The Vintage Guide to Classical Music

出版者:Vintage

作者:Jan Swafford

页数:624

出版时间:1992-12-15

价格:USD 21.00

装帧:Paperback

isbn号码:9780679728054

具体描述

The most readable and comprehensive guide to enjoying over five hundred years of classical music -- from Gregorian chants, Johann Sebastian Bach, and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to Johannes Brahms, Igor Stravinsky, John Cage, and beyond.

The Vintage Guide to Classical Music is a lively -- and opinionated -- musical history and an insider's key to the personalities, epochs, and genres of the Western classical tradition. Among its features:

-- chronologically arranged essays on nearly 100 composers, from Guillaume de Machaut (ca. 1300-1377) to Aaron Copland (1900-1990), that combine biography with detailed analyses of the major works while assessing their role in the social, cultural, and political climate of their times;

-- informative sidebars that clarify broader topics such as melody, polyphony, atonality, and the impact of the early-music movement;

-- a glossary of musical terms, from a cappella to woodwinds;

-- a step-by-step guide to building a great classical music library.

Written with wit and a clarity that both musical experts and beginners can appreciate, The Vintage Guide to Classical Music is an invaluable source-book for music lovers everywhere.

作者简介

Jan Swafford (born 1946) is an American composer and author who teaches composition, theory, and music history at The Boston Conservatory. He earned his B.A. magna cum laude from Harvard College and his M.M.A. and D.M.A. from the Yale School of Music. His teachers included Earle Kim at Harvard, Jacob Druckman at Yale, and Betsy Jolas at Tanglewood. He has written respected musical biographies of Charles Ives and Johannes Brahms, as well as the introductory Vintage Guide to Classical Music".

He writes regular columns on music and other subjects in Slate, and is heard as a commentator on NPR and the BBC. He is a regular program annotator for orchestras and venues including the Boston Symphony, Cleveland Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, and Carnegie Hall. He is completing a biography of Beethoven, due out by 2014.

His writing honors include a 2012 Deems Taylor Award for internet writing and a Mellon Fellowship at Harvard. His Brahms and Ives biographies were end-of-year Critics' Choices in the NY Times. The Ives was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle award in biography and won the Pen-Winship prize for a book on a New England subject.

Swafford's own music, which is highly lyrical and moves freely between tonality and atonality, has been called New Romantic in style. There are equal if less overt contributions from world music, especially Indian and Balinese, and from jazz and blues. The titles of his works reveal a steady inspiration from nature and landscape. The composer views his own work as a kind of classicism: a concern with clarity, directness, and expression, or as he puts it, "music that sounds familiar though it is new, works that sound like they wrote themselves."

Notable are his orchestral works Landscape with Traveler (1979-80), After Spring Rain (1981-82) and From the Shadow of the Mountain (2001), the piano quintet Midsummer Variations (1985), the piano quartet They Who Hunger (1989), and the piano trio They That Mourn (2002), the last in memoriam 9/11 (it is available on YouTube). In 2012 cellist Rhonda Rider premiered his solo cello work "The Silence at Yuma Point", part of a commissioning project of pieces inspired by Grand Canyon (where Swafford has been a frequent hiker). His compositional awards include an NEA Composer Grant, two Massachusetts Artists Foundation Fellowships, and a Tanglewood Fellowship. His work is published by Peer Music Classical and Meridian.

用户评价

我必须强调这本书在“实用性”和“情境化”方面的卓越表现。很多音乐指南只是告诉你“听什么”，但这本书却教你“如何去听”。作者非常注重对听众心理的引导。例如，在介绍室内乐时，书中并没有直接去分析赋格的复杂性，而是建议读者想象自己是身处十八世纪某个贵族沙龙中，听着四位音乐家在壁炉边即兴演奏的情景。这种代入感瞬间打破了音乐与听众之间的距离。此外，书中还提供了许多针对不同情绪或场合的“主题歌单”，虽然这些曲目都可以在其他地方找到，但这本书将其按照特定情境（比如“需要深度专注时”、“雨天冥想时”）进行了精妙的组合和推荐，并解释了为什么这些曲目能达到预期的情感效果。这让我感觉自己不再是被动地接受信息，而是主动地在运用这些知识来丰富自己的日常生活。它真正做到了将古典音乐的欣赏融入生活的每一个细微之处，让它不再是遥不可及的艺术殿堂，而是触手可及的情感共鸣，这种将理论转化为实践的教学方法，是它在我心中脱颖而出的关键所在。

