Vincenzo Bellini's physical beauty, boundless success, and untimely death at the age of thirty-three combined to give him instant mythical status. In John Rosselli's new account, the first in English in twenty-five years, of his life and music, a more accurate view of Bellini emerges. Carefully sorting through fact, legend and even spurious documentation, Rosselli reassesses Bellini's personality, his relationships, and his short but dazzling career in Naples, Milan and Paris. He introduces the operatic world of the early nineteenth century, the singers of Bellini's roles, and, above all he explains the writing and performance of the operas themselves. What emerges from this level-headed biography is a portrait of an otherwise normal young man with uncommon musical gifts.

Berlioz was arguably the greatest French composer of the nineteenth century. Although the author of the Symphonie fantastique was possessed of a fertile imagination and sometimes obsessed by love, the image of Berlioz as a misunderstood and mistreated genius obscures both the solidity of his work as a musical architect and the reality of his position as one sometimes favored by those in power. This Life of Berlioz situates the celebrated French musician in the vibrant and highly politicized musical culture in which he lived and worked as composer, conductor, concert manager, and writer. Bloom's biography—based on special familiarity with archival sources and the composer's only recently made available writings—projects a noncaricatural and enormously talented Berlioz occupied with the practical details of polishing scores and articles, arranging concerts and tours, making connections with those in power, and making an independent career in the age of incipient free enterprise.

Ives' life (1874-1955) spanned two centuries; he grew up in the nineteenth and composed chiefly in the twentieth. His nostalgia for a simpler life in the New England town of his youth is revealed in his frequent musical quotation of songs of that earlier parlor and patriotic songs, hymns and gospel music that he learned from his father, a village bandmaster, and the most important influence on his life and music. This book clarifies the complexity of the man and his music—music that is uniquely autobiographical and that itself illuminates the narrative.

Presenting a fresh picture of the life and work of Joseph Haydn, this biography captures all the complexities and contradictions of the composer's long career. In his lifetime Haydn achieved a degree of fame that easily surpassed that of Mozart and Beethoven. Later his historical significance was more restricted, regarded exclusively as the composer who first recognised the potential of the symphony and the quartet. However, Haydn had also composed operas, oratorios and church music with similar enthusiasm and self-regard. Too easily buttonholed as a Viennese composer, he interacted consistently with the musical life of Vienna only during the earliest and latest periods of his life; London was at least as important in fashioning the composer's fame and legacy. To counter the genial view of the composer, this biography probes the darker side of Haydn's personality, his commercial opportunism and double dealing, his penny-pinching and his troubled marriage.

This is a brief biography of Russia's greatest musical dramatist, Modest Musorgsky (1839-1881), known the world over for his opera Boris Godunov, for his innovative realistic art songs, and for his pianistic work "Pictures at an Exhibition." Yet during his life Musorgsky had no institutional connections, no "degree," no family of his own, not even a permanent address. This book emphasizes the psychological and economic factors that contributed to the composer's remarkable autodidactic rise and tragic, premature end.

Robert Schumann had a difficult start as a composer. Denied any significant musical upbringing, he took a long time through indirect routes to establish himself as a major composer. Persistent illness also dogged his work. His final catastrophic mental collapse has combined with the autobiographical and secretive aspects of his music to cast for posterity a veil of ominous mystery over his entire life. Yet this is only one view. Schumann battled his personal demons and was acutely self-aware and organized. He transformed himself from a brilliant youthful fantasist in small forms into a composer of extended works in every genre. This book provides a new focus on Schumann as a practical working musician interacting with the professional world to develop his creative gifts to the full, and examines the central role of Clara Wieck Schumann in helping to bring this about.

On September 15, 1945 the composer Anton Webern was shot in confusing circumstances in a small mountain village near Salzburg. The world lost a composer of extreme originality whose mature music was still almost unknown. When Webern's works did come to light, he immediately became one of the most influential figures in music of the second half of this century. This book focuses on several aspects of Webern's life that have been treated only briefly in earlier accounts: his youthful instability, his often embarrassing dependence on Schoenberg, his naive nationalism and his absolute belief in the value of the brief moments of music he produced.