Jean Sibelius (20th-Century Composers)

click here for more details, find new or used items	Guy Rickards Used from £66.62 Pages: 240 (Paperback) ISBN: 0714835811 Pub: Phaidon Press Ltd Pub date: 1997-09-04 Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 211915

Reader Reviews:

An eminently readable introduction to the man and his music (6/6 people found this helpful)

This eminently readable introduction to Sibelius and his music is recommended for those who want to learn more about the composer's life beyond the snippets found in the blurb that accompanies CDs.

The biography is told in a strictly narrative style over two hundred pages and eight chapters. As well as details of his family and friendships, his life is also placed in its wider context, both in terms of the music of his times and the political events that shaped Finnish history in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

There is no serious review of the music itself beyond casual comments here and there. This book is not a musicological analysis of the music: readers seeking this must look elsewhere. The final epilogue, though, comments on Sibelius's impact on his contemporaries and today's composers.

There is a full classified list of works at the back, plus recommendations for further reading and listening. The book is copiously full of photographs and other illustrations, although these are all in black and white. As one expects from this publisher, the paper is of very good quality.

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