Product Description

This expanded and completely revised fourth edition is a unique handbook, spanning a thousand years of music from Gregorian chant via Bach and Beethoven to current leading lights such as Thomas Adès and Kaija Saariaho. There are concise biographical profiles of more than 200 composers and informative summaries of the major compositions in all genres, from chamber works to operatic epics. Topics such as the influence of jazz, notation, conducting, the madrigal, and why Stradivarius made such great violins are covered fully in feature boxes. The Rough Guide has been praised for its mix of well-known composers with more obscure, but interesting, figures (like Antoine Brumel and Barbara Strozzi), and for the way it takes contemporary music seriously.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #128660 in Books
• Published on: 2005-07-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 640 pages

BBC Music Magazine, UK
"No idiot's guide...well designed with plentiful illustrations...above all it's got character...and vents some refreshingly idiosyncratic views."

About the Author
Written by an experienced team of experts, drawn from the worlds of academia, music journalism and broadcasting.

Customer Reviews

The best place to start to explore classical music
This book is invaluable for those who have a limited knowledge of classical music and want to expand their listening repertoire. It is a compendium of information on over two hundred classical composers and their works. In addition to the information presented by composer, a number of boxes explore themes as diverse as "What is a Fugue?" (under Bach), "The Cult of the Conductor" (under Mahler) and "The Crisis of Tonality" (under Schoenberg). The choice of composers is excellent - of course when the number is limited, one can always gripe about the favourites that have been left out. The accounts are written in a lively, up-beat style that does not compromise the fidelity of the information. Each composer is covered by an introductory section that is largely biographic, followed by a treatment of major works. Finally, a number (typically one to three) of key recordings are recommended - they tend towards the conservative, but pretty much ensure that the new listener will not be disappointed.

It is worth pointing out that this book does not aspire to be a buyer's guide to CDs. That is the task of, for example, the Penguin and Gramophone guides (on Amazon: ISBN 0141022620 & 0860249727).

I would certainly recommend this book above the NPR guide and other "beginners guides" I have seen. Testimony to that is the fact that my copy has fallen apart from overuse over the years and is now held together with rubber bands. Enjoy!

Informative, exciting, and positively opinionated
The fourth edition of this invaluable guide is packed with information on classical music and should appeal to the novice and the longtime enthusiast - fact, anecdote, explanations of musical styles, explorations of musical forms, biographies and assessments of leading composers and musicians. It's an exciting, entertaining, informative, stimulating smorgasbord of a book which you can browse, read, use as reference material, or employ to settle arguments.

It may, however, start as many arguments as it settles, for the material here does not sit on the fence. The assessments of various composers will fuel the ire of some fans … and bring a smile to the faces of others. This is information and professional opinion, not gospel. This is a reference book with presence, personality, and little pretension - it's never glib or trite. A book to stimulate those little grey cells, not one which will gather much dust.

Indeed it is rough!
It looks great on the outside cover, but when you open it you begin to realise how much is missing. For instance there are no French or any other composers of organ music, so Menddelssohn is there but not for the organ works, the same with many others.
Maybe I was expecting too much.

"Organ Morgan".