This original, graphic-led book explores and explains the key ideas underpinning the world's greatest classical compositions and musical traditions, defines their importance to the musical canon, and places them into their wider social, cultural, and historical context.
The nineteenth title in DK's bestselling Big Ideas series, The Classical Music Book combines accessible, authoritative text with bold explanatory graphics to make the subject of classical music approachable to readers with an interest in the subject who want to learn more while still offering enough to appeal to music aficionados.
From early devotional works to the great symphonies of the Classical and Romantic eras and the diverse and often challenging works of the modern era, The Classical Music Book looks at more than 90 key pieces of music and explores the salient themes and ideas behind each of them.
Author(s): Dorling Kindersley
Series: Big Ideas Simply Explained
Publisher: DK Publishing
Year: 2018
Language: English
Pages: 354
Contents
12 INTRODUCTION
EARLY MUSIC 1000–1400
22 Psalmody is the weapon of the monk
24 Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la
26 We should sing psalms on a ten-string psaltery
28 To sing is to pray twice
32 Tandaradei, sweetly sang the nightingale
36 Music is a science that makes you laugh, sing, and dance
RENAISSANCE 1400–1600
42 Not a single piece of music composed before the last 40 years … is worth hearing
43 Tongue, proclaim the mystery of the glorious body
44 Hear the voyce and prayer
46 The eternal father of Italian music
52 That is the nature of hymns—they make us want to repeat them
54 All the airs and madrigals … whisper softness
55 This feast … did even ravish and stupefie all those strangers that never heard the like
56 My lute, awake!
BAROQUE 1600–1750
62 One of the most magnificent and expensefull diversions
64 Music must move the whole man
70 Lully merits with good reason the title of prince of French musicians
72 He had a peculiar genius to express the energy of English words
78 The object of churches is not the bawling of choristers
84 What the English like is something they can beat time to
80 The new Orpheus of our times
82 The uniting of the French and Italian styles must create the perfection of music
90 Do not expect any profound intention, but rather an ingenious jesting with art
92 Spring has come, and with it gaiety
98 The end and final aim of all music should be none other than the glory of God
106 Telemann is above all praise
107 His whole heart and soul were in his harpsichord
108 Bach is like an astronomer, who … finds the most wonderful stars
CLASSICAL 1750–1820
116 Its forte is like thunder, its crescendo a cataract
118 The most moving act in all of opera
120 We must play from the soul, not like trained birds
122 I was forced to become original
128 The most tremendous genius raised Mozart above all masters
132 The object of the piano is to substitute one performer for a whole orchestra
134 We walk, by the power of music, in joy through death’s dark night
138 I live only in my notes
ROMANTIC 1810–1920
146 The violinist isthat peculiarlyhuman phenomenon …half tiger, half poet
148 Give me a laundry list, and I will set it to music
149 Music is truly love itself
150 No one feels another’s grief, no one understands another’s joy
156 Music is like a dream. One that I cannot hear
162 Instrumentation is at the head of the march
164 Simplicity is the final achievement
166 My symphonies would have reached Opus 100 if I had written them down
170 The last note was drowned … in a unanimous volley of plaudits
174 I love Italian opera—it’s so reckless
176 Who holds the devil, let him hold him well
178 And the dancers whirl around gaily in the waltz’s giddy mazes
179 I live in music like a fish in water
180 Opera must make people weep, feel horrified, die
188 He … comes as if sent straight from God
190 The notes dance up there on the stage
192 A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything
194 Emotional art is a kind of illness
198 If a composer could say what he had to say in words, he would not bother saying it in music
NATIONALISM 1830–1920
206 My fatherland means more to me than anything else
207 Mussorgsky typifies the genius of Russia
208 I am sure my music has a taste of cod fish in it
210 I wanted to do something different
212 The music of the people is like a rare and lovely flower
216 Music is a language of the intangible
218 The art of music above all the other arts is expression of the soul
220 I am a slave to my themes, and submit to their demands
222 Spanish music with a universal accent
223 A wonderful maze of rhythmical dexterities
MODERN 1900–1950
228 I go to see the shadow you have become
232 I want women to turn their minds to big and difficult jobs
240 An audience shouldn’t listen with complacency
246 I haven’t understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it
252 And ever winging up and up, our valley is his golden cup
254 Stand up and take your dissonance like a man
256 I have never written a note I didn’t mean
258 Life is a lot like jazz … it’s better when you improvise
262 A mad extravaganza at the edge of the abyss
263 I come with the youthful spirit of my country, with youthful music
264 Musically, there is not a single center of gravity in this piece
266 The only love affair I ever had was with music
268 Science alone can infuse music with youthful vigor
270 A nation creates music. The composer only arranges it
272 I detest imitation. I detest hackneyed devices
273 Balinese music retained a rhythmic vitality both primitive and joyous
274 Real music is always revolutionary
280 My music is natural, like a waterfall
282 Never was I listened to with such rapt attention and comprehension
284 I must create order out of chaos
286 The music is so knit … that it takes you in very strong hands and leads you into its own world
288 Composing is like driving down a foggy road
CONTEMPORARY
298 Sound is the vocabulary of nature
302 I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas; I’m frightened of the old ones
306 He has changed our view of musical time and form
308 The role of the musician … is perpetual exploration
309 Close communion with the people is the natural soil nourishing all my work
310 I was struck by the emotional charge of the work
312 Once you become an ism, what you’re doing is dead
314 I desire to carve … a single painful tone as intense as silence itself
316 In music … things don’t get better or worse: they evolve and transform themselves
318 If you tell me a lie, let it be a black lie
320 The process of substituting beats for rests
321 We were so far ahead … because everyone else stayed so far behind
322 This must be the first purpose of art … to change us
323 I could start out from the chaos and create order in it
324 Volcanic, expansive, dazzling—and obsessive
325 My music is written for ears
326 Blue … like the sky. Where all possibilities soar
328 The music uses simple building blocks and grows organically from there …
329 This is the core of who we are and what we need to be
330 DIRECTORY
340 GLOSSARY
344 INDEX
351 QUOTE ATTRIBUTIONS
352 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
