Features an introduction to each period, as well as its key composers, personalities, styles, forms, and instruments. (view table of contents)

Organized chronologically by era, an authoritative guide features in each chapter an introduction to each period, as well as its key composers, personalities, styles, forms, and instruments; and is extensively cross-referenced. and providing a Listening Guide for each era, historical background, discography, bibliography, and nine hundred full-color illustrations. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Dmitry Shostakovich's memoirs, Testimony, `related to and edited by Solomon Volkov', have been the subject of fierce debate since their publication in 1979. Was Testimony a forgery, made up by an impudent impostor, or was it the deathbed confession of a bent, but unbroken, man? Even now, years after the fall of the communist regime, a coterie of well-placed Western musicologists have regularly raised objections to Testimony, hoping with each attack to undermine the picture of Shostakovich presented in his memoirs that of a man of enormous moral stature, bitterly disillusioned with the Soviet system...read more