Product Description

"All Music Guide's" look at classical music is the definitive source for all things classical. Over 500 composer and 800 performer bios are here, from all the big names like Beethoven, Vivaldi and Bach to such left-field entries as Brian Eno and Pete Townshend (for ambient music, which had a heavy influence on the Minimalist movement and the modern spiritualists like Arvo Part and John Tavener, and the rock opera Tommy, respectively). Each artist entry has all you need to know, such as vital statistics, biography, and album recommendations. Thousands of composition descriptions, dating from the 11th century to the 21st, are covered, including operas, symphonies, concertos and ballets. 23 essays are also present, devoted to the major time periods, forms, and genres of in classical music. Choral works, songs, and other vocal works get their own sections, as do keyboard works, chamber music, and film scores. Perhaps best of all, over 11,000 albums of classical music are detailed.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #78973 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-16
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1632 pages

Customer Reviews

A marvellous resource!
I bought this huge book - 1,600 pages of very small font - some months ago and I would say that it is the most comprehensive guide to music listeners available.

What it is not is a CD guide, although each work discussed by one of the dozens of contributors has a short list of recommended recordings at the end. What we have instead are short essays that are similar to those notes found with the better CDs for each major piece that a composer wrote.

Although this is an American guide, don't let that put you off at all, as the range of writers is broad and nearly all the composers I can think of have thier own section.

Coupled with the latest Gramophone or Penguin CD guide (or even better, the now dated Third Ear Guide) you will have all you need to build a great music library.

A library in a single volume
Like Mark Melton, I am impressed with this volume. I keep going back to it. There is no consistent style as there are so many contributors, but they rarely disappoint. Some are witty, provocative, enthusiastic or mildly critical, but all are informative. Inenvitably, there is some selectiveness, but, despite its American provenance, British composers and performers get a good representation among the entries.

Pages missing
Take care - I purchased this book and pages 809 to 840 were missing. It is a very heavy book to have to return to Amazon.