Description
Book SynopsisIn this fully updated edition of his long-indispensable study, Malcolm MacDonald takes advantage of 30 years of recent scholarship, new biographical information, and deeper understanding of Schoenberg's aims and significance to produce a superb guide to Schoenberg's life and work.
Trade ReviewThe Master Musicians are the classics of the repertoire. * Nicholas Kenyon, The Sunday Times *
Malcolm MacDonald, an eloquent advocate for Arnold Schoenberg, has done away with the dry and cerebral bogeyman of modernism. In his place is a complex, multi-faceted, and often contradictory personality whose music pulses with wit, passion, and spiritual depth. MacDonald ably guides us past the 'how' of technical procedures to the 'what' of expressive substance, toward a vast universe of human thought and emotion, at once challenging and entrancing, terrifying and breathtakingly beautiful. This is a Schoenberg of vital relevance to our own fractured world. * Christopher Hailey *
No general survey of Schoenberg is more alert than this one to the paradoxical yet productive tensions between tradition and innovation, secular and spiritual in the composer's life and work. Returning to his original text after three decades, Malcolm MacDonald has not only updated the narrative but also intensified his interpretation in ways which fit the book's governing qualities of enthusiasm and admiration for Schoenberg's special capacity to transcend the negative. The result is an absorbing and accessible tribute to one of musical modernism's greatest masters. * Arnold Whittall, author of Musical Composition in the Twentieth Century and Exploring Twentieth-Century Music *
The Master Musicians are the classics of the repertoire. * Nicholas Kenyon, The Sunday Times *
Malcolm MacDonald, an eloquent advocate for Arnold Schoenberg, has done away with the dry and cerebral bogeyman of modernism. In his place is a complex, multi-faceted, and often contradictory personality whose music pulses with wit, passion, and spiritual depth. MacDonald ably guides us past the 'how' of technical procedures to the 'what' of expressive substance, toward a vast universe of human thought and emotion, at once challenging and entrancing, terrifying and breathtakingly beautiful. This is a Schoenberg of vital relevance to our own fractured world. * Christopher Hailey *
No general survey of Schoenberg is more alert than this one to the paradoxical yet productive tensions between tradition and innovation, secular and spiritual in the composer's life and work. Returning to his original text after three decades, Malcolm MacDonald has not only updated the narrative but also intensified his interpretation in ways which fit the book's governing qualities of enthusiasm and admiration for Schoenberg's special capacity to transcend the negative. The result is an absorbing and accessible tribute to one of musical modernism's greatest masters. * Arnold Whittall, author of Musical Composition in the Twentieth Century and Exploring Twentieth-Century Music *
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations ; 1. Peripeteia (1908-13) ; 2. The Past (1874-1907) ; 3. Consolidation (1914-1933) ; 4. In the Wilderness (1933-51) ; 5. Heart and Brain ; 6. Style ; 7. Choral Music ; 8. Orchestra and Chamber Music ; 9. Chamber Music ; 10. Solo Keyboard Music ; 11. The Songs ; 12. Three Stage Works ; 13. Miscellany ; 14. Unfinished Torsos ; 15...and Idea ; Epilogue ; Appendices ; A. Calendar ; B. List of Works ; C. Personalia ; D. Bibliography ; Index
