Michael Steinberg

Michael Steinberg's highly successful listener's guides--The Symphony and The Concerto--have been universally praised for their blend of captivating biography, crystal clear musical analysis, and delightful humor. Now Steinberg follows these two greatly admired volumes with Choral Masterworks: A Listener's Guide, the only such guide available to this most popular of musical forms. Here are more than fifty illuminating essays on the classic choral masterworks, ranging from Handel's Messiah, Bach's Mass in B Minor, and Beethoven's Missa Solemnis, to works by Haydn, Brahms, Mendelssohn, and many others. Steinberg spans the entire history of classical music, from such giants of the Romantic era as Verdi and Berlioz, to leading modern composers such as Elgar, Rachmaninoff, Vaughan Williams, and Stravinsky, to contemporary masters such as John Adams and Charles Wuorinen. For each piece, Steinberg includes a fascinating biographical account of the work's genesis, often spiced with wonderful asides, such as the true story of Mozart's Requiem--Salieri had nothing to do with the composition of it, nor did he poison Mozart, who most likely died of rheumatic fever. The author also includes an astute musical analysis of each piece, one that casual music lovers can easily appreciate and that musicians and more serious fans will find invaluable. The book also includes basic information such as the various movements of the work, the organization of the chorus and orchestra, and brief historical notes on early performances. More than twenty million Americans perform regularly in choirs or choruses. Choral Masterworks will appeal not only to concert goers and CD collectors, but also to this vast multitude of choral performers, an especially engaged and active community. Steinberg, program annotator for the San Francisco, Boston, and New York Philharmonic orchestras, describes some 50 works for accompanied chorus. For each, he begins with the composer's statistics, continues to the voices and instruments in the piece, sketches its genesis and first performances and how it fits into its creator's compositional history, and leads the reader through its sections, noting what to listen for. The big boys--Bach, Beethoven, Brahms, Haydn, and Stravinsky--are represented by their major works, but the less-well-known likes of John Adams' Harmonium, based on poem

Este libro revela el rol esencial de la música en los debates acerca de la sociedad, la identidad y la cultura de la modernidad europea del siglo XIX. Michael Steinberg parte de la consideración de la música "como un género clave en la historia de la forma cultural y estética, y como un significativo componente existencial de la historia de la vida cultural". Así, en este ensayo acerca de la historia cultural de la música plantea un recorrido que va desde Mozart a Mahler, de la música sacra a la secular, incluyendo la ópera tanto como la obra sinfónica y la instrumental solista.

La presente Guía ofrece más de cincuenta ensayos sobre las obras maestras corales que abarcan toda la historia de la música clásica hasta los compositores contemporáneos. En cada uno se describe vívidamente la época de cada compositor y las circunstancias que le condujeron a escribir sus obras corales, con fascinantes detalles biográficos de su génesis. A continuación se aborda tanto la arquitectura global de la obra como su análisis musical pormenorizado, que será valioso para los amantes de la música coral, aficionados y profesionales. Asimismo, incluye información básica como los movimientos de cada obra, la organización del coro y de la orquesta y breves notas históricas sobre sus primeras representaciones. Su erudición y su capacidad para presentarla en términos claros y accesibles harán de esta Guía una lectura indispensable para mejorar nuestra comprensión y apreciación de la música coral.