Composers and songwriters

The extraordinary group of Russian composers who came together in St Petersburg in the 1860s - long known as 'The Mighty Handful', but, as the moguchaya kuchka, better translated as 'the great little heap' - gave rise to one of the most fascinating and colourful stories in all musical history.

Brigid Brophy first published her passionate, profoundly original Mozart the Dramatist in 1964, revisiting it subsequently in 1988.

First published in 1936, Calvocoressi's and Abraham's study was the first complete account of its subject to appear in any language, including Russian, and was based on a large amount of original first-hand research.

SUNDAY TIMES MUSIC BOOK OF THE YEARROUGH TRADE BOOK OF THE YEARMOJO BOOK OF THE YEARIn 1975, Viv Albertine was obsessed with music but it never occurred to her she could be in a band as she couldn't play an instrument and she'd never seen a girl play electric guitar.

In our time, Bernard Leach has done for pottery what Henry Moore has done for scuplture.

This enthralling play considers the relationship between the private life and public work of the composer Leos Janacek, the passion he felt for a married woman nearly forty years his junior, and his final surge of creative energy.

Arguably the most important popular British composer of the 20th century, John Barry (1933-2011) enjoyed a career that spanned over fifty years, in which time he won five Academy Awards for pictures includingBorn Free, Out of Africa and Dances with Wolves.

When, in 2000, the National Theatre published its poll of the hundred best plays of the 20th century, David Hare had written five of them.

The Time by the Sea is about Ronald Blythe's life in Aldeburgh during the 1950s.

John Bridcut, author of the acclaimed 'Britten's Children', has included significant fresh material which will make the book indispensable for Britten aficionados as well as for those who are discovering the composer's music for the first time.

Andre de Toth's remarkable, eccentric and utterly compelling memoir opens amidst the enchanted cafe society of pre-war Budapest.

Gustav Holst was a leading figure in the new age of English music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

First published in 1978 The Ordeal of Ivor Gurney is a moving and extraordinary account of a tragic genius penned by the composer Michael Hurd.

Re-issued to coincide with the centenary of Messiaen's birth, The Messiaen Companion was the first major study to appear after the composer's death in April 1992.

Best remembered for his operas and his War Requiem, Benjamin Britten's radical politics and his sexuality have also ensured that he remains a controversial public figure.

Gustav Mahler is the most influential symphonist of the twentieth century.

In May 1939 Britten and Pears disembarked at Montreal at the start of their American visit, which was to be a period of intense musical activity and new personal relationships.

A decade after the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars had given way to an era of retrenchment and repression, 1824 became a watershed year.

Joseph Haydn is one of the greatest and most innovative of all composers, yet in some ways he is still curiously misunderstood.

Volume 2 opens at the the outbreak of the First World War and at the time of Janacek's lowest ebb.

Why is Mozart the best known and most popular of all the great Western classical composers?

The music of J.

Shostakovich: A Life Remembered is a unique study of the great composer, drawn from the reminiscences and reflections of his contemporaries.

John Tyrrell's biography of the Leos Janacek is the culmination of a life's work in the field.

An illuminating study of the life and work of Gyorgy Ligeti, one of the best-loved and most original composers of our time.

For over a century the Wagners have presided over the Bayreuth Festival, playing host to many of the greatest and ghastliest figures in the arts and politics amidst family in-fighting and political controversy.

'Sometimes I liken the creative act to that of being a good gardener.

A century after his death, Gustav Mahler is the most important composer of modern times.

John Bridcut, author of the acclaimed 'Britten's Children', will include significant fresh material which will make the book indispensable for Britten aficionados as well as for those who are discovering the composer's music for the first time.

Richard Wagner remains, almost 130 years after his death, the most controversial composer in the history of music.

October 1982: ABC, Culture Club, Shalamar and Survivor dominate the top twenty when the Pogues barrel out from the backstreets of King's Cross, a furious, pioneering mix of punk energy, traditional melodies and the powerfully poetic songwriting of Shane MacGowan.

The Treatise on Musical Objects is regarded as Pierre Schaeffer's most important work on music and its relationship with technology.

An occasion to appreciate Dexter's resounding musical genius as well as his wish for major social transformation.

Stravinsky in the Americas explores the ';pre-Craft' period of Igor Stravinsky's life, from when he first landed on American shores in 1925 to the end of World War II in 1945.

Arnold Schoenberg and Thomas Mann, two towering figures of twentieth-century music and literature, both found refuge in the German-exile community in Los Angeles during the Nazi era.

The name Giuseppe Verdi conjures images of Italians singing opera in the streets and bursting into song at political protests or when facing the firing squad.

Beyond Reasonrelates Wagner's works to the philosophical and cultural ideas of his time, centering on the four music dramas he created in the second half of his career:Der Ring des Nibelungen,Tristan und Isolde,Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg, andParsifal.

Nostalgia for the Future is the first collection in English of the writings and interviews of Luigi Nono (19241990).

Listening for the Secret is a critical assessment of the Grateful Dead and the distinct culture that grew out of the group's music, politics, and performance.

In this original study, Christopher Alan Reynolds examines the influence of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony on two major nineteenth-century composers, Richard Wagner and Robert Schumann.

Romantic Anatomies of Performance is concerned with the very matter of musical expression: the hands and voices of virtuosic musicians.

Bud Powell was not only one of the greatest bebop pianists of all time, he stands as one of the twentieth century's most dynamic and fiercely adventurous musical minds.

Frontier Figures is a tour-de-force exploration of how the American West, both as physical space and inspiration, animated American music.

In the first musicological study of Kurt Weill's complete stage works, Stephen Hinton charts the full range of theatrical achievements by one of twentieth-century musical theater's key figures.

Luigi Russolo (1885-1947)-painter, composer, builder of musical instruments, and first-hour member of the Italian Futurist movement-was a crucial figure in the evolution of twentieth-century aesthetics.

In this groundbreaking, historically-informed semiotic study of late eighteenth-century music, Stephen Rumph focuses on Mozart to explore musical meaning within the context of Enlightenment sign and language theory.

Compelling from cover to cover, this is the story of one of the most recorded and beloved jazz trumpeters of all time.

From his dazzling conducting debut in 1943 until his death in 1990, Leonard Bernstein's star blazed brilliantly.

Over the past four decades, Richard Taruskin's publications have redefined the field of Russian-music study.

Horace Silver is one of the last giants remaining from the incredible flowering and creative extension of bebop music that became known as "e;hard bop"e; in the 1950s.