The New Grove Turn of the Century Masters: Janacek, Mahler, Strauss, Sibelius (Composer Biography Series)

"The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians" is the most comprehensive and up-to-date body of musical knowledge ever gathered together. "The New Grove" composer biographies have been selected from the dictionary to bring the most widely used of the biographies to a larger audience. Each has been expanded and updated for book publication and contains a comprehensive work list, index and fully revised bibliography, in addition to the definitive discussion of the subject's life and works. The four great figures of European music as the 20th century succeeded the 19th are treated in the present volume. Two of them represent symphonic composition-- Mahler, who so notably broadened the emotional range of the symphony, and Sibelius, whose symphonies are distinguished by the grandeur of their architecture. The other two represent opera-- Strauss, who moved from the lurid world of Wilde's "Salome" through the glorious decadence of "Rosenkavalier" to the serenity of "Capriccio", and Janacek, who brought a new note of earthiness and urgency into the opera house of his day.