Product Description

Celebrating its 100th anniversary, this extraordinary series continues to amaze and captivate its readers with detailed insight into the lives and work of music's geniuses. Unlike other composer biographies that focus narrowly on the music, this series explores the personal history of each composer and the social context surrounding the music. In a precise, engaging, and authoritative manner, each volume combines a vivid portrait of the master musicians' inspirations, influences, life experiences, even their weaknesses, with an accessible discussion of their work-all in roughly 300 pages. Further, each volume offers superb reference material, including a detailed life and times chronology, a complete list of works, a personalia glossary highlighting the important people in the composer's life, and a select bibliography. Under the supervision of music expert and series general editor Stanley Sadie, Master Musicians will certainly proceed to delight music scholars, serious musicians, and all music lovers for another hundred years.
When this much acclaimed biography on Schubert was published ten years ago, it was welcomed as `a model of critical biography ... an essential vade mecum for all Schubertians'. In the intervening years, however, Schubert's public image has changed considerably, making it necessary to revise thoroughly the main text of the book as well as the four detailed appendices which serve as a useful reference section. Its aim remains the same: to provide a readable, authoritative, and reliable guide to Schubert's life and works for the student, the musician, and the general reader.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1245031 in Books
• Published on: 2001-03-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 294 pages

Amazon.com Review
The most remarkable composer of song literature in the history of Western music, Franz Schubert sometimes gets overlooked in favor of his more bombastic contemporaries. 1997 marks the bicentennial of his birth; record companies and concert programmers, who love such pegs, have accordingly scheduled loads of Schubert for the year. You can find some useful insights into the composer and his work with this biography, a slightly expanded version of the essay written for the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Also helpful is the detailed chronicle of his music, arranged by type and date of composition.

Review

From reviews of the first edition:"a model of critical biography ... an essential vade mecum for all Schubertians'"--TLS
"a book which should open many ears and minds to Schubert's true musical stature"--The Musical Times
"admirable"--Andrew Porter, The Observer

About the Author

Formerly a music critic for the Manchester Guardian, John Reed is the author of several books on Schubert.

Customer Reviews

Splendid Guide
In his late years, John Reed accomplished a magnificent task: writing and revising this book. Though a smallish book, he successfully compiled critical evaluation, date (latest estimate), circumstance, and future effect of an great numbers of important (often unduly underrated) works of Schubert. His view is in general quite well-balanced and persuasive. I think this book is the most reliable guide book for Schubert's supreme music. Strongly recommended.

Nice intro. Very valuable list of all Schubert's works in the back.
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is now best available online (at a hefty subscription fee). A version was published in 1980 in more than two dozen volumes. It was a magnificent achievement, but almost immediately errors were found, disputes were had, and at least one article was guilty of a hidden insult that was discovered too late. Some of the biographical articles were so good that they were excerpted into a series of short books, this being one of them.

If you are interested in the life of Schubert, one of our greatest composers, and one of the very greatest song writers of all time, this book provides a nice introduction to his life and work. Especially valuable is the list of all his known works (and a list of the spurious compositions as well), and an index of his songs by name. This genius died at 31 having written more than 600 songs and at least 200 other works including large symphonies, quartets, and even a couple of for the stage.

The bibliography is especially useful because it discusses important articles on Schubert by genre, that is important articles and books on his symphonies, or quartets, or what have you. This book can only be an introduction, you will have to go further to really appreciate the greatness of this composer who died so ridiculously young.

It was written by Maurice J.E. Brown who died before it was completed and finished by his friend, the wonderful Eric Sams (who died at 78 in September 2004, to our loss).