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To Boulez and Beyond: Music in Europe Since the Rite of Spring
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 780.904
EAN: 9780823078752
ISBN: 0823078752
Label: Watson-Guptill Publications
Manufacturer: Watson-Guptill Publications
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 382
Publication Date: 1999-12
Publisher: Watson-Guptill Publications
Studio: Watson-Guptill Publications
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Editorial Review:
Beginning with Stravinsky and "The Rite of Spring," this book traces the course of classical music from the early twentieth century to the present day and beyond, as it moves into the twenty-first century. This elucidating text covers the major figures in music of the past hundred years, from Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Varese, and Webern to Boulez, Cage, Henze, and Stockhausen. Describing a dramatic revolution against music traditional and a new artistic sensibility, this book offers a guided tour and a concise analysis of the major trends in classical music.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - The most deceptively titled work I've come across in a while
Joan Peyser's book TO BOULEZ AND BEYOND: Music in Europe Since the Rite of Spring has a rather deceptive title. I assumed that it would be an overview of contemporary music, profiling various composers. Instead, Peyser's book is divided into two halves. The first is a history of the work of Stravinsky and of the Second Viennese School, exploring how they each contributed to European music. The second half is a gushing (but that's okay, I admire him myself) biography of Boulez alone, that only goes ... Read More
Rating:  - A messy book about Joan Peyser
It is very hard to believe that a book as defective as this is thrown onto the market as a glossy hardcover with one of the most misleading titles ever. "Never ... use the word gossip in a pejorative sense. It's the very stuff of biography and has to be woven in," Peyser once told her students at NYU. And so what you get here is essentially an extended tabloid gossip-column, full of unsubstantiated hear-say and personal opinions, including that of Peyser's beautician (I'm not joking!). There is no ... Read More
Rating: - credibility?
As a non-expert reader seeking an introduction in the field, I "learn" on the first couple of pages about a list of composers - Beethoven among them - being born in Vienna. How much is the reader to believe of the information he doesn't already know better by himself?
Rating:  - 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 ... Read More
Rating:  - Boulez Updated
In contrast to a previous reviewer, I found this volume interesting and well worth reading, if hardly up to its subtitle of Music in Europe Since the Rite of Spring. I think what happened was that Peyser intended to update her Boulez biography of 1975 (she says as much), had already started a book about music since the Rite, and finally gave up and combined the two in an unfortunate mishmash, adding bits and pieces of scattered information about other composers as it seemed appropriate to her. It is, ... Read More
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