The Bard Music Festival30

  • Camille Saint-Saëns and His World Camille Saint-Saëns and His World Edited by Jann Pasler

    Camille Saint-Saëns—perhaps the foremost French musical figure of the late nineteenth century and a composer who wrote in nearly every musical genre, from opera and the symphony to film music—is now being rediscovered after a...
  • Shostakovich and His World Shostakovich and His World Edited by Laurel E. Fay

    Dmitri Shostakovich (1906-1975) has a reputation as one of the leading composers of the twentieth century. But the story of his controversial role in history is still being told, and his full measure as a musician still being taken....
  • Charles Ives and His World Charles Ives and His World Edited by J. Burkholder

    This volume shows Charles Ives in the context of his world in a number of revealing ways. Five new essays examine Ives's relationships to European music and to American music, politics, business, and landscape. J. Peter Burkholder shows...
  • Bartók and His World Bartók and His World Edited by Peter Laki

    Béla Bartók, who died in New York fifty years ago this September, is one of the most frequently performed twentieth-century composers. He is also the subject of a rapidly growing critical and analytical literature. Bartók was born in...
  • Mahler and His World Mahler and His World Edited by Karen Painter

    From the composer's lifetime to the present day, Gustav Mahler's music has provoked extreme responses from the public and from experts. Poised between the Romantic tradition he radically renewed and the austere modernism whose exponents...
  • Beethoven and His World Beethoven and His World Edited by Scott Burnham and Michael P. Steinberg

    Few composers even begin to approach Beethoven's pervasive presence in modern Western culture, from the concert hall to the comic strip. Edited by a cultural historian and a music theorist, Beethoven and His World gathers eminent...
  • Korngold and His World Korngold and His World Edited by Daniel Goldmark and Kevin C. Karnes

    Erich Wolfgang Korngold (1897–1957) was the last compositional prodigy to emerge from the Austro-German tradition of Mozart and Mendelssohn. He was lauded in his youth by everyone from Mahler to Puccini and his auspicious career in...
  • Rimsky-Korsakov and His World Rimsky-Korsakov and His World Edited by Marina Frolova-Walker

    During his lifetime, Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844–1908) was a composer whose work had great influence not only in his native Russia but also internationally. While he remains well-known in Russia—where many of his fifteen operas...
  • Sergey Prokofiev and His World Sergey Prokofiev and His World Edited by Simon Morrison

    Sergey Prokofiev (1891-1953), arguably the most popular composer of the twentieth century, led a life of triumph and tragedy. The story of his prodigious childhood in tsarist Russia, maturation in the West, and rise and fall as a...
  • Aaron Copland and His World Aaron Copland and His World Edited by Carol J. Oja and Judith Tick

    Aaron Copland and His World reassesses the legacy of one of America's best-loved composers at a pivotal moment--as his life and work shift from the realm of personal memory to that of history. This collection of seventeen essays by...
  • Chopin and His World Chopin and His World Edited by Jonathan D. Bellman and Halina Goldberg

    Fryderyk Chopin (1810–49), although the most beloved of piano composers, remains a contradictory figure, an artist of virtually universal appeal who preferred the company of only a few sympathetic friends and listeners. Chopin and His...
  • Giacomo Puccini and His World Giacomo Puccini and His World Edited by Arman Schwartz and Emanuele Senici

    Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) is the world's most frequently performed operatic composer, yet he is only beginning to receive serious scholarly attention. In Giacomo Puccini and His World, an international roster of music specialists...
  • Schumann and His World Schumann and His World Edited by R. Larry Todd

    We know Robert Schumann in many ways: as a visionary composer, a seasoned journalist, a cultured man of letters, and a genius who, having passed his mantle on to the young Brahms, succumbed to mental illness in 1856. Drawing on recent...
  • Tchaikovsky and His World Tchaikovsky and His World Edited by Leslie Kearney

    Tchaikovsky has long intrigued music-lovers as a figure who straddles many borders--between East and West, nationalism and cosmopolitanism, tradition and innovation, tenderness and bombast, masculine and feminine. In this book, through...
  • Carlos Chávez and His World Carlos Chávez and His World Edited by Leonora Saavedra

