Classical Music Biography

In Roll Me Up and Smoke Me When I Die, Willie Nelson muses about his greatest influences and the things that are most important to him, and celebrates the family, friends, and colleagues who have blessed his remarkable journey. Willie riffs on everything, from music to poker, Texas to Nashville, and more. He shares the outlaw wisdom he has acquired over the course of eight decades, along with favorite jokes and insights from family, bandmates, and close friends.

In clear and entertaining prose, Plotkin explores a thousand years of music, introduces listeners to more than 100 great works, and profiles in depth many significant composers, including Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Berlioz, Tchaikovsky, Dvoxak, and Mahler. He describes all the musical instruments in the orchestra, defines major musical terms, and makes music theory comprehensible for the uninitiated. There are also conversations with important musicians who offer fascinating insights about their art.

The lives and music of the great composers of classical music unfold in this entertaining account, introduced by singer and presenter Aled Jones. In 1200 years, classical music grew from the chanting of medieval monks through the symphonies of Beethoven and the grand operas of Wagner to the huge orchestral sound-world of the 21st century, with its electronics and its film music.

Amit Chaudhuri, novelist, critic, and essayist, is also a musician, trained in the Indian classical vocal tradition but equally fluent as a guitarist and singer in the American folk music style, who has recorded his experimental compositions extensively and performed around the world. A turning point in his life took place when, as a lonely teenager living in a high-rise in Bombay, far from his family's native Calcutta, he began, contrary to all his prior inclinations, to study Indian classical music.

In his time, the Austrian American composer Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) was an international icon. His twelve-tone system was considered the future of music itself. Today, however, leading orchestras rarely play his works, and his name is met with apathy, if not antipathy. With this interpretative account, the acclaimed biographer of Toscanini finally restores Schoenberg to his rightful place in the canon, revealing him as one of the twentieth century's most influential composers and teachers.

Since exploding on the scene in the late 1970s, Journey has inspired generations of fans with hit after hit. But hidden under this rock 'n' roll glory is a complex story of ambition, larger-than-life personalities, and clashes. David Hamilton Golland unearths the band's true and complete biography, based on over a decade of interviews and thousands of sources.

A sweeping history of three generations darkened by the long shadow of the Holocaust, The Cello Still Sings is a vivid, moving, and true story of personal discovery. As a child Janet is haunted by the eerie hush surrounding her parents' experiences. George and Katherine, two professional musicians and Holocaust survivors, bury the memories of who and what they were before, silencing the past in order to live.

Limited Edition of One is unlike any other music book you will ever have hear. Part the long-awaited memoir of Steven Wilson, whose celebrated band Porcupine Tree began as teenage fiction before unintentionally evolving into a reality that encompassed Grammy-nominated records and sold-out shows around the world, before he set out for an even more successful solo career.

Did you know that: Elgar was not just a composer: he was also an amateur chemist! Elgar was the first composer to champion recorded music Elgar loved cycling, and had a bicycle called ‘Mr. Phoebus’ Elgar came to hate his most famous work Find out about these and many more interesting facts about one of England’s most celebrated composers in, Classical Giants: Elgar. Classical Giants brings to life the most famous composers in history, introducing them to children as real characters who lived and breathed on a real historical timeline. Take your child on a journey of discovery to learn...

Join Donald Macleod, presenter of BBC Radio 3’s Composer of the Week, as he brings Beethoven vividly to life: from his childhood in Bonn to how he won over the aristocratic music circles of Vienna, from the creation of his timeless works to the tragic loss of his hearing - and everything in between.

The attraction of opera is in its scale, in the fact that it is larger than real life in actions and emotions, more magnificent in sound and in sight. And in the world of opera, no figure in our time loomed larger than the late Luciano Pavarotti. Especially in his triumphant collaborations with Placido Domingo and Jose Carreras, he captured the imagination of an audience breadth and depth is remarkable even in the grand context of classical opera.

At thirteen years old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was a child prodigy who had captured the hearts of northern Europe, but his father Leopold was now determined to conquer Italy. Together, they made three visits there the last when Mozart was seventeen, all vividly recounted here by acclaimed conductor Jane Glover. Father and son travelled from the theatres and concert salons of Milan to the church-filled streets of Rome to Naples, poorer and more dangerous than the prosperous north, and to Venice, the carnivelesque birthplace of public opera.

The Beatles left an indelible mark not only on music, but on the culture in which they created it. In a time of great and sudden change, they led a generation into new territory, redefining the social landscape as a place where men and women could try on new roles. They led this change through their music, their public personae, and - under scrutiny - their example. The Beatles Guide to Love & Sex examines all three - the songs, the parts they played in public, and the way they led their lives, for better or worse. John, Paul, George and Ringo began their journey as typical working-class ...

The Music Man stands as one of the greatest achievements in American musical theatre, but few know about its rocky beginnings and the against-all-odds success story of its creator, Meredith Willson. Mark Cabaniss steps back into the Golden Age of Broadway and brings to life the origins of this classic show, the music behind it, and the unlikely story of its creator. Interweaving behind-the-scenes accounts of people who worked with Willson, Cabaniss looks at his long and unusual career as a composer, conductor, radio personality, and flutist.

Beethoven imbibed Enlightenment and revolutionary ideas in his hometown of Bonn, where they were fervently discussed in cafes and at the university. Moving to Vienna at the age of 21 to study with Haydn, he gained renown as a brilliant pianist and innovative composer. In that conservative city, capital of the Hapsburg empire, authorities were ever watchful to curtail and punish overt displays of radical political views. Nevertheless, Beethoven avidly followed the meteoric rise of Napoleon.

From the author's first glimpse of a magical recording studio in the mid-1960s up through a busy career that continues to the present day, this rollicking story can only be told by those that were there. As the young tape operator on sessions for the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and Joe Cocker at the famed Olympic Sound Studios in London, Phill learned the ropes from experienced engineers and producers such as Glyn Johns and Eddie Kramer.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is one of the most famous composers. When he was only three years old, he played the harpsichord and the violin. At the age of four he was making up his own music. He was so young that his father had to help him write it down. When he was six years old, Mozart and his older sister Nannerl were giving concerts to kings and queens and emperors. And Mozart wrote new music all the time, even when he was sitting in bumpy coaches travelling through Europe.

Journey of a Thousand Miles documents the remarkable, dramatic story of a family who sacrificed almost everything - his parents' marriage, financial security, Lang Lang's childhood, and their reputation in China's insular classical music world - for the belief in a young boy's talent. And it reveals the devastating and intense relationship between a boy and his father, who was willing to go to any length to make his son a star.

Pyotr Il'yich Tchaikovsky was just five when he started learning the piano – in his small home-town in Russia. Most families like his had a piano but very few small boys could play it so well. Then he started writing music, too. Ideas for new music poured out of him, especially wonderful tunes. He wrote a lot of music for ballets as well as for big orchestras and small groups of instruments, such as string quartets (two violins, one viola, one cello).

Steven Patrick Morrissey was born in Manchester on May 22nd 1959. Singer-songwriter and co-founder of the Smiths (1982-1987), Morrissey has been a solo artist for twenty-six years, during which time he has had three number 1 albums in England in three different decades.Achieving eleven Top 10 albums (plus nine with the Smiths), his songs have been recorded by David Bowie, Nancy Sinatra, Marianne Faithfull, Chrissie Hynde, Thelma Houston, My Chemical Romance and Christy Moore, amongst others.