Product Description: The book celebrates Arnold Whittall's 80th birthday with a collection of his key writings on Richard Wagner. The first ten chapters deal with the three Romantic operas, the four parts of The Ring and the three remaining music dramas...read more

Product Description: From the earliest years of the 20th century composers sought ways in which to break from earlier musical traditions. Serialism is one of the most prominent innovations resulting from this. From Schoenberg to Stockhausen, Berg to Boulez, this introduction tells the story of how serialism emerged, and provides a basic outline of serial compositional techniques...read more

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Product Description: The second in a series of handbooks on contemporary composers, this is an introduction to the work of Jonathan Harvey. It describes his creative development and includes a substantial interview with Harvey, as well as a comprehensive work list...read more

Product Description: This survey of the most significant modern composers and their techniques has become a standard work on the constantly shifting musical developments during the greater part of the twentieth century. In a concise and accessible narrative, Whittall examines the continued but declining commitment to tonality, twelve-note serialism, and the gradual emergence of new aesthetic attitudes and concepts of musical form...read more

Looks at how Romanticism differs from Classicism, and discusses the works of Paganini, Donizetti, Berlioz, Chopin, Liszt, Wagner, Verdi, Grieg, Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler, Puccini, and Rakhmaninov

In this classic study of Benjamin Britten and Michael Tippett, Arnold Whittall builds up a unique double portrait of the two leading composers of their generation. For this second, revised edition Whittall includes a new chapter on Tippett's major works of the 1980s: the Piano Sonata No. 4, the large-scale choral composition The Mask of Time and the most recent opera, New Year. In addition, new information on the Britten repertoire and an updated bibliography are also presented. (view table of contents)