    Carlos Chávez (1899–1978) is the central figure in Mexican music of the twentieth century and among the most eminent of all Latin American modernist composers. An enfant terrible in his own country, Chávez was an integral part of...
  • Franz Schubert and His World Franz Schubert and His World Edited by Christopher H. Gibbs and Morten Solvik

    During his short lifetime, Franz Schubert (1797–1828) contributed to a wide variety of musical genres, from intimate songs and dances to ambitious chamber pieces, symphonies, and operas. The essays and translated documents in Franz...
  • Stravinsky and His World Stravinsky and His World Tamara Levitz

    Stravinsky and His World brings together an international roster of scholars to explore fresh perspectives on the life and music of Igor Stravinsky. Situating Stravinsky in new intellectual and musical contexts, the essays in this...
  • Dvorák and His World Dvorák and His World Edited by Michael Beckerman

    Antonin Dvorák made his famous trip to the United States one hundred years ago, but despite an enormous amount of attention from scholars and critics since that time, he remains an elusive figure. Comprising both interpretive essays...
  • Haydn and His World Haydn and His World Edited by Elaine R. Sisman

    Joseph Haydn's symphonies and string quartets are staples of the concert repertory, yet many aspects of this founding genius of the Viennese Classical style are only beginning to be explored. From local Kapellmeister to international...
  • Mendelssohn and His World Mendelssohn and His World Edited by R. Larry Todd

    During the 1830s and 1840s the remarkably versatile composer-pianist-organist-conductor Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy stood at the forefront of German and English musical life. Bringing together previously unpublished essays by historians...
  • Schoenberg and His World Schoenberg and His World Edited by Walter Frisch

    As the twentieth century draws to a close, Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) is being acknowledged as one of its most significant and multifaceted composers. Schoenberg and His World explores the richness of his genius through commentary...
  • Edward Elgar and His World Edward Elgar and His World Edited by Byron Adams

    Edward Elgar (1857-1934) is undoubtedly one of the most fascinating, important, and influential figures in the history of British music. He rose from humble beginnings and achieved fame with music that to this day is beloved by...
  • Janácek and His World Janácek and His World Edited by Michael Beckerman

    Once thought to be a provincial composer of only passing interest to eccentrics, Leos Janácek (1854-1928) is now widely acknowledged as one of the most powerful and original creative figures of his time. Banned for all purposes from...
  • Jean Sibelius and His World Jean Sibelius and His World Edited by Daniel M. Grimley

    Perhaps no twentieth-century composer has provoked a more varied reaction among the music-loving public than Jean Sibelius (1865–1957). Originally hailed as a new Beethoven by much of the Anglo-Saxon world, he was also widely...
  • Alban Berg and His World Alban Berg and His World Edited by Christopher Hailey

    Alban Berg and His World is a collection of essays and source material that repositions Berg as the pivotal figure of Viennese musical modernism. His allegiance to the austere rigor of Arnold Schoenberg's musical revolution was balanced...
  • Franz Liszt and His World Franz Liszt and His World Edited by Christopher H. Gibbs and Dana Gooley

    No nineteenth-century composer had more diverse ties to his contemporary world than Franz Liszt (1811-1886). At various points in his life he made his home in Vienna, Paris, Weimar, Rome, and Budapest. In his roles as keyboard virtuoso...
  • Richard Wagner and His World Richard Wagner and His World Edited by Thomas S. Grey

    Richard Wagner (1813-1883) aimed to be more than just a composer. He set out to redefine opera as a "total work of art" combining the highest aspirations of drama, poetry, the symphony, the visual arts, even religion and philosophy....
  • Brahms and His World Brahms and His World: Revised Edition Edited by Walter Frisch and Kevin C. Karnes

    Since its first publication in 1990, Brahms and His World has become a key text for listeners, performers, and scholars interested in the life, work, and times of one of the nineteenth century's most celebrated composers. In this...
  • Debussy and His World Debussy and His World Edited by Jane Fulcher

    Claude Debussy's Paris was factionalized, politicized, and litigious. It was against this background of ferment and change--which characterized French society and music from the Franco-Prussian War to World War I--that Debussy...
  • Richard Strauss and His World Richard Strauss and His World Edited by Bryan Gilliam

    Strongly influencing European musical life from the 1880s through the First World War and remaining highly productive into the 1940s, Richard Strauss enjoyed a remarkable career in a constantly changing artistic and political climate....