To Boulez and Beyond
By (author) Joan Peyser Foreword by Charles Wuorinen
Publication date:
09 November 2007Length of book:
388 pagesPublisher
Scarecrow PressDimensions:
229x155mm6x9"
ISBN-13: 9780810858770
Joan Peyser offers a history of twentieth century music through the lives and works of its greatest composers in To Boulez and Beyond. Peyser provides historical context and suggests psychological insight for these masters, including Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern of the Second Viennese School; their immediate ancestors Wagner and Mahler; Rimsky-Korsakov and his pupil Stravinsky; and Hindemith, Bartók, Cowell, and Varèse. Discussing proponents of serialism and twelve-tone technique, as well as those who worked against these styles, the book also considers Berio, Stockhausen, Shostakovich, Babbitt, Copland, Wuorinen, and Cage, among others, describing how and why music moved throughout the 20th century. The largest section of the book is devoted to the life and works of Pierre Boulez. A new preface and a bibliography help to round out this revised and updated edition.
No one has conveyed as vividly and knowlingly the sense and scents of that 'skeined, stained, veined variety' of twentieth century musics and musical milieus as does Joan Peyser. She transports one into the musics, around the musics and beyond the musics. At a time when so few appear to care about the state and fate of serious contemporary composition, she does, and she is passionately concerned to lead others also to care, to listen, to distinguish, and even - perhaps - to find a home somewhere on that extended range of musical possibilities and realizations.