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The Amazon Store at MillionDollarPetPix.com ( In association with Amazon.com )A French Song Companion List Price: $75.00 Amazon.com's Price: $55.49 You Save: $19.51 (26%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
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Binding: PaperbackDewey Decimal Number: 780 EAN: 9780199249664 ISBN: 0199249660 Label: Oxford University Press, USA Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 568 Publication Date: May 09, 2002 Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA Studio: Oxford University Press, USA Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Amazon.com Review: Filling a long-standing need with great success, A French Song Companion is one of the most welcome books of the year. The translations of the French poetry (fine work by Richard Stokes) are almost as rewarding as the originals. Great care has been taken with line breaks and separation of stanzas; the acrostic of Apollinaire's "Carte postale" and the sweep of his "Bleuet" are seldom observed as they are here. These translations, mercifully, are not of the forced-rhyming type, and the more obscure references are helpfully footnoted. Poems are grouped under composer chapters rather than (as in Philip L. Miller's The Ring of Words) by poet. Though coverage is of necessity not complete for each composer (more on Saint-Saëns and Milhaud would have been useful), there are still hundreds of poems included, even extending to the chamber music and orchestral song genres. Stokes has reached deep into the poetry. His is the only translation of the second of Ravel's "Five Greek Songs," in which the pilgrims are "buried" beneath the church, that makes sense. Each composer chapter also has an opening essay by peerless song pianist Graham Johnson (the one on Satie is especially interesting), and he even covers non-French composers who set French texts. (He finds Leonard Bernstein to be "not the most retiring of composers.") Johnson shares the insights of a lifetime of intimacy with these songs; his description of "en sourdine" could not be more helpful. There are a few Britishisms, and space did not permit the translation of poetic lines not set by the composer, but this book is nothing less than essential in an age when so many CD releases are without texts. Though the asking price is steep, this volume surely will never be bettered, and it is particularly well bound for years of rewarding use. --William R. Braun Product Description: A French Song Companion is an indispensable guide to the modern repertoire and the most comprehensive book of French melodie in any language. Noted accompanist Graham Johnson provides repertoire guides to the work of over 150 composers--the majority of them from France but including British, American, German, Spanish, and Italian musicians who have written French vocal music. The book contains major articles on Faure, Duparc, Debussy, Ravel, and Poulenc, as well as essays on Bizet, Chabrier, Gounod, Chausson, Hahn, and Satie, and important reassessments of such composers as Massenet, Koechlin, and Leguerney. The book combines these articles with the complete texts in English of over 700 songs, all translated by Richard Stokes, making it also a treasury of French poetry from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries. The translations alone will prove invaluable to music lovers and performers; combined with the biographical articles, they become the ideal map for exploring this exciting and diverse repertoire. Average Rating:
 Rating: - Indispensable for singers and accompanistsThis book is encyclopaedic in its coverage and is an indispensable guide for anyone who is interested in French song, but particularly for singers and accompanists. There are many useful translations of poems - not just the well-known ones but obscure ones too - and honest appraisals of the work of almost every composer who has set the French language to music. The book is constructed in such a way that it is very easy to use, with separate indexes for composer, poet and title. The main part of the ... Read More Rating: - A French Song CompanionA French Song Companion This is a superb book! A wonderful source book for deepening one's knowledge of the French art song repertoire. Although not primarily concerned with helping performers to interpret the songs (unlike Bernac in this respect), it contains extraordinarily perceptive and insightful commentaries on the songs, grouped by composers, and should open many doors to most listeners and performers. I cannot recommend it too highly. Rating: - Worthy companion to BernacPierre Bernac's _Interpretation of French Song_ has long been the indispensable reference volume for singers and coaches of this rich musical literature. The focus of the present volume is somewhat different, more comprehensive in its listings of composers (any composer of significance who set French texts is included, resulting in some surprising listings, Bernstein and Dinu Lipatti, for example), but less didactic in terms of pronounciation and performance. The translations by Richard Stokes are so ... Read More 
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