A French Song Companion

A French Song Companion is an indispensable guide to the modern repertoire and the most comprehensive book of French mélodie in any language. Noted accompanist Graham Johnson provides repertoire guides to the work of over 150 composers--the majority of them from France but including British, American, German, Spanish, and Italian musicians who have written French vocal music. The book contains major articles on Fauré, Duparc, Debussy, Ravel, and Poulenc, as well as essays on Bizet, Chabrier, Gounod, Chausson, Hahn, and Satie, and important reassessments of such composers as Massenet, Koechlin, and Leguerney. The book combines these articles with the complete texts in English of over 700 songs, all translated by Richard Stokes, making it also a treasury of French poetry from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries. The translations alone will prove invaluable to music lovers and performers; combined with the biographical articles, they become the ideal map for exploring this exciting and diverse repertoire.

Reference

Johnson, Graham

Stokes, Richard

Encyclopedias & Subject Guides

Oxford University Press

A French Song Companion is an indispensable guide to the modern repertoire and the most comprehensive book of French mélodie in any language. Noted accompanist Graham Johnson provides repertoire guides to the work of over 150 composers--the majority of them from France but including British, American, German, Spanish, and Italian musicians who have written French vocal music. The book contains major articles on Fauré, Duparc, Debussy, Ravel, and Poulenc, as well as essays on Bizet, Chabrier, Gounod, Chausson, Hahn, and Satie, and important reassessments of such composers as Massenet, Koechlin, and Leguerney. The book combines these articles with the complete texts in English of over 700 songs, all translated by Richard Stokes, making it also a treasury of French poetry from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries. The translations alone will prove invaluable to music lovers and performers; combined with the biographical articles, they become the ideal map for exploring this exciting and diverse repertoire.

Arts & Photography

Music

This three-volume boxed set is the definitive work on Franz Schubert’s vocal music with piano. A richly illustrated encyclopedia, these substantial volumes contain more than seven hundred song commentaries with parallel text and translations (by Richard Wigmore), detailed annotations on the songs’ poetic sources, and biographies of one hundred and twenty poets, as well as general articles on accompaniment, tonality, transcriptions, singers, and more. Written by Graham Johnson—celebrated accompanist, author, and the first pianist ever to record all of Schubert’s songs and part-songs—this sumptuous work is a must for performers, scholars, and all lovers of Schubert lieder.

Franz Schubert: The Complete Songs

Yale University Press

Choking the chicken, spanking the monkey, airing the orchid-whatever you call it, none of the images in this book will encourage the gentle art of self-pleasure. This deceptively simple and strangely addictive book presents a laugh-out-loud collection of random pictures virtually guaranteed to dampen the urge of even the strongest libido.

Images You Should Not Masturbate To

Humor & Entertainment

Hibbert, Rob

Humor

TarcherPerigee

Rejected Books is a collection of forty hilariously unrealistic, totally cringe-worthy covers for books that will never, ever be published—from the authors of Images You Should Not Masturbate To\nHave you ever had a great idea for a book but then thought, “Nobody would ever read that”? Well . . . you’re probably right. But you’re not alone! Enter Rejected Books, a rollicking collection of the best book covers for books that were never meant to be. These awful pitches were turned down for any number of reasons: they’re either too long, too sad, too raunchy, or just plain bad.\nThe compilation of imagined book covers in Rejected Books will have you scratching your head and guffawing with every page turn. Though Pranks with Sausages and Holy Bible II don’t actually exist, Rejected Books offers up a professionally produced series of photos imagining just what these wacky ideas (and plenty more) couldlook like.\nRejected Books includes delightfully weird covers of imagined books like:\n• The Sculptors Who Couldn’t Do Hands 
• Cooking with Breast Milk 
• Possessed Toys: A Buying Guide 
• Unfortunate Gluing Accidents 
• Camel Toes Through History\nEnjoy the worst book pitches of all time and rest assured that anyone can have a future in publishing . . . even if your ideas are totally horrible.

Rejected Books: The Most Unpublishable Books of All Time

Clarkson/Potter

This collection of eight 'lectures' by internationally acclaimed pianist, Graham Johnson, is based on a series of concert talks given at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama as part of the Benjamin Britten festival in 2001. The focus of the book is on Britten's songs, starting with his earliest compositions in the genre. Graham Johnson suggests that the nature of Britten's creativity is especially apparent in his setting of poetry, that he becomes the poet's alter-ego. A chapter on Britten's settings of Auden and Eliot explores the particular influences these writers brought to bear at opposite poles of the composer's life. The inspiration of fellow musicians is also discussed, with a chapter devoted to Britten's time in Russia and his friendship with the Rostropovitch family. Closer to home, the book places in context Britten's folksong settings, illustrating how he subverted the English folksong tradition by refusing to accept previous definitions of what constituted national loyalty. Drawing on letters and diaries, and featuring a number of previously unpublished photographs, this book illuminates aspects of Britten's songs from the personal perspective of the pianist who worked closely with Peter Pears after Benjamin Britten was unable to perform through illness. Johnson worked with Pears on learning the role of Aschenbach in 'Death in Venice' and was official pianist for the first master class given by Peter Pears at Snape in 1972.

