Titles in The Listener's Companion: A Scarecrow Press Music Series
provide readers with a deeper understanding of key musical genres and
the work of major artists and composers. Aimed at nonspecialists, each
volume explains in clear and accessible language how to listen to works
from particular artists, composers, and genres. Looking at the context
in which the music appeared as well as its form, authors explore with
readers the environments in which key musical works were written and
performed-from a 1950s bebop concert at the Village Vanguard to a
performance of Handel's Messiah in eighteenth-century Germany. Along
with his contemporaries Chopin and Wagner, Verdi is among the few
composers whose place in the musical pantheon is based almost entirely
upon the mastery of a single genre. This is largely owing to his
staggering output in a career that lasted over fifty years. Several of
his operas occupy the nucleus of the modern repertoire, and Verdi almost
single-handedly maintained the Italian lyric tradition against the tide
of Wagnerian music drama. In his final years, he virtually reinvented
Italian opera. Indeed, Verdi's life and music came to be so intimately
associated with the Italian unification movement known as the
Risorgimento that he is still revered as a great national figure in his
homeland. In Experiencing Verdi: A Listener's Companion, Donald Sanders
combines biography with simple, concise musical analysis. Summarizing
the evolution of Italian opera and the bel canto tradition that
prevailed at the beginning of Verdi's career, Sanders takes readers on a
leisurely tour of eleven of Verdi's most important operas and of the
Manzoni Requiem and concludes with a look at Verdi's influence on later
composers like Giacomo Puccini, his place in the modern repertoire, and
his role as an Italian patriot. With a timeline, glossary of basic
musical terms, and selected reading and listening recommendations,
Experiencing Verdi will engage opera lovers at all levels, from those
just starting to listen, learn, and enjoy to musical devotees.
