No comments about Continuo Playing According to Handel: His Figured Bass Exercises (Early Music Series, No. 12).

2 comments about Music In The Baroque Era - From Monteverdi To Bach.

1. More than 50 years after its publication, Professor Bukofzer's book remains as an examplar of how to discuss musical style. His revelatory insights into the origins and details of Baroque style have set standards respected and imitated by generations of scholars. Another beauty of the book is the clarity and accessibility of his ideas. Performers, amateurs, and scholars will all find many interesting ideas in this book. Some details of chronology and attribution of music have since been corrected in more recent scholarly books, but the real value of this book is in the excellent discussions of the origin of style, and Bokofzer's gift is timeless. Anyone who reads music and has an interest in Baroque music will find this book to be well-written and of immense value.



2. Although written in 1947, this book remains a very fine text on what we call the Baroque era of music. This is roughly the transition caused by the aesthetics of the Florentine Camerata at the end of the 16th century through the culmination of the late Baroque in Bach and Handel. Bach's sons and their contemporaries were the transition towards the Classic period (Gallant and Rococo).
   
   The writing is clear with lots of helpful musical examples and illustrations. More than just a chronology or lists of dates and names, there is a great deal of focus on style that helps us understand what the people of those years said they were trying to achieve with their music and art. Bukofzer is also excellent in pointing out the differences in the aesthetics of various countries. It was not like our time where everything is broadcast at once by the media or produced in vast quantities by huge manufacturing concerns. Ideas traveled more slowly from court to court and at varying rates. Sometimes the changes happened more quickly than others. And, as always, there are differences between what the people in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth centuries thought was valuable and what we value two or three hundred years later.
   
   The extensive bibliography is still valuable even if it doesn't include the huge number of valuable publications on this subject that have been published in the last fifty years. It is not that this book is outdated. What it discusses it discusses very well. However, a great deal of research and thinking about the Baroque has been done in the past twenty or thirty years and your reading and listening will have to become informed by this later work as well. Just don't miss out on this wonderful book, especially since used copies can be had so inexpensively!

1 comments about Anthology for Music in Western Civilization, Volume I: Antiquity through the Baroque.

1. I'm surprised that there are professors who use this. The workbook seems like it has been translated from German into Korean, Korean into Pig Latin, Pig Latin into Spanish, Spanish into Dutch, Dutch into Cantonese, and finally, Cantonese into English. Good luck making sense of its instructions. My classmates and I came to the conclusion that the workbook and the anthology were never edited. They are rife with mistakes.
   
   Unfortunately, if your professor has chosen this, then you have no choice. I wish you luck.

2 comments about Ornamentation in Baroque and Post-Baroque Music, with Special Emphasis on J.S. Bach.

1. Books concerning performance practice are by their very nature controversial, and we can't ask Bach, Handel, or Telemann what they actually meant when they used a short-hand symbol or expected a performer to improvise a decoration. Or can we? Professor Neumann has compiled a volume based on writings in the Baroque era that attempts (successfully in my opinion) to provide some clues to the sketchy musical notations of busy and prolific composers in the Baroque era. His ideas are indeed controversial, but I think that they are well-reasoned and often brilliant. His knowledge of sources in the Baroque is magnificent, and his arguments are keenly-reasoned. This is a book of somewhat limited readership. Performers and scholars who play or edit Baroque music will find this to be a useful reference with a strong idex, a good bibliography, and a helpful guide to solving questions of decoration. Those who don't have an active involvement with Baroque music will find the book cryptic.



2. This book is a must have for any serious musician who performs any Baroque music, even if you aren't a period performer. The text gets tedious, but the knowledge presented is well worth the work.
   
   I do wish there was more research on earlier 17th Century ornamentation practices.

No comments about Norton Recorded Anthology of Western Music, Concise Version (6 Compact Discs).

1 comments about Introduction To Music.

1. Your music intelligence is greatly expanded by having read this historical development of music. That is how I learned about Early Music, my favourite now for several reasons. It puts music into perspective as you see its development over time, the reasons for the different kinds of music, plus what you may think of as technical information is applicable to every type of music today.
   
