The Penguin Companion to Classical Music [Paperback]

Paul Griffiths (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 30, 2005

In this impressive volume, music critic Paul Griffiths offers a succinct and comprehensive guide to the history, forms, and personalities of classical music. Here readers will find:

• Biographies of thousands of composers from Albinoni to Zappa, with in-depth treatment of major figures
• Coverage of individual works, including plot summaries of operas and ballets
• Articles on the history of music and instruments
• Entries on musical forms, from medieval plainchant to
z contemporary minimalism
• Clear definitions of technical terms and jargon
• And much more

This is a must for all those interested in the colorful and complex universe of classical music.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Paul Griffiths, former chief music critic of the New Yorker and a regular contributor to the New York Times, has been writing about music professionally for more than thirty years and is a recipient of the Commonwealth Writers Prize.

Product Details

• Paperback: 912 pages
• Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (August 30, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140515593
• ISBN-13: 978-0140515596
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,119,400 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

50 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Book for Dipping Into or For Reading Cover-to-Cover, February 15, 2006

By 

J Scott Morrison (Middlebury VT, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Penguin Companion to Classical Music (Paperback)

I'm more than a little surprised that this book, published in August 2005, hadn't already received a review by the time of my own review here in mid-February 2006. There has been a lot of buzz about the book, not least because it is the work of one man: Paul Griffiths, former music critic of The New Yorker and the New York Times. The book goes toe to toe with other similar books like the Oxford Dictionary of Music or the Harvard Dictionary of Music, and others of that ilk. It appears to me to be the equal of those which were written by committees of musicologists. And it has the advantage of putting forth the viewpoints of a single author. I found myself browsing with utter delight. My problem with browsing was that when I was referred from an article on, say, Beethoven to one on Handel, I would get side-tracked when, as I turned pages, I came across an article on Frau ohne Schatten, Mirella Freni, or the French sixth. But then that's part of the pleasure of a book of this sort. I took to writing down where I wanted to eventually get to in the book because most times I would get so caught up in the intervening reading that I'd forgotten where I had intended to go.

The book contains short articles (and some not so short -- the one on Beethoven, for instance, takes six pages) on innumerable topics, covered in nearly 900 pages. It covers composers well-known (Beethoven, Bach, Brahms) and those barely heard of (Franchetti, Nanino, Gruenberg), as well as instrumentalists, music publishers, conductors, singers and the like. Basic (and some not-so-basic) musical terms are defined and sometimes examples given. There are articles on the various musical instruments and their histories, as well as disquisitions on various musical forms, techniques, styles, artistic movements et al. There are brief articles on important musical works (e.g. Goldberg Variations) and he provides brief synopses of operas.

Griffiths writes in a smooth modern authoritative-yet-casual style that is extremely easy to read; this is no surprise as he is also a published poet and novelist. He includes enough oddities and rare facts to make a grizzled veteran like myself want to keep reading. Yet he covers the basics without becoming pedantic or pompous. When in an article he uses an abbreviation or set of initials (e.g. LSO: London Symphony Orchestra) one can find the definition under the alphabetical listing for that term. One small deficiency is that he makes no effort to provide pronunciations of non-English terms. As in any work of this scope, he has had to make decisions about what to include and what to leave out. Thus, pianist Marc-André Hamelin rates an article, but his pianistic colleague Stephen Hough does not. One is amazed, though, at how much he manages to include without the work assuming truly gargantuan proportions; in its paperback format the book is easy to handle and will not break your toe if you drop it. It has an attractive format, the paper is sturdy and the print easy to read.

This book would be a valuable addition to any musiclover's library. Strongly recommended.

Scott Morrison

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Marvellous Book, NOT on the Kindle, August 12, 2010

By 

Michael R - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Penguin Companion to Classical Music (Kindle Edition)

Outstanding book. But the inability to search easily renders it useless on the kindle platform. For example I challenge anyone to find the entry on Beethoven in under 5 minutes. Certainly a search of the word will reveal over 70 pages of references to 'the word' in references far and wide, but hidden amongst them will be the primary entry, I could not find it. One is left having to guess the likely page number, and move forward or backwards from there.
Extremely dissapointing on Kindle and not recommended as it stands.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars OUTSTANDING CLASSICAL REFERENCE WORK, April 21, 2009

By 

Bleeker (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Penguin Companion to Classical Music (Paperback)

If there is a better one-volume reference on classical music, I'm not aware of it. Everytime I need info on a composer, even obscure ones, or a particular work or style, I turn to this outstanding book by Paul Griffiths and am not disappointed.