- Hardcover
- Publisher: Random House Inc (April 8, 2008)
- ASIN: B001JYRIKG
- Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent reviews and essays about Music.-,
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Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Opera and the Morbidity of Music (New York Review Collections) (Hardcover)
Yesterday I received this book from Amazon, and already today I have finished reading it, it so fascinated me.- I am sure that I will read it again, more leisurely, many times.- In the first place it is necessary to state that of the 30 essays the first 27 are all book reviews i.e. commentaries on several books -- but all these reviews are so enormously perceptive and add so many facts and so many insights to our knowledge that they make reading these mere book reviews certainly very rewarding and instructive and tell us much about the erudition and intelligence of Joseph Kerman.- They contain not only a wide range of unknown or little-known facts but also illuminating comments.- The four book reviews about Mozart, the four about Beethoven, the one about Berlioz, the two about Verdi and especially the three about Wagner are truly remarkable.- Only the last three essays (The Art of the Program Note, Maria Callas, Carlos Kleiber) are not book reviews but independent chapters written by the author himself, and all three of them are,again, not only astonishingly well informed, containing a wealth of new facts, but also superbly argumented, convincing, witty, original and inspiring.- Highly recommended for every music lover, but also for the general public.-
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Classical Music is still alive!,
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This review is from: Opera and the Morbidity of Music (New York Review Collections) (Hardcover)
In spite of the title of this retrospective collection of essays, Opera and the Morbidity of Music by Joseph Kerman, the author presents a forceful and eloquent argument that opera and classical music in general is neither morbid nor moribund. He is successful through nuanced and informed writing and the use of a structure in which a group of musical themes is highlighted much like those of a Bach fugue. Kerman quotes Charles Rosen, " It is never the theme that is the central interest but the way the theme is embedded in the polyphonic structure" (p. 81). Thus the essays take on this aspect of music and in doing so become more than their individual essayistic parts. There is an ebb and flow to the collection that charmed this reader with references to musical memories and suggestions for future listening and reading. The breadth of the essays spans centuries of music and multiplicities of musical form while frequently narrowing the focus to specific composers. Over the course of thirty essays covering both the familiar (Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner) and the unfamiliar (Byrd, Monteverdi and program notes), the life of music is reviewed from baroque to the present. The whole is lively and intelligent, both informative and accessible for the general reader.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Another Great Book from Joseph K,
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Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Opera and the Morbidity of Music (New York Review Collections) (Hardcover)
I had read many of these essays before, but reading the whole thing last week blew me away. Kerman makes me open up my ears to music and open up my mind to thinking about music and its relationship with society. I found the essays on Wagner and Beethoven particularly revelatory.
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Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs):
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choral masterworks, armé masses, late operas, sonata form Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
The Magic Flute, Oxford University Press, University of California Press, Don Carlos, World War, Les Troyens, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Cambridge University Press, New York, Die Meistersinger, Charles Rosen, The Classical Style, The Romantic Generation, Don Giovanni, Maynard Solomon, Nike Wagner, Richard Wagner, Richard Taruskin, Die Walküre, The Marriage of Figaro, Fifth Symphony, Princeton University Press, The New Grove Wagner, San Francisco, Violin Concerto Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
choral masterworks, armé masses, late operas, sonata form Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
The Magic Flute, Oxford University Press, University of California Press, Don Carlos, World War, Les Troyens, The Well-Tempered Clavier, Cambridge University Press, New York, Die Meistersinger, Charles Rosen, The Classical Style, The Romantic Generation, Don Giovanni, Maynard Solomon, Nike Wagner, Richard Wagner, Richard Taruskin, Die Walküre, The Marriage of Figaro, Fifth Symphony, Princeton University Press, The New Grove Wagner, San Francisco, Violin Concerto Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Front Flap | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Flap | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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