   A fascinating study, if you love music, you will really enjoy reading the history of it.

3 comments about J.S. Bach: A Life in Music.

1. This book provides a useful different way of looking at Bach's life and music by working almost sentence by sentence through the well-known Obituary of 1750/1754 by C.P.E. Bach and Agricola. Williams doesn't hesitate to grapple with thorny issues, nor to question interpretations/speculations we may have become comfortable with and wrongly begun to treat as if they were fact.
   
   I bought the book because I greatly admire Peter Williams' previous writings on Bach and organ music. I was slightly disappointed with this book, however.
   
   I'm an amateur musician who has read a lot about Bach. For me, core references are Christoph Wolff (2000) 'Johann Sebastian Bach; the learned musician' (scholarly and fascinating to read), and 'The New Bach Reader' (David & Mendel/ Wolff). I'd suggest not bothering with the Williams book unless you are already familiar with such books. You'll only value what Williams questions in a sentence or two if you're familiar with arguments over the same issue in other places.



2. J.S. Bach: A Life in Music was full of gorgeous pictures and information on Bach. The CD that came with it started with Bach's early music, then progressed to his final masterpieces. I liked hearing the progression. I used this book for information I needed for a graduate level psychology class. We had to do a case study on a famous person. Bach was a great study! Wonderful book.



3. Bach is my religion, and I am an adult beginner piano student, with roughly four years of classical piano lessons under my belt. Those two facts color my opinion of this biography and of other Bach biographies I have read, namely those by Christoph Wolff and Martin Geck. I do like the Peter Williams biography better than the other two. It is scholarly without being overly so, reverential without going overboard, analytical and informative on the music front without being exhaustive and boring. And I greatly enjoyed the approach of dissecting the obituary written at Bach's death, fleshing out the entries, and/or setting the record straight. The Wolff is very good but leaves me cold, and, to be honest, I couldn't make it all the way through the Geck. I am a tough grader -- hence the four stars. Though I found the Williams biography an extremely engaging read, I do think/hope that the definitive five-star Bach biography has yet to be written.

2 comments about Masterpieces of Western Music: Classics from the Baroque to the Modern (Portable Professor).

1. What makes musical masterpieces great? Why do they remain popular and how are they able to withstand the test of time? Jeffrey Lependorf has been teaching the Masterpieces of Western Music course at Columbia University since 1986. He is a talented teacher and musician whose recording of "Night Pond" was played on the Russian space ship Mir. He is also interestingly a master of the shakuhachi which is an ancient Japanese bamboo flute. Exploring these masterpieces in depth develops an appreciation for a breakdown of their various musical elements and themes and how they relate to each other in time.
   
   This is the first Portable Professor program that I have purchased and I have not been disappointed in the quality of the instruction, the course material and/or the musical selections. The course is very reasonable priced and also includes a course booklet which accompanies the lectures with added resources for greater understanding and further study.
   
   There are fourteen audio lectures on seven cds focusing on an appreciation of Western music classics from Baroque to Modern which fosters for the listener/student an appreciation of the intrinsic greatness of these works which doesn't diminish.
   
   An eighth cd is a sampler and bonus disk.
   
   This Portable Professor examines the 14 classics as follows:
   
   Lecture 1: The Red Priest and His All-Girl Orchestra (This lecture features Antonio Vivaldi's "Spring" from Four Seasons)
   
   Lecture 2: The Case of the Runaway Soloist (This lecture features Johann Sebastian Bach and his "Brandenburg Concerto No. 5)
   
   Lecture 3: All Rise and Sing Hallelujah (This lecture features George Frideric Handel and his "Messiah".
   
