Great illustrated encyclopedia for music lovers! It covers different composers, and explains it in a readable, easy to understand way. I love DK's diagrams and colorful pages that keeps readers interested and curious!

Although folks familiar with music might not classify composers by their dates, the general public's familiarity with the sweep of history makes this an excellent and accessible method of introduction. Exh composer has two or more pages of biography with pictures and interesting sidebars. A small timeline for each one points out principle works with plenty to listen to and learn from.

An excellent introduction.

Amazing format, really love the timelines and great focus on graphic appeal to all age levels. I wish this was longer and also covered other types of composers since it mostly focuses on classical ones. A solid edition to add to anyone's homeschool library. Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the digital review copy.

Awesome Book for Classical Music Lovers

I so enjoyed this book! It is broadly divided into time periods starting pre-1600 composers and continuing through the modern day, with two chapters given over to 19th-century composers. The publishers give two- or four-page spreads to the most famous of the respective eras—though Johann Sebastian Bach is given six pages!—and a final end-of-section directory that highlights other important composers of the era. Each composer section tells some of his or her life, key works, and particular struggles and triumphs. I loved, too, that there were plenty of sidebars, like the “In Context” section that gave historical context for the composer's music or profiled someone important in the composer's life, whether personally or professionally. As you progress through the book, you also get a sense of how music notation changed over time as well as the development of certain instruments, like the piano. The book is full of photographs, paintings, and drawings, some from the era itself and contemporary photos showing how the composer’s music is alive today, say, an opera being staged or an orchestral performance. I loved how the publishers spotlighted female composers when they could, like Felix Mendelssohn's very talented sister Fanny and 17th-century Barbara Strozzi (who was “a key figure in the rise of the cantata and the aria”). As someone who has loved classical music, and even played some, from a very early age, this is a book I absolutely savored and one that I will certainly return to again and again. If you enjoy classical music of any era, this is the book for you.

Composers: Their Lives and Works (DK, 320 pages) is a richly illustrated coffee table book in which eight authors profile some 160 composers over a thousand years of Western music, starting with Guido d’Arezzo (c. 991- c. 1033); the Benedictine monk was “not, strictly speaking, a significant composer” but he developed a system for writing down music that is the basis for Western music notation. It also apparently annoyed the other monks enough so that he left the abbey and became a music teacher.
The last profile in the book is of Eric Whitacre (born 1970) whose specialty is choral compositions, and is
big online. (Not mentioned in the book, since it surely happened after its deadline: Whitacre recently produced a video of 1752 singers from 129 countries performing his “Sing Gently”)

In the preface to “Composers,” the authors make clear (if unintentionally) that their book is less a methodical survey of Western music than a compendium of colorful Western musicians:

“The popular ‘Hollywood’ image of the great composer has been created largely by the giants of 19th century music whose lives are the stuff of legend: Beethoven, the proud, rebellious outsider, increasingly isolated by deafness; Berlioz, pouring his unrequited passion for a beautiful actress into one of the most original of all symphonies; Chopin, the exquisite poet of the piano whose career was blighted by debilitating illness; Tchaikovsky, whose turbulent personal life and puzzling death continue to inspire speculation, and Wagner, whose colossal ego was matched by his colossal creative energy and originality. Not all composers have been such memorable personalities, of course, but there are nevertheless many remarkable characters among them….”

Still, if there is more emphasis on the men and women than on the music, there is implicit in that preface an adherence to a musical hierarchy, which is made explicit by the number of pages devoted to each composer. At the top are Mozart (whose portrait is on the cover), Bach and Beethoven – each of whom gets six pages, including timelines and sidebars and photographs of their pianos and a page of their sheet music. This is followed by some thirty composers (the “giants” of that paragraph in the preface, as well as Schubert, Schumann, Straus and Stravinsky, etc.) who are profiled in four pages apiece. Then there are some 60 (including Whitacre as well as Aaron Copeland, John Cage and many I’d never heard of ) who get only a single paragraph. The rest get two pages each. So it’s no automatic disparagement that the profiles of two of the three American composers whose work included Broadway musical theater scores are in that last, largest two-page category.
What might give Broadway aficionados pause, though, is what the authors of the book say about their work.

