Monteverdi

Master Musicians Series

by Denis Arnold

Celebrating its 100th anniversary, this extraordinary series continues to amaze and captivate its readers with detailed insight into the lives and work of music's geniuses. Unlike other composer biographies that focus narrowly on the music, this series explores the personal history of each composer and the social context surrounding the music. In a precise, engaging, and authoritative manner, each volume combines a vivid portrait of the master musicians' inspirations, influences, life experiences, even their weaknesses, with an accessible discussion of their work--all in roughly 300 pages. Further, each volume offers superb reference material, including a detailed life and times chronology, a complete list of works, a personalia glossary highlighting the important people in the composer's life, and a select bibliography. Under the supervision of music expert and series general editor Stanley Sadie, Master Musicians will certainly proceed to delight music scholars, serious musicians, and all music lovers for another hundred years.

Genres: Music, Biography

212 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

About the author

For the author on business ethics, see: Denis G. Arnold

Denis Midgley Arnold, CBE (Sheffield, 15 December 1926 – Budapest, 28 April 1986) was a British musicologist. After being employed in the extramural department of The Queen's University, Belfast, he became a Lecturer in Music at the University of Hull, and from 1969 to 1975 was Professor of Music at The University of Nottingham. From 1975 he was Heather Professor of Music at Oxford University. He served as editor of Music & Letters. He is best known for his editing of The New Oxford Companion to Music (1983, Oxford University Press), which under his editorship grew to a two-volume work of some 2000 pages, with a broader coverage than Percy Scholes' original; and for his work on the music of Monteverdi, Marenzio and Giovanni Gabrieli. A frequent broadcaster, he also reviewed a great many recordings (mostly in the field of Renaissance music) for Gramophone.

Source: Amazon

Reviews

[Carol · Rating 3 out of 5]

This biography of Claudio Monteverdi was a good introduction to his life and works. Arnold dispatches with Monteverdi's life in a couple of short chapters, and then gives a more in depth examination of the music, divided by genre. There are plenty of musical examples and good analysis of the development of Monteverdi's style and techniques. I think I would have preferred that the biography and works sections had been more integrated, especially for a composer who worked in a time when most music was written to serve the needs of particular establishments and events. This 1990 edition also included an afterword that looked at the state of current research on Monteverdi - it was illuminating but likely to be quite out of date by now. Nonetheless, I got a lot out of this book and especially enjoyed the way it fit in with some of my other recent reading on Gesualdo and music in Italy.