Features the biography of Aaron Copland, his life, and his music.

In his short life, the Virginia-born John Treville Latouche (1914-56) made a profound mark on America's musical theater as a lyricist, book writer, and librettist. His signature achievements include theatrical works with composers Earl Robinson, Vernon Duke, Duke Ellington, Jerome Moross, and Leonard Bernstein.

This comprehensive biography of George Gershwin (1898-1937) unravels the myths surrounding one of America's most celebrated composers and establishes the enduring value of his music. Gershwin created some of the most beloved music of the twentieth century and, along with Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, and Cole Porter, helped make the golden age of Broadway golden. Howard Pollack draws from a wealth of sketches, manuscripts, letters, interviews, books, articles, recordings, films, and other materials—including a large cache of Gershwin scores discovered in a Warner Brothers warehouse in 1982—to create an expansive chronicle of Gershwin’s meteoric rise to fame. He also traces Gershwin’s powerful presence that, even today, extends from Broadway, jazz clubs, and film scores to symphony halls and opera houses. Pollack’s lively narrative describes Gershwin’s family, childhood, and education; his early career as a pianist; his friendships and romantic life; his relation to various musical trends; his writings on music; his working methods; and his tragic death at the age of 38. Unlike Kern, Berlin, and Porter, who mostly worked within the confines of Broadway and Hollywood, Gershwin actively sought to cross the boundaries between high and low, and wrote works that crossed over into a realm where art music, jazz, and Broadway met and merged. The author surveys Gershwin’s entire oeuvre, from his first surviving compositions to the melodies that his brother and principal collaborator, Ira Gershwin, lyricized after his death. Pollack concludes with an exploration of the performances and critical reception of Gershwin's music over the years, from his time to ours.

Award-winning music historian Howard Pollack's new biography of Marc Blitzstein deftly captures the fascinating life and career of an American composer who was openly gay and Marxist at a time when neither was acceptable to the American public. The first biographer to deal with Blitzstein's music as well as his life, Pollack delves deeply into the Blitzstein's life, uncovering new details about his marriage to novelist Eva Goldbeck and his compositional process. Beautifully written and meticulously researched, this book is a must-have for any fan of Broadway or American music.

The son of Russian immigrants, Aaron Copland (1900-1990) became America's most loved and esteemed composer. Commonly referred to as the American composer - 'the best we've got' in the words of Leonard Bernstein - Copland's music none the less has a large worldwide following of devoted listeners. Perennial favourites include such works as Fanfare for the Common Man, A Lincoln Portrait, the suites from Billy the Kid and Appalachian Spring. But the full richness of his accomplishments and the life that lay behind them have rarely been appreciated, and have never, until now, been thoroughly scrutinized and documented. Howard Pollack's meticulously researched biography explores Copland's life in engrossing detail, and includes informed and valuable discussions of his music. Moreover his interviews with Copland's relatives, colleagues, friends and former lovers have enabled him to engage candidly with the much-revered man.

Biografie van de Amerikaanse componist (1894-1976)

His original yet refined orchestral music was championed by Bruno Walter, Fritz Reiner, Otto Klemperer, Serge Koussevitzky, and other celebrated conductors, and his sensitive songs were performed by such legendary singers as Alma Gluck and Kirsten Flagstad.".

A pivotal twentieth-century composer, Samuel Barber earned a long list of honors and accolades that included two Pulitzer Prizes for Music and the public support of conductors like Arturo Toscanini, Serge Koussevitzky, and Leonard Bernstein. Barber’s works have since become standard concert repertoire and continue to flourish across high art and popular culture. Acclaimed biographer Howard Pollack (Aaron Copland, George Gershwin) offers a multifaceted account of Barber’s life and music while placing the artist in his social and cultural milieu. Born into a musical family, Barber pursued his artistic ambitions from childhood. Pollack follows Barber’s path from his precocious youth through a career where, from the start, the composer consistently received prizes, fellowships, and other recognition. Stylistic analyses of works like the Adagio for Strings, the Violin Concerto, Knoxville: Summer of 1915 for voice and orchestra, the Piano Concerto, and the operas Vanessa and Antony and Cleopatra, stand alongside revealing accounts of the music’s commissioning, performance, reception, and legacy. Throughout, Pollack weaves in accounts of Barber’s encounters with colleagues like Aaron Copland and Francis Poulenc, performers from Eleanor Steber and Leontyne Price to Vladimir Horowitz and Van Cliburn, patrons, admirers, and a wide circle of eminent friends and acquaintances. He also provides an eloquent portrait of the composer’s decades-long relationship with the renowned opera composer Gian Carlo Menotti. Informed by new interviews and immense archival research, Samuel Barber is a long-awaited critical and personal biography of a monumental figure in twentieth-century American music.

Walter Piston (1894-1976) taught for over thirty years (1926-1960) at Harvard, where he taught such well-known composers as Harold Shapiro and Leonard Bernstein. The biographies, major accomplishments, stylistic developments, and technical resources of 33 of his students are described.

Howard Pollack is one of those very rare people who have successfully managed not to abandon their faith in humanity as they grow older-or their trust in common sense, which he possesses in frightening abundance. His writing rides on these qualities as much as it does on a very sharp eye and a deep understanding of people. His art is often wry but never malicious. It can move you to tears. It can, more often, make you smile. It can be mournful but never maudlin, because, for this thoughtful, bemused author, life goes on despite its confusions and failures. This collection will charm you, envelop you in a sense of goodness and decency you will not easily forget.