To Boulez and Beyond: Music in Europe Since the Rite of Spring

by Joan Peyser

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0823078752
• ISBN13: 9780823078752
• Release Date: October 1999
• Publisher: Billboard Books
• Length: 393 Pages
• Weight: 1.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Essential and Lucid

This work is the combined result of two previous books by Peyser, the first a study of Schoenberg, Stravinsky and Varese; the second a biography of Pierre Boulez up to the mid-seventies. Although Peyser has edited her work to eliminate some overlapping material, and has added a short chapter on Boulez' last three decades, there is still a feeling of jerry-rigging and overall incompleteness that cannot be avoided, and one is left craving for more material on Boulez' latter life and composers from the late seventies on. No matter. These flaws pale in comparison to the value of the work itself -- a lucid, emphatic, and highly readable account of modernism in music. Avoiding serious technical discussion that would alienate anyone but a composer, Peyser casts her subjects in a dramatic light, detailing their works in terms of impact, emotional content, and the challenges they either met or failed to overcome. Of course special attention is paid to Boulez, who emerges as a complex, thorny, enigmatic and passionate figure -- very much like his music, in fact. As Boulez is notoriously private, her objective and highly researched biography is doubly valuable, and some of the anecdotes are simply priceless. Highly recommended to any enthusiast of modern atonal or experimental music.