To Boulez and Beyond

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 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, Bart k, Cowell, and Var se. Discussing proponents...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0810858770
• ISBN13: 9780810858770
• Release Date: November 2007
• Publisher: Scarecrow Press
• Length: 388 Pages
• Weight: 1.37 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.4" x 8.9"

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.