Read Books Online and Download eBooks, EPub, PDF, Mobi, Kindle, Text Full Free.
Lina Serge
Download Lina Serge full books in PDF, epub, and Kindle. Read online Lina Serge ebook anywhere anytime directly on your device. Fast Download speed and no annoying ads. We cannot guarantee that every ebooks is available!
Download or read book Lina & Serge written by Simon Morrison and published by HMH. This book was released on 2013-03-19 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This account of the renowned composer’s neglected wife—including her years in a Soviet prison—is “a story both riveting and wrenching” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review). Serge Prokofiev was one of the twentieth century’s most brilliant composers yet is an enigma to historians and his fans. Why did he leave the West and move to the Soviet Union despite Stalin’s crimes? Why did his astonishing creativity in the 1930s soon dissolve into a far less inspiring output in his later years? The answers can finally be revealed, thanks to Simon Morrison’s unique and unfettered access to the family’s voluminous papers and his ability to reconstruct the tragic, riveting life of the composer’s wife, Lina. Morrison’s portrait of the marriage of Lina and Serge Prokofiev is the story of a remarkable woman who fought for survival in the face of unbearable betrayal and despair and of the irresistibly talented but heartlessly self-absorbed musician she married. Born to a Spanish father and Russian mother in Madrid at the end of the nineteenth century and raised in Brooklyn, Lina fell in love with a rising-star composer—and defied convention to be with him, courting public censure. She devoted her life to Serge and art, training to be an operatic soprano and following her brilliant husband to Stalin’s Russia. Just as Serge found initial acclaim—before becoming constricted by the harsh doctrine of socialist-realist music—Lina was at first accepted and later scorned, ending her singing career. Serge abandoned her and took up with another woman. Finally, Lina was arrested and shipped off to the gulag in 1948. She would be held in captivity for eight awful years. Meanwhile, Serge found himself the tool of an evil regime to which he was forced to accommodate himself. The contrast between Lina and Serge is one of strength and perseverance versus utter self-absorption, a remarkable human drama that draws on the forces of art, sacrifice, and the struggle against oppression. Readers will never forget the tragic drama of Lina’s life, and never listen to Serge’s music in quite the same way again.
Book Synopsis Russian Music at Home and Abroad by : Richard Taruskin
Download or read book Russian Music at Home and Abroad written by Richard Taruskin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2016-09-06 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This new collection views Russian music through the Greek triad ofÊÒthe Good, the True, and the BeautifulÓ to investigateÊhow the idea of "nation" embeds itself in the public discourse about music and other arts with results at times invigorating, at times corrupting. In our divided, postÐCold War, and now postÐ9/11 world, Russian music, formerly a quiet corner on the margins of musicology, has become a site of noisy contention. Richard Taruskin assesses the political and cultural stakes that attach to it in the era of Pussy Riot and renewed international tensions, before turning to individual cases from the nineteenth century to the present. Much ofÊthe volume is devoted to the resolutely cosmopolitan but inveterately Russian Igor Stravinsky, one of the major forces in the music of the twentieth century and subject of particular interest to composers and music theorists all over the world. Taruskin here revisits him for the first time since the 1990s, when everything changed for Russia and its cultural products. Other essays are devoted to the cultural and social policies of the Soviet Union and their effect on the music produced there as those policies swung away from Communist internationalism to traditional Russian nationalism; to the musicians of the Russian postrevolutionary diaspora; andÊto the tension between the compelling artistic quality of works such as StravinskyÕs Sacre du Printemps or ProkofieffÕs Zdravitsa and the antihumanistic or totalitarian messages they convey. Russian Music at Home and Abroad addresses these concerns in a personal and critical way, characteristically demonstrating TaruskinÕs authority and ability toÊbring living history out of the shadows.
