A Natural History of the Piano
The Instrument, the Music, the Musicians - from Mozart to Jazz and Everything in Between
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- 11,99 €
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- 11,99 €
Descrizione dell’editore
Stuart Isacoff - pianist, critic and teacher - explores the history and evolution of the piano: how its sound provides the basis for emotional expression and individual style, why it has so powerfully entertained generation upon generation of listeners.
A Natural History of the Piano distills a lifetime of research and passion into one brilliant narrative. We witness Mozart unveiling his monumental concertos in Vienna's coffeehouses, using a special piano with one keyboard for the hands and another for the feet; European virtuoso Henri Herz entertaining rowdy miners during the California gold rush; Beethoven at his piano, conjuring healing angels to console a grieving mother who had lost her child; Liszt fainting in the arms of a page turner to spark an entire hall into hysterics Ranging from the groundbreaking music of Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt and Debussy to the breathtaking techniques of Glenn Gould, Oscar Peterson, Arthur Rubinstein and Van Cliburn, Isacoff delineates how classical music and jazz influenced each other as the uniquely American art form progressed from ragtime, novelty, boogie, bebop, and beyond, through Scott Joplin, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, Herbie Hancock and Bill Charlap.
Here is the instrument in all its complexity and beauty. We learn of the incredible craftsmanship of a modern Steinway, the peculiarity of specialty pianos built for the Victorian household, the continuing innovation in keyboards including electronic ones. And most of all, we hear the music of the masters, from centuries ago and in our own age, as brilliantly evoked as its most recent performance.
This wide-ranging volume is an essential for music lovers, pianists, and the armchair musician.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pianist and author Isacoff (Temperament: How Music Became a Battleground for the Great Minds of Western Civilization) again ventures into music's conceptual thickets, this time emerging with an encyclopedic and argumentative overview of all things piano: its antecedents, builders, players, popularity, and cultural status. It is not a strictly chronological history, as the main narrative is festooned with inset boxes, artist's photos, and backstory sidebars on topics ranging from "What's a Sonata?" to jazz icon Billy Taylor on "Learning from Tatum." Isacoff's main concern, it appears, is classifying how matters of style, sound, mood, and technique associated with such classical masters as Mozart, Beethoven, Liszt, and others interrelate and perpetuate across genre into modern times. As Isacoff puts it, "Despite the large swath they cut across time and geography, many of these creators fell naturally into a handful of stylistic categories." Those groups combustibles, alchemists, rhythmizers, and melodists shape a piano gestalt through which readers will be impressed (and occasionally rendered numb) by the depth and diversity of Isacoff's research and references. And, of course, there's room for argument. To his credit, though searching for the affinities that may make music universal, Isacoff also illuminates elements of what may, in fact, make music timeless.
