This updated and expanded edition of the perennial favorite traces the line of composers from Monteverde to the tonalists of the 1990s. Schonberg discusses the lives and works of the foremost figures in classical music, weaving a fabric rich in detail and anecdote.

An authoritative guide to the lives and works of over 100 of the most famous classical composers, encompassing all styles of composition from medieval times to the present day. Including biographies for each composer, and historical information about the musical eras, events and artistic movements of that time, also how the composers influenced or changed the development of their art form.

In the scorching summer of 1976--the hottest since records began--Christopher Norton, his wife Laura and their young daughter Faye settle into their new home in north London. The faded glory of the Victorian house is the perfect place for Norton, a composer of film soundtracks, to build a recording studio of his own. But soon in the long, oppressively hot nights, Laura begins to hear something through the crackle of the baby monitor. First, a knocking...

Set in the international world of classical music, the film centers on Lydia Tár, widely considered one of the greatest living composer/conductors and first-ever female chief conductor of a major German orchestra.

"One of the most successful and distinguished artists of our time, Andrew Lloyd Webber has reigned over the musical theatre world for nearly five decades. The winner of numerous awards, including multiple Tonys and an Oscar, Lloyd Webber has enchanted millions worldwide with his music and numerous hit shows, including Jesus Christ Superstar, Evita, Cats, The Phantom of the Opera--Broadway's longest running show--and most recently, School of Rock....

lluminates Beethoven's difficult childhood, his struggle to find a wife, his ungovernable temper, his emotional volatility, his tendency to push away those trying to help him, and in middle age his obsessive compulsion to control his nephew's life.

We think we know the story of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's life. Austrian-born to a tyrannical father who worked him fiercely; unhappily married to a spendthrift woman; a child-like character ill at ease amid the aristocratic splendor of the Viennese court; a musical genius who died young thus depriving the world of future glories. Yet only that last point is actually true. In this comprehensive biography, John Suchet examines the many myths and misunderstandings...

In the early days of the new millennium, pages of a weathered original sonata manuscript--the gift of a Czech immigrant living out her final days in Queens--come into the hands of Meta Taverner, a young musicologist whose concert piano career was cut short by an injury. To Meta's eye, it appears to be an authentic eighteenth-century work; to her discerning ear, the music rendered there is hauntingly beautiful, clearly the undiscovered composition...

"A compact masterpiece dedicated to the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich -- Julian Barnes's first novel since his best-selling, Booker Prize-winning The Sense of an Ending. 1936: Shostakovich, just thirty, fears for his livelihood and his life. Stalin, hitherto a distant figure, has taken a sudden interest in his work and denounced his latest opera. Now, certain he will be exiled to Siberia (or, more likely, shot dead on the spot), he reflects...