Book Synopsis Musical Lives and Times Examined by : Richard Taruskin
Download or read book Musical Lives and Times Examined written by Richard Taruskin and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 576 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A gathering chiefly of talks given either by invitation or at conferences throughout the world over the last quarter century. The topics range widely, but recurrent themes include the place of classical music in contemporary society and culture, the fraught relationship between aesthetics and ethics, and the responsibilities of scholarship in an age of spin"--
Book Synopsis The Victims Return by : Stephen F. Cohen
Download or read book The Victims Return written by Stephen F. Cohen and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2013-02-28 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stalin's reign of terror in the Soviet Union has been called 'the other Holocaust'. During the Stalin years, it is thought that more innocent men, women and children perished than in Hitler's destruction of the European Jews. Many millions died in Stalin's Gulag of torture prisons and forced-labour camps, yet others survived and were freed after his death in 1953. This book is the story of the survivors. Long kept secret by Soviet repression and censorship, it is now told by renowned author and historian Stephen F. Cohen, who came to know many former Gulag inmates during his frequent trips to Moscow over a period of thirty years. Based on first-hand interviews with the victims themselves and on newly available materials, Cohen provides a powerful narrative of the survivors' post-Gulag saga, from their liberation and return to Soviet society, to their long struggle to salvage what remained of their shattered lives and to obtain justice. Spanning more than fifty years, "The Victims Return" combines individual stories with the fierce political conflicts that raged, both in society and in the Kremlin, over the victims of the terror and the people who had victimized them. This compelling book will be essential reading for anyone interested in Russian history.
Book Synopsis Territorial Rights by : Muriel Spark
Download or read book Territorial Rights written by Muriel Spark and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2012-03-20 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A witty, romantic farce from the author of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie: “Beautifully put together and effortlessly entertaining” (The New York Times). Robert wants nothing more than to become a serious art historian. But his hopes for a staid academic life are put on hold when he’s driven from London to Venice to escape one lover and seek out another: the enigmatic Bulgarian refugee Lina Pancev. In Venice, Robert encounters a grand carnival of lust, lies, blackmail, cocktail parties, and regicide. As he chases Lina, his heart’s desire, the city itself provides a priceless education in love, art, and beauty. Witty yet elegant, Territorial Rights is a celebration of human imperfection and complexity, with as many shifting identities, wardrobe changes, and sumptuous settings as a comic opera. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Muriel Spark including rare photos and never-before-seen documents from the author’s archive at the National Library of Scotland.
Book Synopsis Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography by : Harlow Robinson
Download or read book Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography written by Harlow Robinson and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-07-31 with total page 548 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography traces the career of one of the most significant — and most popular — composers of the twentieth century. Using materials from previously closed archives in the USSR, from archives in Paris and London, and interviews with family members and musicians who knew and worked with Prokofiev, the biography illuminates the life and music of the prolific creator of such classics as Peter and the Wolf, Romeo and Juliet, Cinderella, the “Classical” Symphony, the Alexander NevskyCantata, and the Lieutenant Kizhe Suite. Prokofiev (1891-1953) lived a life complicated and enriched by the momentous political and social transformation of his homeland in the aftermath of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. Born to a middle-class family in rural Ukraine, he demonstrated amazing music talent at a very early age. In 1904, he began serious musical study at St. Petersburg Conservatory. For graduation, he composed (and performed) his audacious Piano Concerto No.1, which helped to make his name as the “Bad Boy of Russian Music.” As one of the most accomplished pianists of his time, Prokofiev composed many works for the instrument which remain today an important fixture of the concert repertory. Prokofiev fled the chaos following the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution for the United States, where he lived and worked for several years, producing his comic opera The Love for Three Oranges and his very popular Third Piano Concerto. But he found American taste too underdeveloped, and moved to Paris in 1923 where he collaborated on ballets with Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes (including Prodigal Son) and wrote several more operas (The Gambler, The Fiery Angel). Prokofiev also toured widely as a concert pianist, reaching nearly all major European capitals and returning several times to the United States, where his music was promoted by Serge Koussevitsky, conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. During his Paris years, he began returning regularly on tours to the USSR, greeted with ecstatic enthusiasm. Dissatisfied with his music’s reception in Paris, and homesick for Russia, Prokofiev in 1936 made the controversial decision to move with his wife and two sons to Moscow, just as Josef Stalin’s purges were intensifying. Until 1938 he continued to tour abroad. In Moscow and Leningrad, Prokofiev worked with brilliant artists, including film director Sergei Eisenstein (for whom he wrote the scores toAlexander Nevsky and Ivan the Terrible), pianist Sviatoslav Richter, cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and ballerina Galina Ulanova (who danced the role of Juliet in Romeo and Juliet). But life was difficult: during World War II, Prokofiev and his second wife were evacuated to Central Asia. Even so, he managed to compose his gigantic opera War and Peace, his epic Fifth Symphony and many other seminal works of Soviet and world music. After suffering a stroke in 1945, Prokofiev’s health worsened. At the same time, his music was attacked as “formalist” by Stalin’s cultural officials