Bøker av Simon Morrison

A thrilling new biography of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky—composer of some of the world’s most popular orchestral and theatrical music

"Through painstakingly precise research, Simon Morrison brings us a glimpse of the woman behind the chiffon, leather, and lace and provides us with insights into the inspirations and motivations of our generation's most iconic female singer, allowing us to see her in all her dimensions. Fascinating!"--Walter Egan, music producer, songwriter, artist "Mirror in the Sky is a genuine delight for any Stevie Nicks fan, but an absolute treasure for true music aficionados. Less about the 'rock star lifestyle' than the creative process and collaboration that make the lifestyle possible, it's an incredibly rare glimpse into musical machinations that only those on the inside are familiar with. Everyone wonders what it's like to be a rock star, but if you want to understand how Nicks actually forged that capricious path--becoming a musical icon--this book is for you."--Kristin Casey, author of Rock Monster: My Life with Joe Walsh

An aesthetic, historical, and theoretical study of four scores, Russian Opera and the Symbolist Movement is a groundbreaking and imaginative treatment of the important yet neglected topic of Russian opera in the Silver Age. Spanning the gap between the supernatural Russian music of the nineteenth century and the compositions of Prokofiev and Stravinsky, this exceptionally insightful and well-researched book explores how Russian symbolist poets interpreted opera and prompted operatic innovation. Simon Morrison shows how these works, though stylistically and technically different, reveal the extent to which the operatic representation of the miraculous can be translated into its enactment.Morrison treats these largely unstudied pieces by canonical composers: Tchaikovsky's Queen of Spades, Rimsky-Korsakov's Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevroniya, Scriabin's unfinished Mysterium, and Prokofiev's Fiery Angel. The chapters, revisionist studies of these composers and scores, address separate aspects of Symbolist poetics, discussing such topics as literary and musical decadence, pagan-Christian syncretism, theurgy, and life creation, or the portrayal of art in life. The appendix offers the first complete English-language translation of Scriabin's libretto for the Preparatory Act.Providing valuable insight into both the Symbolist enterprise and Russian musicology, this book casts new light on opera's evolving, ambiguous place in fin de siecle culture.

First enraptured by the young pianist and rising star, Serge Prokofiev, during a courtship in Brooklyn, then abandoned by him in Moscow, Lina survived one of the darkest periods in Soviet history - enduring eight years in the Gulag after she received that fateful telephone call.