Stephen Walsh

Everyone loves romantic music: the sweet melody of a Schubert song, the heroine dying for love in an Italian opera, the swooning orchestration of a Tchaikovsky symphony. But as Stephen Walsh - author of the highly praised Debussy: A Painter in Sound - points out in this intensely absorbing study, there is infinitely more to romantic music than meets the eye. The Beloved Vision amounts to a complete, entertaining and singularly readable account of the whole phase in music history that has become the mainstay of the twentieth and twenty-first century concert and operatic repertoire, with some little help from earlier times.The narrative begins in the eighteenth century, with C.P.E. Bach, Haydn and the literary movement known as Sturm und Drang, seen as a reaction of the individual artist to the confident certainties of the Enlightenment. The windows are flung open, and everything to do with style, form, even technique, is exposed to the emotional and intellectual weather, the impulses and preferences of the individual composer. Risk taking - the braving of the unknown - was certainly an important part of what the composers wanted to do, as true of Chopin and Verdi as it is of Berlioz and Wagner. Its an exciting, colourful, story, told with passion but also with the precision and clarity of detail for which this author is so widely admired.

Debussys life is of extraordinary interest because, like Wagner and Stravinsky, he crossed artistic boundaries, associating as much with poets and artists as with musicians. His father was active in the 1871 Paris Commune and the composers childhood was thus unsettled, his musical preparation erratic, and his subsequent lifestyle somewhat bohemian by the bourgeois norms of the French musical establishment. He never went to a proper school, but was enough of a pianist to enter the Paris Conservatoire at the age of 10. Whilst still a student he rebelled against the academy-taught "rules of composition" and constructed a language of his own, in constant rebellion against the heavy Wagnerian influence prevalent at that time. In the early 1900s he worked in Paris as a music critic. His own music during these years includes some of the greatest and most influential works of the early twentieth century: the opera Pelleas et Melisande, his orchestral masterpieces La Mer and Images, a series of profoundly original piano works (including two books of Preludes), and the ballet Jeux, premiered in Diaghilevs 1913 season just before Stravinskys Rite of Spring (which Debussy attended). His later years were plagued by the rectal cancer that eventually killed him in 1918. But he continued to compose until 1917 This was a period of political and cultural turmoil in French life, the Franco-Prussian war and its aftermath, the Dreyfus affair with its religious and military undercurrents, the general instability of the Third Republic, and the First World War. Stephen Walshs study combines chronological biography with a contextualised picture placing Debussy in the broad artistic and social environment of turn-of-the-century France, making this a significant contribution to the cultural history of the time.

The extraordinary group of Russian composers who came together in St Petersburg in the 1860s - long known as The Mighty Handful, but, as the moguchaya kuchka, better translated as the great little heap - gave rise to one of the most fascinating and colourful stories in all musical history. Stephen Walsh, author of a major biography of their direct successor, Stravinsky, has written an absorbing account of Musorgsky and his circle - Borodin, Cui, Balakirev and Rimsky-Korsakov. With little or no musical education they created works of lasting significance - Musorgskys Boris Godunov, Borodins Prince Igor and Rimsky-Korsakovs Sheherazade. Written with deep understanding and panache, The Kuchka, is highly engaging and a significant contribution to cultural history.

Narración sin concesiones de la cruda realidad de una guerra que cambió el curso de la historia. Se analiza la batalla de Stalingrado, sus precedentes y consecuencias de la mano de un experto en historia militar sovietica y se acompaña de un documento grafico con fotografias ineditas.

A rich and luminous biography of nineteenth century music. A New Yorker "Best Book of the Year"When one thinks of great classical musicmusic with the most emotional resonance and timelessnesswe harken back to the nineteenth century and the Romantic tradition. We recall the sweet melody of a Schubert song, the heroine dying for love in an Italian opera, the swooning orchestration of a Tchaikovsky symphony.The emotional resonance of nineteenth century has moved generations muscians and resonated with countless listeners. It has inspired artists and writers. But no writer until how has adopted such a vividly insightful narrative approach as Stephen Walsh and he shows how there is more to Romantic music that meets the eyeand the ear.With authority, insight, and passion, The Beloved Vision, links the music history of this singular epoch to the ideas that lay behind Romanticism in all its manifestations. In this complete, entertaining, and singularly readable account, we come to understand the entire phase in music history that has become the mainstay of the twentieth and twenty-first century concert and operatic repertoire. We also come to understand Beethoven, Mahler, Schubert, Chopin, and Wagner anew.The narrative begins in the eighteenth century, with C.P.E. Bach, Haydn and the literary movement known as Sturm und Drang, seen as a reaction of the individual artist to the confident certainties of the Enlightenment. The windows are flung open, and everything to do with style, form, even technique, is exposed to the emotional and intellectual weather, the impulses and preferences of the individual composer. Risk takingthe braving of the unknownwas certainly an important part of what the composers wanted to do, as true of Chopin and Verdi as it is of Berlioz and Wagner. Its an exciting, colorful, story, told with passion but also with the precision and clarity of detail for which Stephen Walsh is so widely admired.The Beloved Vision is a cultural tour de force, by turns bold, challenging, and immensely stimulating.