in 1948, when his first wife was arrested and sent to a labor camp. Ironically, Prokofiev died on the very same day as Stalin, March 5, 1953. “One is grateful for Harlow Robinson’s Sergei Prokofiev: A Biography... which is about as good as a musical biography gets: Robinson illuminates the artist’s character, penetrates the human significance of the music, demonstrates an easy command of Russian political and cultural history, and writes with clarity and vigor. Anyone thinking about Prokofiev is deeply in his debt.” — Algis Valiunas, The Weekly Standard “Harlow Robinson’s biography of the composer is the fullest account to date, a thoughtful study of a puzzling personality in and out of music and a comprehensive history of the East-West cultural curtain as it constrained the life and work of the one major artist who had been active on both of its sides... The biographer is fair-minded, generous to Prokofiev but by no means an apologist... the best-written biography of a modern composer.” — Robert Craft, The Washington Post “An indefatigably productive composer who achieved considerable success during his lifetime, Prokofiev seldom seemed satisfied, as he restlessly sought ever-greater recognition. Mr. Robinson explores the darkest corners of this labyrinthine life and brings clarity to some of its more puzzling twists and turns... [he] skillfully relates Prokofiev’s life to greater political and cultural currents.” — Carol J. Oja, The New York Times “[Robinson] tells us more than anyone hitherto about the composer’s life as well as much about the origins and qualities of the music... The first full biography published in English to avoid the pitfalls of cold-war politics... [A] book of many virtues. [Robinson] gives us more facts about Prokofiev’s life than any previous biographer, and he weaves them into a story of politics, art, and romance that marvelously gathers momentum... Robinson writes with the skill of a novelist; but the story, in this instance, is true.” — George Martin, The Opera Quarterly “A splendid life, by a Slavic-studies specialist who is also a musician, of one of our century’s most popular composers... Mr. Robinson’s account of the musical development of his monomaniacal hero is first-rate.” — The New Yorker “[A] well-written, scholarly, and very detailed book...” — April FitzLyon, The Times Literary Supplement “Certainly, there is nothing in English to rival Robinson’s book in scope and detail...” — Richard Dyer, The Boston Globe “[Prokofiev] has long been in need of the full, impressively researched, congenially written study that Robinson gives us.” — Gary Schmidgall, Opera News “[A] fluent, readable and detailed biography of Prokofiev from the perspective of a musically informed cultural historian... Robinson has made a complicated and contradictory life accessible to the western reader... Robinson has performed the important first step of chronicling for the general reader one of the twentieth century’s major musical personalities – and his biography will stitch music into the Russian cultural scene for many professional Slavists as well.” — Caryl Emerson, The Russian Review “The manner in which [Stravinsky and Prokofiev] pursued their careers in tandem for a while is one of the subjects generously described by Harlow Robinson with his flair for interesting and relevant information in his absorbing new biography of Prokofiev.” — Arthur Berger, The New York Review of Books “More detailed and comprehensive, and less politically partisan, than previous biographies, this readable account... deals objectively but compassionately with the life and work of a major Russian composer.” — Publishers Weekly “This is the best biography in English to date on Prokofiev... Robinson candidly exposes Prokofiev’s flaws, from his musical capriciousness and opportunism to his unpardonable social tactlessness... Throughout, the writing is intended for the lay reader — crisp, fast-paced, and unencumbered by technical jargon. Highly recommended.” — Library Journal
Author :Pennsylvania. Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg Commission Publisher : ISBN 13 : Total Pages :512 pages Book Rating :4.3/5 (91 download)
Book Synopsis Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg by : Pennsylvania. Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg Commission
Download or read book Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg written by Pennsylvania. Fiftieth Anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg Commission and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis Rethinking Prokofiev by : Rita McAllister
Download or read book Rethinking Prokofiev written by Rita McAllister and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020-01-23 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Among major 20th-century composers whose music is poorly understood, Sergei Prokofiev stands out conspicuously. The turbulent times in which Prokofiev lived and the chronology of his travels-he left Russia in the wake of Revolution, and returned at the height of the Stalinist purges-have caused unusually polarized appraisals of his music. While individual, distinctive, and instantly recognizable, Prokofiev's music was also idiosyncratically tonal in an age when tonality was largely passé. Prokofiev's output therefore has been largely elusive and difficult to assess against contemporary trends. More than sixty years after the composer's death, editors Rita McAllister and Christina Guillaumier offer Rethinking Prokofiev as an assessment that redresses this enigmatic composer's legacy. Often more political than artistic, these appraisals have depended not only upon the date of publication but also the geographical location of the writer. Commissioned from some of the most distinguished and rising scholars in the field, this collection highlights the background and context of Prokofiev's work. Contributors delve into the composer's relationship to nineteenth-century Russian traditions, Silver-Age and Symbolist composers and poets, the culture of Paris in the 1920s and '30s, and to his later Soviet colleagues and younger contemporaries. They also investigate his reception in the West, his return to Russia, and the effect of his music on contemporary popular culture. Still, the main focus of the book is on the music itself: his early, experimental piano and vocal works, as well as his piano concertos, operas, film scores, early ballets, and late symphonies. Through an empirical examination of his characteristic harmonies, melodies, cadences, and musical gestures-and through an analysis of the newly uncovered contents of his sketch-books-contributors reveal much of what makes Prokofiev an idiosyncratic genius and his music intriguing, often dramatic, and almost always beguiling.
