A musical book of days

LEBRECHT,Norman

Collins

Here is one of the most enjoyable and illuminating books ever published for the music lover, a feast of delightful anecdotes that reveal the all-too-human side of the great composers and performers.
There are stories of appetites (Handel eating dinner for three), embarrassments (Brahms falling asleep as Liszt plays), oddities (Bruckner's dog being trained to howl at Wagner), and devotions (a lovely admirer disrobing in tribute to Puccini). There are memorable accounts of Stravinsky telling Proust how much he hates Beethoven, of Tchaikovsky's first bewildering telephone call, of Dvorak's strange love of pigeons, and of Verdi's intricate maneuvering to keep the now-famous melody of "La donna è mobile" top secret.
There is also wonderful trivia (Beethoven loved to cat "bread soup" made with ten raw eggs), along with eccentric strategies (Verdi, disturbed by the sound of street organs playing arias from his operas, hired them all for a season and kept them locked in a room). There are examples of musicians munificent generosity (Haydn called Mozart "the greatest composer known to me, either in person or by name"), and scathing dismissal ("Have you heard any Stockhausen?" the conductor Sir Thomas Beecham was asked. "No," he replied, "but I believe I have trodden in some").
Collected from thousands of books, articles, and unpublished manuscripts (with historical sources provided in extensive notes), these anecdotes appear in their original form, throwing fresh light on familiar figures in the musical hall of fame. For browsing, reading, research and amusement, this book is a grand entertainment for concert-goers, record-buyers, operamanes, gossips and music lovers everywhere.

Book of Musical Anecdotes

Arts & Photography

Music

Free Press

Inflated egos, corporate insanity, slave labour, sexual excess, dazzling genius. Welcome to the world of classical recording. "Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness" is a sparkling expose of the strange truth and sheer brilliance behind the classical music recording industry. Leading music critic Norman Lebrecht charts its rise since the great Caruso's first gramophone bestseller of 1902 and predicts the industry's imminent doom in the face of schmaltzy crossover albums and new technology. From the imperious Karajan to the perfectionist Toscanini and charismatic Bernstein, the leading figures are all here, depicted in witty, incisive pen portraits. Including Lebrecht's own selections of 100 recorded masterpieces and twenty that should never have been made, this is a compelling story of flamboyant maestros, lifelong alliances, disastrous personality clashes and entrepreneurial masterstrokes.

Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness: The Secret Life and Shameful Death of the Classical Record Industry

Penguin Books, Ltd.

Depicts the temperamental feuds between a variety of musicians, composers, conductors, and music critics, including Mozart, Wagner, Mahler, and Toscanini

Discord: Conflict and the making of music

A. Deutsch

See notes

Twentieth century music has been remarkable for its pluralism. The various stylesatonality, neo-classicism, nationalism, serialism, jazz, computer music, minimalism, electronics, folklorism, happenings,” sheer chancehave been far from monolithic, and experimentation has been, perhaps, the century's only defining feature. With over 2500 entries, The Companion to 20th-Century Music is the first book to comprehensively define and applaud this diversity. Norman Lebrecht celebrates variety and innovation, assessing composers and musicians according to artistic merit rather than ideological or institutional eminence. He states that his purpose is to demythologize, to enlighten, and to entertain,” so he writes in a readable, narrative style, free of jargon and abbreviations. The end result is the perfect companion to the music of our time.

The Companion To 20th-century Music

Biographies & Memoirs

Arts & Literature

Da Capo Press

From the author of The Song of Names (winner of the 2002 Whitbread First Novel Award), a powerful new novel that explores the reverberations of love and hate in the story of one man’s unlikely survival. In an unnamed country at the end of a world war, Paul Miller escapes from a labor camp, collapsing after running only a few hundred feet. He is taken in by a young woman named Alice, and by the time she has nursed him back to health, the war has ended. With no one to return to and learning to love the woman who saved him, Paul decides to stay where he is. Over time he marries Alice, has a family, helps to rebuild the village, and, eventually, becomes its mayor. But Paul is inescapably haunted by his life before the war, by his time in the camp, and by the fact that the people who are now his friends ignored for years the labor camp in their midst. When the camp’s commander returns to the village, Paul is at last faced with the moral dilemma that will force him to choose between vengeance and forgiveness. The Game of Opposites tells a universal tale of good and evil with extraordinary humanity and poignancy. It is a stunning evocation of the capability for both within all of us.

The Game of Opposites: A Novel

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

Pantheon

In an unnamed country at the end of a world war, Paul Miller escapes from a labor camp, collapsing after a few hundred feet. Taken in by a young woman he learns to love, Paul decides to stay where he is, and, as the war ends, he marries, starts a family, and helps to rebuild the village. But Paul is inescapably haunted by his life before the war, by his time in the camp, and by the fact that the people who are now his friends ignored for years the horrors in their midst. So when the camp’s commander suddenly returns to the village, Paul finds himself forced to choose between vengeance and forgiveness. The Game of Opposites is a universal tale of good and evil, and a stunning evocation of the capability for both within us all.

The Game of Opposites

Literary

Anchor

Although Gustav Mahler was a famous conductor in Vienna and New York, the music that he wrote was condemned during his lifetime and for many years after his death in 1911. “Pages of dreary emptiness,” sniffed a leading American conductor. Yet today, almost one hundred years later, Mahler has displaced Beethoven as a box-office draw and exerts a unique influence on both popular music and film scores. Mahler’s coming-of-age began with such 1960s phenomena as Leonard Bernstein’s boxed set of his symphonies and Luchino Visconti’s film Death in Venice, which used Mahler’s music in its sound track. But that was just the first in a series of waves that established Mahler not just as a great composer but also as an oracle with a personal message for every listener. There are now almost two thousand recordings of his music, which has become an irresistible launchpad for young maestros such as Gustavo Dudamel. Why Mahler? Why does his music affect us in the way it does? Norman Lebrecht, one of the world’s most widely read cultural commentators, has been wrestling obsessively with Mahler for half his life. Pacing out his every footstep from birthplace to grave, scrutinizing his manuscripts, talking to those who knew him, Lebrecht constructs a compelling new portrait of Mahler as a man who lived determinedly outside his own times. Mahler was—along with Picasso, Einstein, Freud, Kafka, and Joyce—a maker of our modern world. “Mahler dealt with issues I could recognize,” writes Lebrecht, “with racism, workplace chaos, social conflict, relationship breakdown, alienation, depression, and the limitations of medical knowledge.” Why Mahler? is a book that shows how music can change our lives.

Why Mahler?: How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed Our World

Mahler Remembered

Using previously unpublished documents, Lebrecht constructs a profile of Gustav Mahler, a man and musician far more complex than is generally suspected. Idealistic or pragmatic, Mahler engendered contrasting impressions in those who lived and worked with him. Photos.

W.W. Norton & Co., Inc.

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

Books by LEBRECHT,Norman

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

A musical book of days

Book of Musical Anecdotes

Maestros, Masterpieces and Madness: The Secret Life and Shameful Death of the Classical Record Industry

Discord: Conflict and the making of music

Book of Musical Anecdotes

The Companion To 20th-century Music

The Game of Opposites: A Novel

The Game of Opposites

Why Mahler?: How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed Our World

Mahler Remembered