Britten, Voice and Piano: Lectures on the Vocal Music of Benjamin Britten (Guildhall Research Studies)

Routledge

The career of Gabriel Fauré as a composer of songs for voice and piano traverses six decades (1862-1921); almost the whole history of French mélodie is contained within these parameters. In the 1860s Fauré, the lifelong protégé of Camille Saint-SaÃ«ns, was a suavely precocious student; he was part of Pauline Viardot's circle in the 1870s and he nearly married her daughter. Pointed in the direction of symbolist poetry by Robert de Montesquiou in 1886, Fauré was the favoured composer from the early 1890s of Winnarretta Singer, later Princesse de Polignac, and his songs were revered by Marcel Proust. In 1905 he became director of the Paris Conservatoire, and he composed his most profound music in old age. His existence, steadily productive and outwardly imperturbable, was undermined by self-doubt, an unhappy marriage and a tragic loss of hearing. In this detailed study Graham Johnson places the vocal music within twin contexts: Fauré's own life story, and the parallel lives of his many poets. We encounter such giants as Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine, the patrician Leconte de Lisle, the forgotten Armand Silvestre and the Belgian symbolist Charles Van Lerberghe. The chronological range of the narrative encompasses Fauré's first poet, Victor Hugo, who railed against Napoleon III in the 1850s, and the last, Jean de La Ville de Mirmont, killed in action in the First World War. In this comprehensive and richly illustrated study each of Fauré's 109 songs receives a separate commentary. Additional chapters for the student singer and serious music lover discuss interpretation and performance in both aesthetical and practical terms. Richard Stokes provides parallel English translations of the original French texts. In the twenty-first century musical modernity is evaluated differently from the way it was assessed thirty years ago. Fauré is no longer merely a 'Master of Charms' circumscribed by the belle époque. His status as a great composer of timeless

Gabriel Fauré: The Songs and their Poets (Guildhall Research Studies)

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Social Democratic Politics in Britain, 1881-1911 (Studies in British History, V. 67)

History

Europe

Edwin Mellen Pr

This collection of eight 'lectures' by internationally acclaimed pianist, Graham Johnson, is based on a series of concert talks given at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama as part of the Benjamin Britten festival in 2001. The focus of the book is on Britten's songs, starting with his earliest compositions in the genre. Graham Johnson suggests that the nature of Britten's creativity is especially apparent in his setting of poetry, that he becomes the poet's alter-ego. A chapter on Britten's settings of Auden and Eliot explores the particular influences these writers brought to bear at opposite poles of the composer's life. The inspiration of fellow musicians is also discussed, with a chapter devoted to Britten's time in Russia and his friendship with the Rostropovitch family. Closer to home, the book places in context Britten's folksong settings, illustrating how he subverted the English folksong tradition by refusing to accept previous definitions of what constituted national loyalty. Drawing on letters and diaries, and featuring a number of previously unpublished photographs, this book illuminates aspects of Britten's songs from the personal perspective of the pianist who worked closely with Peter Pears after Benjamin Britten was unable to perform through illness. Johnson worked with Pears on learning the role of Aschenbach in 'Death in Venice' and was official pianist for the first master class given by Peter Pears at Snape in 1972.

Britten, Voice and Piano: Lectures on the Vocal Music of Benjamin Britten

Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) is widely acknowledged as one of the twentieth century's most significant masters of vocal music --solo, choral, and operatic-- quite apart from his achievements in instrumental spheres. But what it cost him, and the determined bravery it took for his unusual talent to thrive, has always been underestimated. In this seminal biography, which will serve as the definitive guide to the songs, acclaimed collaborative pianist Graham Johnson shows that it is in Poulenc's extraordinary songs, and seeing how they fit into his life --which included crippling guilt on account of his sexuality-- that we discover&nbsp;Poulenc heart and soul. With Jeremy Sams's vibrant new song translations, the first in over forty years, and the insight that comes from a lifetime of performing this music, Johnson provides an essential volume for singers, pianists, listeners, and readers interested in the artistic milieu of modernism in the first half of the twentieth century.

Poulenc: The Life in the Songs

Liveright

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Johnson, Graham. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Johnson, Graham

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Johnson, Graham. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

A French Song Companion

A French Song Companion

Franz Schubert: The Complete Songs

Images You Should Not Masturbate To

Rejected Books: The Most Unpublishable Books of All Time

Britten, Voice and Piano: Lectures on the Vocal Music of Benjamin Britten (Guildhall Research Studies)

Gabriel Fauré: The Songs and their Poets (Guildhall Research Studies)

Social Democratic Politics in Britain, 1881-1911 (Studies in British History, V. 67)

Britten, Voice and Piano: Lectures on the Vocal Music of Benjamin Britten

Poulenc: The Life in the Songs