| Product Summary | | Format: Paperback | | ISBN: 9780674011014 | | Publisher: Harvard University Press | | Publish Date: 4/10/2007 | | Buy.com Sku: 31111892 | | Item#: BSCXTH | | Dimensions (in Inches) 12H x 5.5L x 1T | | Pages: 368 |
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| | | Proposing that Arnold Schoenberg has been more discussed than heard, more tolerated than loved, Allen Shawn puts aside ultimate judgments about Schoenberg's place in music history to explore the composer's fascinating world in a series of linked essays--"soundings"--that are both searching and wonderfully suggestive. Approaching Schoenberg primarily from the listener's point of view, Shawn plunges into the details of some of Schoenberg's works while at the same time providing a broad overview of his involvements in music, painting, and the history through which he lived.
Annotation:
Allen Shawn explores the life of Arnold Schoenberg, choosing to tell the composer's story not in an academic, chronological way but as a series of offbeat, personal linked essays that look at Schoenberg's many facets, including the uneasy blend of radical and traditionalist that infuses his works.
| PraiseLos Angeles Times Book Review
"Shawn takes an eclectic approach, sometimes using Schoenberg's painting...as a guide to the music, sometimes sugaring the book with anecdotes of his own relationship as a listener and a teacher of the composer's works. Even so, Shawn feels the necessity, fairly frequently, of injecting arguments that need the illustration of written music--and therefore require not only musical literacy on the part of the reader but a handy piano. Still, Shawn, a composer and teacher, writes with an enthusiasm for the music of words....If Shawn's exhalations lead readers to put down the book and put on a CD of Schoenberg's opera MOSES UND ARON, the maestro could hardly complain." - Jonathan Levi 02/03/2002New York Times
"Mr. Shawn is at his best discussing the motivations for Schoenberg's exploration of atonality at the beginning of the 20th century....Schoenberg's quest for a new musical grammar culminated in his formulation of 12-tone theory, and Mr. Shawn traces that quest through brilliant and lucid essays on the major works. Alas, these chapters...are not for general readers. Still, much of the book is quite accessible, for Mr. Shawn is an engaging writer." - Anthony Tommasini 02/13/2002 Kirkus
"A splendid survey of the life and music of the 20th century's most controversial composer....Shawn's coverage of the basic biographical facts is as entertaining as his readable musical analysis. His wry wit and affection for his subject humanize Schoenberg for the first time." 11/15/2001 |
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