   Lecture 4: More Than Just a Little Night Music (This lecture features Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik")
   
   Lecture 5: Magnificent Obsession: The World in Four Notes (This lecture features Ludwig van Beethoven and his "Symphony No. 5 in C Minor")
   
   Lecture 6: Romanticism with a Capital "R," or Be Careful What you Wish For (This lecture features Hector Berlioz and his "Symphonie Fantastique")
   
   Lecture 7: How to Make a Piano Sing (This lecture features Frederic Chopin and his "Nocturne in D-flat")
   
   Lecture 8, Going Forward by Looking Back (This lecture features Johannes Brahms and his "Variations and Fugue on a Theme by Handel")
   
   Lecture 9: A Tale of Love and Death (This lecture features Richard Wagner and his "Tristam and Isolde")
   
   Lecture 10: It Takes Two, Baby (This lecture features Modest Mussorgsky and his "Pictures at an Exhibition")
   
   Lecture 11: A Quiet Revolution (This lecture features Claude Debussy and his "Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune")
   
   Lecture 12: Modernism with a Bang! (This lecture features Igor Stravinsky and his "Rite of Spring")
   
   Lecture 13: Kid Stuff (This lecture features Maurice Ravel and his "Mother Goose Suite")
   
   Lecture 14: The Prairies of Brooklyn (This lecture features Aaron Copland's "Spring Suite")
   
   I enjoyed each lecture and thought that the presentation for each lecture was very well done. The listener will hear a brief history of not only the composer by of the featured composition. Each cited work will be listened to with the work itself accompanied by a Lependorf voice over. The Columbia University professor comments on all of the important musical elements intrinsic to each masterpiece. You still will thoroughly enjoy each work. Lependorf unobtrusively comments on those segments worth highlighting for the student listener. The professor instructs and dissects each piece acting as your own private musical tour guide.
   
   Recommend Highly
   
   Bentley/2007
   
   Masterpieces of Western Music (Classics from the Baroque to the Modern (Portable Professor)
   
   Note: This can also be acquired at local national book stores; worthwhile.



2. It's okay, but a lot of fluff regurgitated from your average lectures. I've gone through the Learning Company's lectures, and find them to be much more complete and more worth the time. This is a gimmick of Barnes and Noble to make themselves look more serious, but it fails miserably. If you know nothing about music, or just want to understand some pretty music, it's okay, but not really worth the price.

No comments about Music of the Baroque.

5 comments about Anthology of Scores To History of Music in Western Culture, Volume 1: Antiquity Through the Baroque Era.

1. As a general history intended for the academic market, Bonds's contribution ranks as a formidable contender with K Stolba's and Grout/Palisca's works. Visually appealing with many period paintings, illustrations and tables in color, the book also entertains with well-written text which illuminates the cultural context of developing genres.
   Composer profiles and "Focus" features break up the text and provide essential insights. Particularly valuable are the "Primary Evidence" highlights which contain extensive quotes from primary resources. Five appendices include "A Guide to Selected Research Materials in Music History" and the set text for the ordinary of the mass with English translation.
   Fourteen CDs and two score anthologies (available seperately) complete the perspective on occidental high art music. Nevertheless, the text stands well alone and would complement the library of anyone interested in western art music history.



2. This is one of the new breed of general music history texts to hit the market in the past decade. Correcting many of the errors made by the Grout and vastly more readable, this text is filled with unique side bars, charts, lists, photographs, time lines, etc. I keep one copy of this at home and one at the office along with Craig Wright and Bryan Simms' Music in Western Civilization (which is my all-time favorite music history text). If you only want to buy one book (and this is not required for a class), purchase the Wright/Simms. If you don't mind spending the extra money, I would purchase the Bonds and the Wright/Simms as a superb addition to any professional musician's library.



3. For information and a clear perspective on Western European (and American) music history, there is not much better. Bonds prefaces each section or era with a "prelude", providing information on the general history of that era outside of the musical world. Then, we see how everything moves together. The overall assessment of Western European Music History is covered meticulously from the Ancients to modern day (or nearly so).



4. this is just what i needed for my music history class!!!
   great shipping time!!!



5. This text book is a really good one. It has a huge amount of information and lots of interesting points and obscure details. The text is accompanied by a lot of full color pictures of composers, manuscripts, maps, and lots of other things. The only issue I had with it was to extremely close look at the music theory part of the history. Half of the book is about the notes that the composers used.