我是一个资深乐迷，已经听古典音乐超过二十年了，坦白讲，我对市面上大部分的“入门指南”已经失去了兴趣，因为它们对我来说信息量实在太低了。然而，这本书却出乎意料地提供了许多我未曾留意过的“角落知识”。它并没有沉溺于那些人尽皆知的名曲解析，反而花了不少笔墨去探讨那些被主流叙事所忽略的、但在特定历史时期至关重要的作曲家及其作品。书中对于早期音乐的考据尤其令人印象深刻，那些关于中世纪圣歌如何过渡到文艺复兴复调音乐的论述，其深度和细节的丰富程度，甚至超过了我收藏的一些专业研究文献。作者在处理这些“冷门”领域时，展现出了惊人的学术功底，同时依然保持着叙述的引人入胜。更让我惊喜的是，书中穿插了一些对“乐器演变”的介绍，比如管弦乐队编制是如何一步步发展壮大的，这让我对作品的配器法有了全新的理解。比如，读完关于铜管乐器在浪漫主义时期地位提升的章节后，我再去听马勒的交响曲，那种宏大叙事的力量感仿佛被放大了数倍。这本书无疑是为那些渴望超越表面，深入挖掘古典音乐“地层结构”的进阶爱好者准备的宝藏。

这本书的阅读体验，简直是一次跨越时空的音乐之旅，它最成功的地方在于，完全消解了古典音乐的“高冷”光环。我拿到手后，并没有急着去啃那些严肃的章节，而是被封面内侧那张手绘的“维也纳音乐世家关系图”所吸引。那张图表做得极其精美，将海顿、莫扎特、贝多芬三代音乐巨匠之间的师承、竞争和互相影响，用生动的线条勾勒出来，让人一目了然，瞬间就对那个时代音乐界的“江湖恩怨”有了初步概念。这种将视觉元素融入深度知识传授的方式，极大地降低了理解的门槛。而且，全书的排版极为讲究，留白恰到好处，既保证了信息的密度，又不会让人产生阅读疲劳。我习惯在睡前阅读，以前很多音乐书籍的字体太小或段落太密，读几页就得放下休息。但这本书的字体大小和行距设计非常人性化，让人可以沉浸其中，享受阅读的乐趣。它不是一本工具书，更像是一本精心制作的“艺术品”，值得放在客厅的书架上，随时翻阅，每次都能发现新的惊喜和细节。

老实说，我抱着一种审视的眼光打开这本“指南”的，毕竟市面上关于古典音乐的读物多如牛毛，大部分都是泛泛而谈，或者过于偏向某一特定流派的深度挖掘，让人难以全面把握。这本书的独特之处在于它对“年代感”的把控达到了一个近乎完美的平衡。它巧妙地避开了纯粹的时间轴罗列，而是将音乐史的演进与当时的技术发展、社会思潮紧密结合起来。阅读过程中，我深感震撼的是作者对不同时期风格差异的细致剖析。比如，从巴洛克时期的严谨对位法，到古典主义时期的清晰结构和情感克制，再到浪漫主义时期个人情感的爆发式倾泻，作者没有用空洞的形容词，而是引用了具体的乐段进行对比分析，即便没有专业的乐理知识，也能清晰地感受到那种从“规则”到“自由”的演变轨迹。这种对比手法极大地增强了学习的趣味性，让我对“为什么”某个作曲家会写出某种风格的音乐有了更深层次的认识。我原本以为这本书的篇幅会让人感到压力，但流畅的文笔和清晰的章节划分，让它更像是一部值得反复品味的“百科全书式小说”。它不仅仅是告诉你“谁写了什么”，更是告诉你“他们为什么这样写”，这才是真正的价值所在。

这本书简直是为我量身定做的！我一直对古典音乐怀有浓厚的兴趣，但总觉得入门有些困难，那些复杂的术语和海量的作曲家名字让人望而却步。然而，这本书完全颠覆了我的这种认知。它不是那种高高在上、故作深奥的学术著作，而是像一位和蔼可亲、博学的长者，用最平易近人的方式，带着你一步步走进这个美妙的世界。我尤其欣赏作者在讲解巴赫、莫扎特、贝多芬这些“巨匠”时所采用的叙事手法，完全没有刻板的说教，而是穿插着许多鲜活的轶事和当时的社会背景，让我仿佛能感受到那个时代音乐家们的心跳与呼吸。比如，书中对莫扎特晚年创作《安魂曲》时的心境描绘，那种挣扎与升华，读来令人动容。我感觉自己不再是单纯地“听”音乐，而是开始“理解”音乐背后的情感脉络和历史重量。装帧设计也十分考究，厚实的纸张和清晰的字体，拿在手里就是一种享受。对于想要系统性了解古典音乐体系，但又害怕枯燥理论的初学者来说，这绝对是一剂良药，它成功地将那些冷硬的知识点，转化成了引人入胜的故事线，让每一次翻阅都充满了期待。我甚至开始尝试去听那些我以前略过的曲目，因为有了这本书的指引，我能更好地捕捉到那些细微的结构变化和情感递进，真是一次美妙的启蒙之旅。

刚开始翻，语言流畅太适合当intro了。竟然从没再版？

I guess all musicians can write well

I guess all musicians can write well

刚开始翻，语言流畅太适合当intro了。竟然从没再版？

好书好书