- ISBN13: 9780761120728
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
Product Description
A complete education in classical music, written with verve and wit. No music lover can pick up this one-volume compendium without becoming a more knowledgeable, discerning listener. • The sonata form revealed, and why it’s been deeply satisfying for three centuries. • What to listen for in Brahms, a self-described Classicist who was one of music’s great innovators. • Pizzicato, fioritura, parlando, glissando. • The transformative power of Toscanini–who e… More >>
The NPR Listener’s Encyclopedia of Classical Music
Tags: Classical, classicist, complete education, discerning listener, Encyclopedia, encyclopedia of classical music, Listener's, Music, music lover, pizzicato, remainder mark, sonata form, transformative power, volume compendium
#1 by L. McCann on April 22, 2010 - 11:36 pm
this was a gift and not read by me. My son, however, did like it very much.
Rating: 5 / 5
#2 by Susie on April 23, 2010 - 2:05 am
I would have rated this much higher if the code to access the Naxos site actually worked. I have had no luck after numerous tries. Naxos did not reply after they were contacted online. The code may have expired or something.
Rating: 1 / 5
#3 by David A. Baer on April 23, 2010 - 4:58 am
Public radio, that soft target of pundits and ideologues, will be written up by cultural historians as one of the small candles of sanity that under the rhetorical swagger lent its soft glow to the quiet and the commuter.
How fitting, then, that this superbly accessible encyclopedia of classical music should bear the ‘NPR’ name (for ‘National Public Radio’) in its title. The ‘Recommended Recordings’ box that follows many of the entires will be hotly debated and even derided as falsely canonical. But pragmatic and novice listeners will welcome this feature as a point of departure from those awestruck moments of overwhelming beauty when one knows he must *have* that piece that just played, or perish.
My copy came unexpectedly from WCPE, the fine listener-supported station in North Carolina that I stream through my computer on five continents of business travel destinations, a little bit of almost-home that works its magic on the anonymity and sameness of hotel rooms. You may, less fortunate, have to buy your own.
Don’t hesitate to do so if you find yourself often accompanied by the immortal – one hopes that turns out to be the right word – sounds of the West’s still-living ‘classical’ music tradition. At least some of the angels, after all, must certainly sing Mozart. Listen to him there, read about him here, and you may one morning find yourself singing – every so slightly more knowledgeably – with them.
Rating: 5 / 5
#4 by Lynn J. Smith on April 23, 2010 - 5:54 am
Even for the true classic music afficiando, this is a helpful compendium of names and selections to use when purchasing albums or for general hands on reference.
Rating: 5 / 5
#5 by J. Fallon on April 23, 2010 - 6:08 am
The text is interesting. However – this you don’t read front to back. If I want to look up Verdi, there’s a table of contents; and the V’s are a few hundred or thousand swipes; or using the location bar at the bottom of the iPhone version until somehow you hit the right page. A simple search feature (like Adobe Reader), or an alphabetical index would make this (and many non-fiction books) much more useful. As it is – an expensive sampler for the paperback, which I should have gotten.
Rating: 3 / 5