into the soundtrack of Nazi Germany, and the composer came to be defined by his ferocious antisemitism.
4. Composers: Their Lives and Works
Author: by DK
DK
English
320 pages
The only love affair I have ever had was with music. Maurice RavelA compelling celebration of more than 90 of the world’s most influential composers from the medieval period to the present day, Composers reveals the fascinating stories of their lives, loves, and works.
Biographical entries introduced with a stunning portrait of each featured composer trace the friendships, loves, and rivalries that inspired each musical genius. Profiles offer revealing insights into what drove each individual to create the musical masterpieces symphonies, concertos, and operatic scores that changed the direction of classical music and are still celebrated and treasured today.
Lavishly illustrated with paintings or photographs of each composer, alongside original musical scores and personal correspondence, images of their homes and where they worked, and personal effects and other important artifacts, the book introduces the key influences, themes, and working methods of each individual, setting their works within a wider historical and cultural context.
5. Beethoven, A Life
Author: by Jan Caeyers
English
680 pages
0520343549
The authoritative Beethoven biography, endorsed by and produced in close collaboration with the Beethoven-Haus Bonn, is timed for the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth. With unprecedented access to the archives at the Beethoven House in Bonn, renowned Beethoven conductor and scholar Jan Caeyers expertly weaves together a deeply human and complex image of Beethovenhis troubled youth, his unpredictable mood swings, his desires, relationships, and conflicts with family and friends, the mysteries surrounding his affair with the immortal beloved, and the dramatic tale of his deafness.
Caeyers also offers new insights into Beethoven’s music and its gradual transformation from the work of a skilled craftsman into that of a consummate artist. Demonstrating an impressive command of the vast scholarship on this iconic composer, Caeyers brings Beethoven’s world alive with elegant prose, memorable musical descriptions, and vivid depictions of Bonn and Viennathe cities where Beethoven produced and performed his works.
6. Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina
Author: by Misty Copeland
Touchstone
English
304 pages
A bestselling and prize-winning memoir by African-American ballerina Misty Copeland, Life in Motion is the vividly told story of her journey to the world-class American Ballet Theatreand delves into the harrowing family conflicts that nearly drove her away from ballet as a thirteen-year-old prodigy.
Determination meets dance in this New York Times bestselling memoir by the history-making ballerina Misty Copeland, recounting the story of her journey to become the first African-American principal ballerina at the prestigious American Ballet Theatre. When she first placed her hands on the barre at an after-school community center, no one expected the undersized, underprivileged, and anxious thirteen-year-old to become one of America’s most groundbreaking dancers .
A true prodigy, she was attempting in months roles that take most dancers years to master. But when Misty became caught between the control and comfort she found in the world of ballet and the harsh realities of her own life, she had to choose to embrace both her identity and her dreams, and find the courage to be one of a kind.
7. Mozart's Starling
Author: by Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Little, Brown Spark
English
288 pages
On May 27th, 1784, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart met a flirtatious little starling in a Viennese shop who sang an improvised version of the theme from his Piano Concerto no.17 in G major. Sensing a kindred spirit in the plucky young bird, Mozart bought him and took him home to be a family pet.
For three years, the starling lived with Mozart, influencing his work and serving as his companion, distraction, consolation, and muse. Two centuries later, starlings are reviled by even the most compassionate conservationists. A nonnative, invasive species, they invade sensitive habitats, outcompete local birds for nest sites and food, and decimate crops.
A seasoned birder and naturalist, Lyanda Lynn Haupt is well versed in the difficult and often strained relationships these birds have with other species and the environment. But after rescuing a baby starling of her own, Haupt found herself enchanted by the same intelligence and playful spirit that had so charmed her favorite composer.
