The lives of the great composers / Harold C. Schonberg.

Includes bibliographical references (p. [621]-635) and index.

Pioneer of opera. Claudio Monteverdi -- Transfiguration of the baroque. Johann Sebastian Bach -- Composer and impresario. George Frideric Handel -- Reformer of opera. Christoph Willibald Gluck -- Classicism par excellence. Joseph Haydn -- Prodigy from Salzburg. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart -- Revolutionary from Bonn. Ludwig Van Beethoven -- Poet of music. Franz Schubert -- Freedom and a new language. Weber and the early romantics -- Romantic exuberance and classic restraint. Hector Berlioz -- Florestan and Eusebius. Robert Schumann -- Apotheosis of the piano. Frédéric Chopin -- Virtuoso, charlatan--and prophet. Franz Liszt -- Bourgeois genius. Felix Mendelssohn -- Voice, voice, and more voice. Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini -- Spectacle, spectacle, and more spectacle. Meyerbeer, Cherubini, Auber -- Colossus of Italy. Giuseppe Verdi -- Colossus of Germany. Richard Wagner -- Keeper of the flame. Johannes Brahms -- Master of the lied. Hugo Wolf -- Waltz, can-can, and satire. Strauss, Offenbach, Sullivan -- Faust and French opera. From Gounod to Saint-Saëns -- Russian nationalism and the mighty five. From Glinka to Rimsky-Korsakov -- Surcharged emotionalism. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky -- From Bohemia to Spain. European nationalists -- Chromaticism and sensibilité. From Franck to Fauré -- Only for the theater. Giacomo Puccini -- Romanticism's long coda. Richard Strauss -- Religion, mysticism and retrospection. Bruckner, Mahler, Reger -- Sympolism and impressionism. Claude Debussy -- Gallic elegance and the new breed. Maurice Ravel and Les Six -- The chameleon. Igor Stravinsky -- The English Renaissance. Elgar, Delius, Vaughan Williams -- Mysticism and melancholy. Scriabin and Rachmaninoff -- Under the Soviets. Prokofiev and Shostakovich -- German neoclassicism. Busoni, Weill, Hindemith -- Rise of an American tradition. From Gottschalk to Copland -- The uncompromising Hungarian. Béla Bartók -- The second Viennese school. Schoenberg, Berg, Webern -- The international serial movement. From Varése to Messiaen -- The new eclecticism. From Carter to the minimalists.

This updated and expanded edition of the perennial favorite traces the line of composers from Monteverde to the tonalists of the 1990s. Schonberg discusses the lives and works of the foremost figures in classical music, weaving a fabric rich in detail and anecdote. Photos.

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