Composers & Musicians Books

A DESCRIPTION OF MUSIC."In the storm, in the smoke, in the fight, I comeTo help thee, dear, with my fife and my drum.My name is Music: and, when the bellRings for the dead men, I rule the knell;And, whenever the mariner wrecked through the blastHears the fog-bell sound, it was I who passed.The poet hath told you how I, a young maid,Came fresh from the gods to the myrtle shade;And thence, by a power... more...

It is perhaps fitting that the series of volumes comprising The Musician's Bookshelf should be inaugurated by the present collection of essays. To the majority of English readers the name of that strange and forceful personality, Romain Rolland, is known only through his magnificent, intimate record of an artist's life and aspirations, embracing ten volumes, Jean-Christophe. This is not the... more...

THE VIOLIN AND EARLY VIOLINISTS. The Ancestry of the Violin.—The Origin of the Cremona School of Violin-Making.—The Amatis and Stradiuarii.—Extraordinary Art Activity of Italy at this Period.—Antonius Stradiuarius and Joseph Guarnerius.—Something about the Lives of the Two Greatest Violin-Makers of the World.—Corelli, the First Great Violinist.—His Contemporaries and... more...

EDWARD MACDOWELL BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH EDWARD ALEXANDER MACDOWELL was born in New York City, U.S.A., on December 18th, 1861, of American parents descended from a Quaker family of Scotch-Irish extraction who emigrated to America about the middle of the 18th Century. He was their third son. As a boy he studied the pianoforte with Juan Buitrago, a South American, Pablo Desvernine, a Cuban, and for a short... more...