8. Year of the Monkey (VINTAGE)
Author: by Patti Smith
English
224 pages
1984898922
Riveting, elegant, humorousand illustrated by Smith’s signature PolaroidsNew York Times bestseller Year of the Monkey is a moving and original work, a touchstone for our turbulent times. A picaresque voyage through Patti Smith’s dreams and life, blending fiction and reality, conjured characters and actual onesThe New York TimesFollowing a run of new year’s concerts at San Francisco’s legendary Fillmore, Patti Smith finds herself tramping the coast of Santa Cruz, about to embark on a year of solitary wandering.
Unfettered by logic or time, she draws us into her private wonderland, in which she debates intellectual grifters and spars with the likes of a postmodern Cheshire Cat. Then, in February 2016, a surreal lunar year begins, bringing unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and inescapable sorrow.
For Smithinveterately curious, always exploring, always writingthis becomes a year of reckoning with the changes in life’s gyre: with loss, aging, and a dramatic shift in the political landscape of America. Taking us from California to the Arizona desert, from a Kentucky farm to the hospital room of a valued mentor, Smith melds the western landscape with her own dreamscape in a haunting, poetic blend of fact and fiction.
9. Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician
Author: by Christoph Wolff
English
599 pages
0393322564
Finalist for the 2001 Pulitzer Prize in Biography, this landmark book was revised in 2013 to include new knowledge discovered after its initial publication. Although we have heard the music of J.S. Bach in countless performances and recordings, the composer himself still comes across only as an enigmatic figure in a single familiar portrait.
As we mark the 250th anniversary of Bach’s death, author Christoph Wolff presents a new picture that brings to life this towering figure of the Baroque era. This engaging new biography portrays Bach as the living, breathing, and sometimes imperfect human being that he was, while bringing to bear all the advances of the last half-century of Bach scholarship.
Wolff demonstrates the intimate connection between the composer’s life and his music, showing how Bach’s superb inventiveness pervaded his career as musician, composer, performer, scholar, and teacher. And throughout, we see Bach in the broader context of his time: its institutions, traditions, and influences.
10. Bach: Music in the Castle of Heaven
Author: by John Eliot Gardiner
Vintage
English
672 pages
English
40 pages
Price:
$15.89
as of Jul 13, 2021
(7:27 pm)
A harmonious introduction to one of our country’s most important singers and role models-as envisioned by Newbery Honoree Pam Muoz Ryan and Caldecott Medalist Brian Selznick. Marian Anderson is best known for her historic concert at the Lincoln Memorial in 1939, which drew an integrated crowd of 75,000 people in pre-Civil Rights America.
While this momentous event showcased the uniqueness of her voice, the strength of her character, and the struggles of the times in which she lived, it is only part of her story. Like the operatic arias Marian would come to sing, Ryan’s text is as moving as a libretto, and Selznick’s pictures as exquisitely detailed and elaborately designed as a stage set.
What emerges most profoundly from their shared vision is a role model of courage.
12. Music Comes Out of Silence: A Memoir
Author: by Andras Schiff
B088RL2TRN
Orion (April 2, 2020)
April 2, 2020
Andras Schiff is one of the most important pianists of our time. This stimulating account of his life and work, told in two parts, takes readers on an intimate journey from Schiff’s childhood in Hungary through to the present day.
In conversationw with Martin Meyer, Schiff discusses a diverse range of topics from his experiences with anti-Semitism and communist rule to his musical training with maestros such as Pl Kadosa and Ferenc Rados, as well as his thoughts on playing techniques and musical interpretation.
In a collection of Schiff’s writings we are enthralled by a guided tour of Bach’s ‘Goldberg’ Variations, sobered by Schiff’s public defiance against nationalistic and racist attitudes – to the extent that he refused to perform in Haider’s Austria or Orban’s Hungary – and delighted by the playful ‘Ten Commandments’ for concertgoers.
More than a memoir, this is a seminal compilation of the thoughts and experiences of one of the greatest musicians of our time, of his inimitable art of making music out of silence.
