Alex Ross   Alex Ross, renowned New Yorker music critic and author of the international bestseller and Pulitzer Prize finalist The Rest Is Noise, reveals how Richard Wagner became the proving ground for...

Simon Morrison Acclaimed for treading new ground in operatic studies of the period, Simon Morrison’s influential and now-classic text explores music and the occult during the Russian Symbolist movement. Including...

Edited by Anastasia Belina and Derek B Scott Those whose thoughts of musical theatre are dominated by the Broadway musical will find this book a revelation. From the 1850s to...

Richard Crawford The life of a beloved American composer reflected through his music, writings, and letters. New York City native and gifted pianist George Gershwin blossomed as an accompanist before...

Nick Hornby Annie's put fifteen years into safe, slightly obsessive Duncan, and now she'd like her money back, please. It's time to move on. But she lives in Gooleness, the...

Matthew Mugmon Reveals how Aaron Copland's complex relationship with the music of Gustav Mahler shaped his vision for American music in the twentieth century.The iconic American composer Aaron Copland (1900-1990)...

Laurenz Lutteken Richard Strauss is an outlier in the context of twentieth century music. Some consider him a composer of the late romantic period, while others declare him a traitor...

Rita McAllester Among major 20th-century composers whose music is poorly understood, Sergei Prokofiev stands out conspicuously. The turbulent times in which Prokofiev lived and the chronology of his travels-he left...

David Schoenbaum No single American could personify what Henry Luce called the American Century. But over his eighty-one years, Isaac Stern came closer than most. Russian-Jewish parents brought him to...

Charles Rosen Beethoven’s piano sonatas form one of the most important collections of works in the whole history of music. Spanning several decades of his life as a composer, the...

Francesca Brittan The centrality of fantasy to French literary culture has long been accepted by critics, but the sonorous dimensions of the mode and its wider implications for musical production...

Benedict Taylor As one of the foremost composers, conductors, and pianists of the nineteenth century, Felix Mendelssohn played a fundamental role in the shaping of modern musical tastes through his...