Leonard Bernstein, we’re told, “was acclaimed worldwide for his contributions to both ‘serious’ concert music and Broadway musicals”
The quotation marks around the word serious are by the authors, who never explain what they mean by serious, nor why they put it in quotes. Are they trying to soften the blow? Are they trying to absolve themselves of the responsibility for the judgment that any music performed on Broadway is unserious?



They attribute that judgment directly in the two-page spread about George Gershwin, who provided “music for a string of hit shows…Despite his successes, Gershwin yearned to be a ‘serious’ composer..” Again with the quotation marks. Are they actually quoting Gershwin now, or is this just another dodge?


Six other Broadway composers are mentioned in “Composers Their Lives and Works.” Kurt Weill, composer of Three Penny Opera and One Touch of Venus, gets a paragraph: “A composer who bridged the gap between popular and serious music.” (This time the serious is not in quotes.) The others get this: “Composers such as George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Johnny Mercer and Richard Rodgers learned their trade in Tin Pan Alley, but now turned their attention to writing songs for the Broadway musical theatre and the movies.” That’s it. That’s part of the two pages on Gershwin, in a short sidebar entitled The Great American Songbook. There is no other mention of any of them. There is no mention of Stephen Sondheim or any other living musical theater composer.

For that matter, there is no mention of Duke Ellington, even though that would give the authors another opportunity to talk about serious versus popular music. Indeed, I couldn’t find any African-American composers at all.

You can’t include everybody of course.. But these omissions seem all the starker for several reasons. The authors make an obvious effort to include women composers in each of the six chapters, from “Before 1600” to “Late 20th to 21st Century.” And there is an implicit promise in the preface, when the authors talk about how “the scope of music has expanded not only in genre but also in style and in the range of instruments….” I guess that doesn’t extend to jazz by Black artists or jazz hands on Broadway..

A great linear progression of the lives of some of the most known composers with some shockers (assuming you aren't well versed in their respective lives. A real elucidating read.

A good timeline and introduction to different composers from before 1600 to today. Not fully in depth about them but a decent intro.

I love pretty much everything DK publishes, and this series of artists/authors and now composers and their lives is fascinating and gorgeously illustrated. I enjoy classical music and was passingly familiar with many of their composers, but reading their biographies definitely deepens my appreciation of their work. A great book that belongs on coffee tables of all classical music lovers out there.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher DK for this advance reader’s copy in exchange for an honest review.

I’m a fan of classical music but don’t necessarily have a lot of insight into the composer’s themselves - although I have been to Mozart’s home. loved this book that provided a list and a brief overview of the lives and works composers from early 1600s to 21st century, some of he more famous composers get a few extra pages .

This book is a great introduction for music lovers

DK's beautiful anthology of composers (in the Western classical music tradition) starts in the Middle Ages and ends in the early 21st century. I was pleased to see Fanny Mendelssohn and Clara Schumann given their own profiles instead of being mentioned only in connection with their male relatives, as has long been the case. A couple of composers whose talent went beyond the classical genre - George Gershwin, Leonard Bernstein - are included as well. At the end of each chapter, a directory gives brief biographies of other relevant composers of the era. A glossary of musical terms is included at the end to aid non-musicians. This is a valuable resource for music students and aficionados.

This isn’t quite what I expected. I think I was expecting more of a breakdown of their pieces and thought process behind the pieces. It does feature some of their works and the personality of the composer, so there is some. This goes through history featuring the movers and shakers (well, specifically composers) in the music world from early days (“before 1600”) through the present day (“late 20th & 21st centuries”). So many I knew; quite a few I did not. Each prominent composer gets a spread, generally one page with their image and the facing page telling more about them. Some get more space and it appears that is to tell more about the time period in general. And if they were more prolific in their work- and lives- it requires more space. There are some bits about a composer's life that readers will be happier not knowing. There are six chapters covering before 1600, 17th & 18th centuries, early 19th then late 19th century, early 20th, and lastly the late 20th & 21st centuries. Each chapter has a Directory which tells of other composers along with a short bio of each featured. This would be a good introductory book on composers and their time periods. It would be a GREAT #coffeetablebook as it is beautifully arranged. #composers #netgalley