Book Synopsis The Firebird and the Fox by : Jeffrey Brooks
Download or read book The Firebird and the Fox written by Jeffrey Brooks and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-24 with total page 349 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A century of Russian artistic genius, including literature, art, music and dance, within the dynamic cultural ecosystem that shaped it.
Book Synopsis Routledge Handbook of Urban Water Governance by : Thomas Bolognesi
Download or read book Routledge Handbook of Urban Water Governance written by Thomas Bolognesi and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2022-09-01 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This handbook provides a comprehensive, state-of-the-art overview of urban water governance. Of the many growing challenges presented by rapid urbanization, water governance is a critical one and while urban water governance is now regarded as a critical field of research, the literature is fragmented. For the first time, this handbook brings together urban water governance research, containing interdisciplinary contributions from established and emerging scholars, practitioners, and policymakers. It addresses the key questions of how urban water governance works, how is it shaped, and what the impacts are. The handbook's structure offers a progressive entry into the complexity of urban water governance. Starting with technical dimensions, the handbook addresses supply and demand, wastewater, and sanitation. It then considers regulation and economic factors, examining water utilities and services. Political processes, and the actors involved, are addressed and the handbook finishes with a part focusing on governance and sustainability, where chapters address critically important topics such as access to water, water safety, and water security. This handbook is essential reading for students, scholars, and professionals interested in urban water governance, urban studies, and water resource management and sustainability more broadly.
Book Synopsis Selected Letters of Sergei Prokofiev by : Sergey Prokofiev
Download or read book Selected Letters of Sergei Prokofiev written by Sergey Prokofiev and published by UPNE. This book was released on 1998 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume collects for the first time in English the most representative and enlightening of Prokofiev's letters, including some previously suppressed missives that have never before been published. Expertly translated and annotated by Harlow Robinson, the correspondence presented here covers Prokofiev's earliest years at St. Petersburg Conservatory, his extensive worldwide travels, and his return to Moscow. Among the correspondents are childhood friend Vera Alpers, harpist Eleonora Damskaya, ballet impresario Sergei Diaghilev, theatrical director Vsevolod Meyerhold, Soviet critic Boris Asafiev, composers Vernon Duke and Nikolai Miaskovsky, soprano Nina Koshetz, musicologist Nicolas Slonimsky, violinist Jascha Heifetz, conductor Serge Koussevitsky, and film director Sergei Eisenstein. Prokofiev vividly describes, often with dramatic flair and a quirky sense of humor, concerts, performances, his compositions, political events, and meetings with other musicians and composers. His observations are peppered with musical gossip as well as eccentric, original, and disarmingly apolitical insights.
Book Synopsis Can Democracy Safeguard the Future? by : Graham Smith
Download or read book Can Democracy Safeguard the Future? written by Graham Smith and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-02-01 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our democracies repeatedly fail to safeguard the future. From pensions to pandemics, health and social care through to climate, biodiversity and emerging technologies, democracies have been unable to deliver robust policies for the long term. In this book, Graham Smith asks why. Exploring the drivers of short-termism, he considers ways of reshaping legislatures and constitutions and proposes strengthening independent offices whose overarching goals do not change at every election. More radically, Smith argues that forms of participatory and deliberative politics offer the most effective democratic response to the current political myopia, as well as a powerful means of protecting the interests of generations to come.
