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Topic: Musician Biographies  (Read 2445 times)

Offline MzrtMusic

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Musician Biographies
on: September 01, 2004, 05:50:52 AM
I was just wondering what your favorite biographies are. About performers, or composers, it doesn't matter. I'm just looking for some good music reading, and I've exhausted my library. Also, if you wouldn't mind, why is each particular title on your favorite list?

Love,

Sarah
My heart is full of many things...there are moments when I feel that speech is nothing after all.
-- Ludwig Van Beethoven

Offline bernhard

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Re: Musician Biographies
Reply #1 on: September 01, 2004, 08:56:07 PM
First have a look here:

https://www.pianoforum.net/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=misc;action=display;num=1067000286

And here are a few more:

Michael Steen - The Lives and Times of the Great Composers
This is a great book! Not only it tells you about a number of famous composers lives, as it details the historic context and social mores of the times he lived. Highly recommended (and very readable)

Janice Galloway – Clara (Jonathan Cape) – A well researched fictionalised account of the life of Clara Schumann. Robert Schumann, Brahms and Fredrick Wieck also figure prominently.

Not really a biography, but nevertheless very interesting is:

Schumann on Music (Dover) – a collection of Schumann’s critical writings on music.

Although a bit off topic, this list may also interest you:

https://www.allegromusiconline.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=CTGY&Store_Code=AMO&Category_Code=CS

Best wishes,
Bernhard.
The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side. (Hunter Thompson)

Online ted

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Re: Musician Biographies
Reply #2 on: September 03, 2004, 05:53:12 AM
"Delius as I Knew Him", by Eric Fenby, is very interesting. It didn't particularly change the way I hear Delius's music, but Fenby lets slip several very insightful observations about the composer's abilities, methods and opinions.

Eric Fenby was responsible for one of the greatest acts of kindness in twentieth century music. He grinds his axe about religion in one rather silly chapter but overall his love of the music and his reverence for the composer shine through; a book so fascinating I read it in one sitting.
"Mistakes are the portals of discovery." - James Joyce

Offline ChopinLoverInPA

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Re: Musician Biographies
Reply #3 on: September 03, 2004, 05:08:47 PM
"The Lives of the Great Composers" -- Harold C. Schonberg.

Focuses more on the composers as people, as opposed to musically, but still pretty interesting...

Offline bernhard

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Re: Musician Biographies
Reply #4 on: September 04, 2004, 04:53:28 AM
Quote
"Delius as I Knew Him", by Eric Fenby, is very interesting. It didn't particularly change the way I hear Delius's music, but Fenby lets slip several very insightful observations about the composer's abilities, methods and opinions.

Eric Fenby was responsible for one of the greatest acts of kindness in twentieth century music. He grinds his axe about religion in one rather silly chapter but overall his love of the music and his reverence for the composer shine through; a book so fascinating I read it in one sitting.


Ken Russel made a very interesting movie about Delius based on  this book and Fenby appears in it (as himself) It is available in DVD. By the way Delius - although he didn't wirte much piano musci - wrote three superb preludes for piano. Worth checking.

Best wishes,
Bernhard
The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side. (Hunter Thompson)

Offline pianostring

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Re: Musician Biographies
Reply #5 on: September 04, 2004, 05:50:40 AM
Have you read The Tender Tyrant, about Nadia Boulanger?  She taught composition to most of the American composers, as well as Europeans, who amounted to anything in the 20th Century.  

There are also good biographies on Clara Schumann and Amy Beach, plus a short one on Cecile Chaminade.  (We women need all the models we can get).  

I agree with Bernhard about Janice Galloway's "Clara".  It's a great read!

Ellen

Online ted

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Re: Musician Biographies
Reply #6 on: September 04, 2004, 10:14:22 AM
There's a site explaining a lot about the Delius film at

https://www.musicweb.uk.net/classrev/2001/Dec01/Delius_Russell.htm

Ken Russell also made a superb television documentary about Elgar which is also available on DVD. One very surprising fact is that Elgar and Delius became good friends in their later years. As Fenby says, two musical personalities more dissimilar would be hard to imagine, yet Elgar spent time at Delius's home and the two got on very well indeed.

