Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Pages: 204
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9¼
978-0-8108-8885-2 • Hardback • August 2016 • $62.00 • (£48.00)
978-0-8108-8886-9 • eBook • August 2016 • $58.50 • (£45.00)
Franco Sciannameo is professor and associate dean for Interdisciplinary Initiatives in the College of Fine Arts at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA. He is the author of Nino Rota, Federico Fellini and the Making of an Italian Cinematic Folk Opera: Amarcord (2005); Giuseppe Mazzini's Philosophy of Music: Envisioning a Social Opera (1836) (2005); Nino Rota's The Godfather Trilogy (2010), and Phil Trajetta (1777-1854), Patriot, Musician, Immigrant (2010)
Chapter 1: In the Baroque: Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and Bach’s Four Harpsichords
Chapter 2: Mozart – Haydn – Brunetti – Tomasini
Chapter 3: Viotti and Beethoven
Chapter 4: The Meteoric Paganini and His Epigones
Chapter 5: At the Heart of German Romanticism: Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Bruch
Chapter 6: Brahms’ Violin Concerto and the End of an Era
Chapter 7: In the After-Brahms: Monsters and Leprechauns
Chapter 8: Pillars of Modernism: Stravinsky, Prokofiev, Berg, and Bartôk
Chapter 9: Barber and Korngold, Shostakovich and…Schoenberg
Chapter 10: Music without Anxieties
Published in the ‘Listener's Companion’ series, which is intended to ‘give readers a deeper understanding of pivotal musical genres and ... iconic composers and performers,’ this volume offers historical background and somewhat sentimental, literary-styled stories. On the plus side, the book is comprehensive. All the genres are covered, and major violin composers are well represented. The book's organization is logical, as are the subsections within the chapters. . . .Summing Up:Recommended. . . . .Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; general readers.
— Choice Reviews
Violinist and scholar, Professor Sciannameo invites readers into the world of the violin concerto, tracing its history from The Four Seasons tothe pillars of modernism such as the Berg and Bartók, Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Prokofiev, Szymanowski and Martinu concertos. He also explores the stories of the composers who wrote these celebrated masterpieces, and the virtuosi who performed them. Sciannameo allows the reader to truly experience these fabled works by evoking the era and circumstances surrounding their genesis.
— Stringendo