Neil Butterworth – författare

The Dictionary of American Classical Composers covers over 650 composers active from the 18th century to today. Covering all classical styles, it offers the most comprehensive overview of key composers in the United States available.Entries include basic biographical information and critical analysis of each composer's key works and ideas. Entries also include worklists and bibliographic information. Whenever possible, the entries will have been checked by the composers themselves to assure greatest possible accuracy. This new edition, completely updated and expanded from the 1984 edition, also includes over 200 historic photographs.

First survey of Copland's entire output for some 30 years - a period seeing some of his most important works.Aaron Copland was one of the twentieth century's most popular and distinguished composers. Copland was born in 1900 in Brooklyn, where he began his musical career, before moving to the Paris in the 1920s, where Stravinsky, Prokofiev and Les Six were the centre of attention. On his return to the United States at the end of the decade he began to produce a series of works which could leave no one in any doubt that American composers were capable of writing music equal to the best of their European contemporaries.This chronological survey of Copland's work discusses ever one of his compositions and examines his influential writings on music. Profusely illustrated with musicexamples and photographs, it includes a conversation on the piano music with Aaron Copland and Leo Smit and also features sketches of Copland in rehearsal by Milein Cosman.NEIL BUTTERWORTH was formerly Head of Music atNapier College, Edinburgh.

First published in 1998, this volume is the first book to focus on the American symphony. Neil Butterworth surveys the development of the symphony in the United States from early European influences in the last century to the present day, and asks why American composers have shown such allegiance to a musical form which their European contemporaries appear to have discarded.An overview of the growth of musical societies in America during the eighteenth century and the establishment of the first professional orchestras during the early part of the nineteenth century is followed by chronological analyses of the works of those composers who have played important parts in the progress of symphony in the United States, from Charles Ives, Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein, to contemporary figures such as William Bolcom and John Harbison.Complete with a comprehensive catalogue of symphonies and an extensive discography, this book is an indispensable reference work.