My teacher, as a child prodigy sent to Llandaff cathedral as a choirboy around 1900, had lessons in composition from Elgar, who took a shine to the boy's abilities. He often told me how Elgar was utterly unlike the archetypal great composer - more like a kindly farmer - completely without airs and graces. Debussy used to visit too, and improvise, playing one motif for hours on end, driving all within earshot to distraction.

It is regrettable that my teacher did not get around to writing his autobiography, as it would have been of the utmost interest. As a teenager, I thought he was making up all these anecdotes about famous people , but after his death I found that they were true.

Thanks for pointing out Delius's piano pieces, Bernhard; I shall make a point of studying them; I really didn't know he wrote any. The trouble with his music is that it is so overpoweringly evocative and individual. Its influence bobs up in my playing in all sorts of ways and it becomes difficult to stop short of imitation. There are those moments when he interrupts a phrase with a luscious, fat, unusual ninth and just sits on it - exquisite - like being surprised by the heavy scent of something in the garden at night.

From what Fenby says, Delius required many tryouts at the piano and many misfires, even when younger and well. Apparently he had a shocking sense of pitch. This was quite unlike Elgar who, we are told, used to go for a ride on a bicycle or a horse and come back with an orchestral movement finished in his head. I suppose results are what matter in the end though, not their method of generation.

Cheers,
Ted.
"Mistakes are the portals of discovery." - James Joyce

Offline bernhard

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Re: Musician Biographies
Reply #7 on: September 06, 2004, 12:58:28 AM
Quote
There's a site explaining a lot about the Delius film at

https://www.musicweb.uk.net/classrev/2001/Dec01/Delius_Russell.htm

Ken Russell also made a superb television documentary about Elgar which is also available on DVD. One very surprising fact is that Elgar and Delius became good friends in their later years. As Fenby says, two musical personalities more dissimilar would be hard to imagine, yet Elgar spent time at Delius's home and the two got on very well indeed.

My teacher, as a child prodigy sent to Llandaff cathedral as a choirboy around 1900, had lessons in composition from Elgar, who took a shine to the boy's abilities. He often told me how Elgar was utterly unlike the archetypal great composer - more like a kindly farmer - completely without airs and graces. Debussy used to visit too, and improvise, playing one motif for hours on end, driving all within earshot to distraction.

It is regrettable that my teacher did not get around to writing his autobiography, as it would have been of the utmost interest. As a teenager, I thought he was making up all these anecdotes about famous people , but after his death I found that they were true.

Thanks for pointing out Delius's piano pieces, Bernhard; I shall make a point of studying them; I really didn't know he wrote any. The trouble with his music is that it is so overpoweringly evocative and individual. Its influence bobs up in my playing in all sorts of ways and it becomes difficult to stop short of imitation. There are those moments when he interrupts a phrase with a luscious, fat, unusual ninth and just sits on it - exquisite - like being surprised by the heavy scent of something in the garden at night.

From what Fenby says, Delius required many tryouts at the piano and many misfires, even when younger and well. Apparently he had a shocking sense of pitch. This was quite unlike Elgar who, we are told, used to go for a ride on a bicycle or a horse and come back with an orchestral movement finished in his head. I suppose results are what matter in the end though, not their method of generation.

Cheers,
Ted.


Yes, I love Delius, he is my favorite English composer.

Elgar also wrote precious little piano music. I just came accross two interesting miniatures by him:

Presto
Griffinesque

(Two miniatures for piano solo by Elgar - Novello).

Composed in the 1880's they could easily be mistaken by Schumann pieces.

And of course the Enigma variations (if you feel like something more substantial) were originally written for piano.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.
The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There's also a negative side. (Hunter Thompson)
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