This important biography of Elgar draws on letters and documents which have become available in the last twenty-five years. Michael Kennedy, a leading scholar of British music and a distinguished musical biographer, uses this new material, which includes Elgars own vast correspondence, in an attempt to get to the centre of the composers complex personality. Elgars letters reveal his unpredictable swings of mood, from gaiety and a fondness for puns to morose self-pity and a feeling that he was not wanted, and although much of Elgars music sounds confident and coherent, it also has an underlying layer of unease, melancholy and insecurity. His relationships with his wife and other women friends are a continuing thread in the life of a man who remained acutely conscious of his lower middle-class origins in spite of his meteoric rise to fame, honours in Edward VIIs reign and friendship with the King.
Bach, like Shakespeare, is known largely by his works, exceptional in quantity as well as quality, and only a few original documents convey any idea of his life and character. Peter Williamss thoroughly new look at Bachs biography asks many questions about the so-called evidence. What was he like as a young man, as a father, as an ageing church servant? What were his preoccupations? What music did he know and how did he compose and perform such an amazing amount of music? Was he a disappointed man? Reading the available documentation critically, especially from the viewpoint of a performer, and going back to the first substantial biography of Bach, namely his Obituary, Williams suggests new interpretations of the composers life and his work. In addition, he asks if our understanding of Bach has been hindered by the unremitting deference displayed towards him since his death.
John Lennon lives on. Forty years after the Beatles invaded America in 1964, and more than twenty years after Lennon's death, his work is perennially popular and continues to appeal across the generations. A man shrouded in myth and controversy, Lennon led a complex, enigmatic life. The Lennon Companion is a luminous and multifaceted exploration of John Lennon's life and work, a collection of over fifty articles from a stellar list of writers including Pauline Kael, Tom Wolfe, Martin Amis, Gloria Steinem, and Philip Larkin-a remarkably multidimensional look at Lennon's music, myth, and mystique.
The Latin explosion of Marc Anthony, Ricky Martin, and the Buena Vista Social Club may look like it came out of nowhere, but the incredible variety of Latin music has been transforming the United States since the turn of the century, when Caribbean beats turned New Orleans music into jazz. In fact, we wouldn't have any of our popular music without it: Imagine pop sans the mambos of Perez Prado and Tito Puente, the garage rock of Richie Valens, or even the glitzy croon of Julio Iglesias, not to mention the psychedelia of Santana and Los Lobos and the underground cult grooves of newcomers like Bebel Gilberto. The Latin Beat outlines the musical styles of each country, then traces each form as it migrates north. Morales travels from the Latin ballad to bossa nova to Latin jazz, chronicles the development of the samba in Brazil and salsa in New York, explores the connection between the mambo craze of the 1950's with the Cuban craze of today, and uncovers the hidden history of Latinos in rock and hip hop. The Latin Beat is the only book that explores where the music has come from and celebrates all of the directions it is going.
