by Duncan Clark Joe Staines This expanded and updated third edition is a unique handbook, spanning a thousand years of music from Gregorian chant to works by contemporaries such as Judith Weir and Wolfgang Rihm. Both a CD buyer's guide and a who's who, it features: concise biographical sketches of more than 200 composers, explaining their social and musical contexts; informative summaries of the major compositions in all genres, from solo instrumental pieces to operas with casts of hundreds; incisive reviews of hundreds of CDs, selecting the best of the latest recordings and the pick of the reissues; lively articles on such topics as sonata form, the concerto, atonality and film music; more than 150 pictures, including some rarely seen archive photos.--from back cover. 610 pages Publisher : Rough Guides Date Published : 2001 First member to have this in CatalogTalk about this |