13. Absolutely on Music: Conversations (Vintage International)
Author: by Haruki Murakami
Vintage
English
320 pages
A deeply personal, intimate conversation about music and writing between the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author and the former conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In Absolutely on Music, internationally Haruki Murakami sits down with his friend Seiji Ozawa, the revered former conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, for a series of conversations on their shared passion: music.
Over the course of two years, Murakami and Ozawa discuss everything from Brahms to Beethoven, from Leonard Bernstein to Glenn Gould, from Bartk to Mahler, and from pop-up orchestras to opera. They listen to and dissect recordings of some of their favorite performances, and Murakami questions Ozawa about his career conducting orchestras around the world.
Culminating in Murakami’s ten-day visit to the banks of Lake Geneva to observe Ozawa’s retreat for young musicians, the book is interspersed with ruminations on record collecting, jazz clubs, orchestra halls, film scores, and much more. A deep reflection on the essential nature of both music and writing, Absolutely on Music is an unprecedented glimpse into the minds of two maestros.
14. Dweller in Shadows: A Life of Ivor Gurney
Author: by Kate Kennedy
English
512 pages
0691212783
The first comprehensive biography of an extraordinary English poet and composer whose life was haunted by fighting in the First World War and, later, confinement in a mental asylumIvor Gurney (18901937) wrote some of the most anthologized poems of the First World War and composed some of the greatest works in the English song repertoire, such as Sleep.
Yet his life was shadowed by the trauma of the war and mental illness, and he spent his last fifteen years confined to a mental asylum. In Dweller in Shadows, Kate Kennedy presents the first comprehensive biography of this extraordinary and misunderstood artist.
A promising student at the Royal College of Music, Gurney enlisted as a private with the Gloucestershire regiment in 1915 and spent two years in the trenches of the Western Front. Wounded in the arm and subsequently gassed during the Battle of Passchendaele, Gurney was recovering in hospital when his first collection of poems, Severn and Somme, was published.
Despite episodes of depression, he resumed his music studies after the war until he was committed to an asylum in 1922. At times believing he was Shakespeare and that the machines under the floor were torturing him, he nevertheless continued to write and compose, leaving behind a vast body of unpublished work when he died of tuberculosis.
15. Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times
Author: by Dr. Alan Walker
Picador
English
768 pages
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. The Sunday Times (U.K. Classical Music Book of 2018 and one of The Economist’s Best Books of 2018.”A magisterial portrait.” -Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim, The New York Times Book ReviewA landmark biography of the Polish composer by a leading authority on Chopin and his timeBased on ten years of research and a vast cache of primary sources located in archives in Warsaw, Paris, London, New York, and Washington, D.C., Alan Walker’s monumental Fryderyk Chopin: A Life and Times is the most comprehensive biography of the great Polish composer to appear in English in more than a century.
Walker’s work is a corrective biography, intended to dispel the many myths and legends that continue to surround Chopin. Fryderyk Chopin is an intimate look into a dramatic life; of particular focus are Chopin’s childhood and youth in Poland, which are brought into line with the latest scholarly findings, and Chopin’s romantic life with George Sand, with whom he lived for nine years.
16. Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces
Author: by Laura Tunbridge
English
288 pages
030025458X
A major new biography published for the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, offering a fresh, human portrayal Illuminating…. Tunbridge’s pithy A Life in Nine Pieces is different and welcome: a biography presented through the focus of nine different compositions. Fiona Maddocks, The GuardianRewarding….
A lot of information is packed into her musical portraits. Richard Fairman, Financial Times The iconic image of Beethoven is of him as a lone genius: hair wild, fists clenched, and brow furrowed. Beethoven may well have shaped the music of the future, but he was also a product of his time, influenced by the people, politics, and culture around him.
Oxford scholar Laura Tunbridge offers an alternative history of Beethoven’s career, placing his music in contexts that shed light on why particular pieces are valued more than others, and what this tells us about his larger-than-life reputation. Each chapter focuses on a period of his life, a piece of music, and a revealing theme, from family to friends, from heroism to liberty.
