Great Composers

In The Indispensable Composers, Tommasini offers his own personal guide to the canon - and what greatness really means in classical music. What does it mean to be canonical now? Who gets to say? And do we have enough perspective on the 20th century to even begin assessing it? To make his case, Tommasini draws on elements of biography, the anxiety of influence, the composer's relationships with colleagues, and shifting attitudes toward a composer's work over time.

The Great Gate of Kiev resounds to the tumultuous bell rings that end Pictures an an Exhibition, one of the most magnificent and virtuosic of all piano pieces. However, to some of his contemporaries, Modest Mussorgsky was ‘insane’ and ‘a perfect idiot’. Born into a wealthy land-owning family, what drove this tormented man and why did he suffer psychological breakdowns and alcoholism? How did he achieve his command of the realist idiom in his stage works? d, of course, Pictures at an Exhibition.

Beatlemania had struck North America, creating a musical and pop culture phenomenon unlike anything the world had ever seen. At the center of it all was John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the principal songwriting duo who were instrumental in creating the soundtrack of the 1960s, while producing some of the world's most timeless classics. Together with George Harrison and Ringo Starr, Lennon and McCartney propelled The Beatles to unprecedented heights, experimenting with their sound in ways that revolutionized rock and inspired bands across various musical genres.