"Great, beautiful little studiesof unspoken fear and longing and love, told with a sure-footed delicacy rare in a debut" Sarah Moss, Irish Times"An exciting, original, and very welcome new voice" Donal Ryan"These are startling, adventurous and often wonderful stories. I loved this collection" Roddy DoyleA sharp and insightful debut short story collection about the pitfalls of ordinary life A wife yearns to escape the tight-fisted confines of a package holiday. A boy dreams of footballing greatness as his mother mourns a loss. A man tries to assemble an absent childs playhouse, with impossible instructions and too much beer. A woman seeks clarity from automated voices. A father is distracted from Christmas tree shopping with his son by the looming pressure of quarterly sales targets.Shine/Variance captures the tiny crises and wonders of daily life with warmth, wit and decisive clarity. Ordinary people - commuters, call centre workers, children and parents - struggle for stability while craving more, and the schism between expectation and reality is only rarely bridged. Yet, amidst the faltering, recognition and bright moments of hope still illuminate their days.Fresh, tender and darkly funny, these stories are a window into the longings, frustrations and painfully human connections of ordinary life from a remarkable new voice in fiction."The most powerful new collection Ive read in some years" John Boyne"Brilliantly bats, staggeringly compelling, and ferociously funny. Stephen Walsh rips the concreteness of reality straight from us and reflects back a more wobbly version of our turbulent lives... Completely unique" June Caldwell"Full of assured originality and freshness - a new writer much to be welcomed" Bernard MacLaverty

In 1934, Igor Stravinsky was fifty-two, a Russian expatriate living in Paris and already regarded by many as the most important composer of his generation. Stravinsky: The Second Exile follows him through the remainder of his long life, which he would spend largely in the United States. These are the years during which he would compose such masterworks as The Rakes Progress and Symphony in C, and achieve a new level of fame as a conductor and concert pianist in his own right. In this second and final volume of Stephen Walshs acclaimed biography, the author traces and illuminates Stravinskys increasingly complex and often agonised family life and his crucially important relationship with his associate Robert Craft. As a musicologist and critic, Walsh is able to speak with authority and wit not only about Stravinskys life, but also about his work, expertly following the composers musical journey from the neoclassicism of his late French and early American periods, through his early essays in serial technique, and on finally to the astonishing complexities of this protean geniuss final works. Based on exhaustive research, Stephen Walsh uncovers new and controversial material, making this the second volume of the most definitive biography of the most significant and influential composer of the twentieth century.

The emergence of Russian classical music in the nineteenth century in the wake of Mikhail Glinka comprises one of the most remarkable and fascinating stories in all musical history. The five men who came together in the Russian capital of St. Petersburg in the 1860s, all composers of talent, some of genius, would bein spite of a virtual lack of technical trainingresponsible for some of the greatest and best-loved music ever written. How this happened is the subject of Stephen Walshs brilliant composite portrait of the group known in the West as the Five, and in Russia as moguchaya kuchkathe Mighty Little Heap. Friends, competitors, and creative intellectuals whose ambitions and ideas reflect the ferment of their times, Mily Balakirev, Cesar Cui, Alexander Borodin, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov, andmost important of allModest Musorgsky, come wonderfully to life in this extended account.The detail is engrossing. We see Borodin composing music while conducting research in chemistry (he would jump up and run back to the laboratory to make sure nothing had burnt out or boiled over there, meanwhile filling the corridor with improbable sequences of ninths or sevenths); Balakirev tutoring Musorgsky (Balakirev could not remedy the defects in his pupils character, but he could confront him with works of genius); Cui doggedly producing operas during breaks from his career as a military fortifications instructor. Musorgsky asserts his independence, moving from writing songs and the showpiece Night on Bald Mountain to the magnificent Boris Godunov, meanwhile struggling against poverty and depression. In the background such important figures as Vissarion Belinsky and Nikolay Chernishevsky shape the cultural milieu, while the godfather of the kuchka, critic and scholar Vladimir Stasov, is seen offering sometimes combative support. As an experienced and widely skilled musical scholar and biographer (his two-volume life of Stravinsky has been called one of the best books ever written about a musician), Stephen Walsh is exceptionally wellplaced to tell this story. He does so with deep understanding and panache, making Musorgksy and His Circle both important and a delight to read.

One of the most revered composers of the twentieth century, Claude Debussy (18621918) achieved the unheard of: he reinvented the language of music without alienating the majority of music lovers. Debussy drove French music into entirely new regions of beauty and excitement at a time when old traditions threatened to stifle it. Yet despite his profound influence on French culture, Debussys own life was complicated and often troubled by struggles over money, women, and ill health. Here, Stephen Walsh, acclaimed author of Stravinsky, chronicles both the composer himself and the unique moment in European history that bore him. Walshs engagingly original approach is to enrich a lively biography with analyses of Debussys music: from his first daring breaks with the rules as a Conservatoire student to his achievements as the greatest French composer of his time.

