Library

Published in Boston in 1900, this volume belongs to the historical literature through which musicians, critics and teachers organized knowledge about its subject. Its value in Classical Archive is not only bibliographic: the dossier records the edition identity, principal responsibility, publication context and the work's likely research role,…

This curated dossier identifies Great Contemporary Pianists Speak for Themselves, Vol. I by Elyse Mach as a distinct biographical or documentary source within Classical Archive. It is included not merely as a title record but as a research-oriented entry: the book is indexed by subject, author and title…

This curated dossier identifies Great Contemporary Pianists Speak for Themselves, Vol. II by Elyse Mach as a distinct biographical or documentary source within Classical Archive. It is included not merely as a title record but as a research-oriented entry: the book is indexed by subject, author and title…

This early music-biographical classic presents Haydn through a sequence of letters and then turns to Mozart, interspersing anecdote, aesthetic judgment and broad comments on European musical life. Stendhal’s enthusiasm gives the book unusual immediacy, but modern scholarship has established that substantial portions were derived from Giuseppe Carpani and…

Stendhal’s Rossini is less a conventional biography than a contemporary, argumentative portrait of the composer and the operatic culture around him. Written while Rossini was still the dominant European opera celebrity, it mixes description of works, theatrical gossip, aesthetic polemic and observations on singers, audiences and institutions.

The final volume reaches Burney’s contemporary musical world and contains some of the set’s most important evidence for eighteenth-century performance, composition and reception. It also includes bibliographic material and extensive commentary on composers and institutions familiar to Burney at first or near-first hand.

Hawkins begins his five-volume history with ancient theory, systems, modes, intervals and early writers, presenting music as both a science and a historical practice. The work appeared in the same year as the first volume of Burney’s rival history and provides an essential alternative model of eighteenth-century musical…

The final volume completes Hawkins’s vast survey and reaches the musical world nearest his own lifetime. It combines biographical portraits, institutional history and judgments about repertory and practice, closing one of the foundational English histories of music.