Download or read book Pierre Key's Music Year Book written by and published by . This book was released on 1925 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Book Synopsis European Union Foreign Policy in a Changing World by : Karen E. Smith
Download or read book European Union Foreign Policy in a Changing World written by Karen E. Smith and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2013-04-18 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second edition of European Union Foreign Policy in a Changing World provides a clear introduction to the complexities of contemporary European foreign policy and offers a fresh and distinctive perspective on the nature of the EU’s international identity. Thoroughly revised and expanded, the book explores how and why the EU tries to achieve five core foreign policy objectives: the encouragement of regional cooperation; the advancement of human rights; the promotion of democracy and good governance; the prevention of violent conflicts; and the fight against international crime, including terrorism. In pursuing these goals, the book illustrates how the EU is faced with acute policy dilemmas because the five objectives not only clash with each other, but also with additional policy priorities – such as securing energy supplies or establishing strategic partnerships with key powers. The uniqueness of the EU as a global actor is carefully assessed, and its key policies and the related dilemmas it faces compared with those of other international actors. This well-written and thoroughly researched book will be a valuable resource for undergraduate and postgraduate students of European politics, foreign policy analysis, international relations and related disciplines.
Download or read book Sergey Prokofiev written by Daniel Jaffé and published by Phaidon. This book was released on 1998-11-06 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive, revealing biography of the versatile Russian composer and pianist.
Book Synopsis Sergey Prokofiev and His World by : Simon Morrison
Download or read book Sergey Prokofiev and His World written by Simon Morrison and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2008-08-24 with total page 594 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sergey Prokofiev (1891-1953), arguably the most popular composer of the twentieth century, led a life of triumph and tragedy. The story of his prodigious childhood in tsarist Russia, maturation in the West, and rise and fall as a Stalinist-era composer is filled with unresolved questions. Sergey Prokofiev and His World probes beneath the surface of his career and contextualizes his contributions to music on both sides of the nascent Cold War divide. The book contains previously unknown documents from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art in Moscow and the Prokofiev Estate in Paris. The literary notebook of the composer's mother, Mariya Grigoryevna, illuminates her involvement in his education and is translated in full, as are ninety-eight letters between the composer and his business partner, Levon Atovmyan. The collection also includes a translation of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky's unperformed stage adaptation of Eugene Onegin, for which Prokofiev composed incidental music in 1936. The essays in the book range in focus from musical sketches to Kremlin decrees. The contributors explore Prokofiev's time in America; evaluate his working methods in the mid-1930s; document the creation of his score for the film Lieutenant Kizhe; tackle how and why Prokofiev rewrote his 1930 Fourth Symphony in 1947; detail his immortalization by Soviet bureaucrats, composers, and scholars; and examine Prokofiev's interest in Christian Science and the paths it opened for his music. The contributors are Mark Aranovsky, Kevin Bartig, Elizabeth Bergman, Leon Botstein, Pamela Davidson, Caryl Emerson, Marina Frolova-Walker, Nelly Kravetz, Leonid Maximenkov, Stephen Press, and Peter Schmelz.
Book Synopsis Sergey Prokofiev and His World by : Simon Morrison
Download or read book Sergey Prokofiev and His World written by Simon Morrison and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-26 with total page 580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sergey Prokofiev (1891-1953), arguably the most popular composer of the twentieth century, led a life of triumph and tragedy. The story of his prodigious childhood in tsarist Russia, maturation in the West, and rise and fall as a Stalinist-era composer is filled with unresolved questions. Sergey Prokofiev and His World probes beneath the surface of his career and contextualizes his contributions to music on both sides of the nascent Cold War divide. The book contains previously unknown documents from the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art in Moscow and the Prokofiev Estate in Paris. The literary notebook of the composer's mother, Mariya Grigoryevna, illuminates her involvement in his education and is translated in full, as are ninety-eight letters between the composer and his business partner, Levon Atovmyan. The collection also includes a translation of Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky's unperformed stage adaptation of Eugene Onegin, for which Prokofiev composed incidental music in 1936. The essays in the book range in focus from musical sketches to Kremlin decrees. The contributors explore Prokofiev's time in America; evaluate his working methods in the mid-1930s; document the creation of his score for the film Lieutenant Kizhe; tackle how and why Prokofiev rewrote his 1930 Fourth Symphony in 1947; detail his immortalization by Soviet bureaucrats, composers, and scholars; and examine Prokofiev's interest in Christian Science and the paths it opened for his music. The contributors are Mark Aranovsky, Kevin Bartig, Elizabeth Bergman, Leon Botstein, Pamela Davidson, Caryl Emerson, Marina Frolova-Walker, Nelly Kravetz, Leonid Maximenkov, Stephen Press, and Peter Schmelz.