This revised and updated edition of Voices of the Old Firm tells the story of Rangers and Celtic in the words of those who can say I was there. By interviewing players, managers but above all supporters of the two great clubs, Stephen Walsh has built up a unique portrait of sixty years of football in the city.Full of evocative social and historical detail, the book surveys all the great moments since the war - the ups and downs, the triumphs and disasters. What was it like to be in Lisbon for Celtics epic 1967 European Cup victory, or in Barcelona for Rangers European triumph of 1972? The different voices which describe these and many other key events include some of the greatest players ever to pull on a green or a blue jersey and they have vivid tales to tell of encounters on the field.But the book also hears the voices of those who have spent their time standing on the terraces or sitting in the stands cheering on their heroes. Ordinary supporters tell of their adventures at home and abroad while following their clubs with sometimes ridiculous levels of devotion. In their own words, they tell of great games of football, but they also describe the fabric of the fans life - the buses, the songs, the drink, the clothes, the bigotry and the passionate emotion which marks Glasgow out from almost all other footballing cities.This classic oral history has been brought fully up to date with the addition of new material reflecting the way the teams have come to dominate the Scottish football scene in the last ten years. Highlights include Celtics pilgrimage to Seville for the UEFA Cup final and Rangers unforgettable championship win of 2005.

Widely regarded the greatest composer of the twentieth century, Igor Stravinsky was central to the development of modernism in art. Deeply influential and wonderfully productive, he is remembered for dozens of masterworks, from The Firebird and The Rite of Spring to The Rakes Progress, but no dependable biography of him exists. Previous studies have relied too heavily on his own unreliable memoirs and conversations, and until now no biographer has possessed both the musical knowledge to evaluate his art and the linguistic proficiency needed to explore the documentary background of his life--a life whose span extended from tsarist Russia to Switzerland, France, and ultimately the United States.In this revealing volume, the first of two, Stephen Walsh follows Stravinsky from his birth in 1882 to 1934. He traces the composers early Russian years in new and fascinating detail, laying bare the complicated relationships within his family and showing how he first displayed his extraordinary talents within the provincial musical circle around his teacher, Nikolay Rimsky-Korsakov. Stravinskys brilliantly creative involvement with the Ballets Russes is illuminated by a sharp sense of the internal artistic politics that animated the group. Portraying Stravinskys circumstances as an emigre in France trying to make his living as a conductor and pianist as well as a composer while beset by emotional and financial demands, Walsh reveals the true roots of his notorious obsession with money during the 1920s and describes with sympathy the nature of his long affair with Vera Sudeykina.While always respecting Stravinskys own insistence that life and art be kept distinct, Stravinsky makes clear precisely how the development of his music was connected to his life and to the intellectual environment in which he found himself. But at the same time it demonstrates the composers remarkably pragmatic psychology, which led him to consider the welfare of his art to be of paramount importance, before which everything else had to give way. Hence, for example, his questionable attitude toward Hitler and Mussolini, and his reputation as a touchy, unpredictable man as famous for his enmities as for his friendships.Stephen Walsh, long established as an expert on Stravinskys music, has drawn upon a vast array of material, much of it unpublished or unavailable in English, to bring the man himself, in all his color and genius, to glowing life. Written with elegance and energy, comprehensive, balanced, and original, Stravinsky is essential reading for anyone interested in the adventure of art in our time.Praise from the British press for Stephen Walshs The Music of Stravinsky "One of the finest general studies of the composer."--Wilfrid Mellers, composer, Times Literary Supplement"The beautiful prose of The Music of Stravinsky is itself a fund of arresting images. For those who already love Stravinskys music, Walshs essays on each work will bring a smile of recognition and joy at new kernels of insight. For those unfamiliar with many of the works he discusses, Walshs commentaries are likely to whet appetites for performances of the works."--John Shepherd, Notes"This book sent me scurrying back to the scores and made me want to recommend it to other people. Above all, it is a good read."--Anthony Pople, Music and Letters

Claude Debussy es uno de los grandes compositores modernos no sólo por la belleza de sus obras, sino también por haber reinventado el lenguaje de la música. Este logro se basó en la asociación de su musica con imagenes visuales y, en buena medida, en el rechazo de las reglas dictadas por el Conservatorio de Paris, para situar el lirismo del sonido por encima de las ambiciones espirituales de la tradicion alemana, de la que procedian dichas reglas. Esta sugerente biografia de Stephen Walsh parte de esta premisa, y traza un sutil analisis tanto de los acontecimientos que marcaron la vida de Debussy como de su obra. Con un estilo elegante, inteligente y transparente el libro se torna una invitacion para revisitar la musica del compositor frances y repensar, una vez mas, la belleza.