Time magazine music critic Michael Walsh has created for the rock ‘n roll generation a complete and totally irreverent guide to listening to, collecting, and enjoying classical music. If rock ‘n roll just isn’t enough for you anymore; if you loved the music from Amadeus, 2001 and Ordinary People and want to know how to find more; or if you can’t wait to take full advantage of your new CD player with the music it was made for, here is a complete and totally irreverent guide to listening to, collecting, and enjoying classical music. It gives you: -The basic beginner’s repertoire, from Bach partitas to Philip Glass operas -The inside story of the great composers as real people with real foibles -Suggested tunes for Sunday brunch, highway driving, morning jogs, and nighttime seductions -And even de-mystifies the dreaded “o” –word (opera)! Who’s Afraid of Classical Music? shows that when you know how to listen, this stuff can be as much fun as the Rolling Stones—and maybe more!

Opera is very much in the public eye--and ear. Here is a lively and readable guide to this inspiring branch of classical music--for anyone who has already discovered the joy of opera and anyone who would like to.

For anyone who has been intimidated, overwhelmed, or just plain confused by what they think opera is, WHO’S AFRAID OF OPERA? offers a lively, readable guide to what author Michael Walsh describes as "the greatest art form yet invented by humankind." From opera's origins in Renaissance Italy to The Who's rock odyssey “Tommy” and Stephen Sondheim's “Into the Woods,” Walsh explores what opera is and what it's not, what makes a great singer, and why it takes Tristan so long to die. So curtain up! It's time to settle into your seat, close up your program, and watch the house lights go down. And get ready for the musical ride of your lives.

This book examines the parallel histories of modern art and modern music and examines why one is embraced and understood and the other ignored, derided or regarded with bewilderment, as noisy, random nonsense perpetrated by, and listened to by the inexplicably crazed. It draws on interviews and often highly amusing anecdotal evidence in order to find answers to the question: Why do people get Rothko and not Stockhausen?

During the last few decades, most cultural critics have come to agree that the division between "high" and "low" art is an artificial one, that Beethoven's Ninth and "Blue Suede Shoes" are equally valuable as cultural texts. In Who Needs Classical Music?, Julian Johnson challenges these assumptions about the relativism of cultural judgements. The author maintains that music is more than just "a matter of taste": while some music provides entertainment, or serves as background noise, other music claims to function as art. This book considers the value of classical music in contemporary society, arguing that it remains distinctive because it works in quite different ways to most of the other music that surrounds us. This intellectually sophisticated yet accessible book offers a new and balanced defense of the specific values of classical music in contemporary culture. Who Needs Classical Music? will stimulate readers to reflect on their own investment (or lack of it) in music and art of all kinds.

A Paperback Original. The author who has taught tens of thousands of people to love opera now introduces readers to the rich and soul-stirring world of classical music. For anyone who is aching to discover classical music, this comprehensive and accessible book is the ideal teacher. Writing in the clear and highly entertaining prose that made Opera 101 the standard text in its field, Fred Plotkin -- music expert, teacher, lecturer, and famous author -- presents classical music in a way that respects both the reader and the art form. In Classical Music 101: --The reader will discover how to become an expert listener, which is essential for learning to love classical music. --A thousand years of music are explored, with emphasis on great works in all styles. Significant composers will be profiled in depth, including Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, and many more. --Important musicians, such as pianist Emanuel Ax, singer Marilyn Horne, and conductor James Levine, speak about their art in interviews. Classical Music 101, the newest addition to a highly successful series intended for readers who don't consider themselves dummies or idiots, will help the person drawn to the finer things in life (and readers who don't know how to approach them) discover the glories of music.

Modern art can be confusing and intimidating--even ugly and blasphemous. And yet curator and art critic Daniel A. Siedell finds something else, something much deeper that resonates with the human experience. With over thirty essays on such diverse artists as Andy Warhol, Thomas Kinkade, Diego Velazquez, Robyn O'Neil, Claudia Alvarez, and Andrei Rublev, Siedell offers a highly personal approach to modern art that is informed by nearly twenty years of experience as a museum curator, art historian, and educator. Siedell combines his experience in the contemporary art world with a theological perspective that serves to deepen the experience of art, allowing the work of art to work as art and not covert philosophy or theology, or visual illustrations of ideas, meanings, and worldviews. Who's Afraid of Modern Art? celebrates the surprising beauty of art that emerges from and embraces pain and suffering, if only we take the time to listen. Indeed, as Siedell reveals, a painting is much more than meets the eye. So, who's afraid of modern art? Siedell's answer might surprise you.

A Study Guide for "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (lit-to-film), excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Drama for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Drama for Students for all of your research needs.

An idealized image of European concert-goers has long prevailed in historical overviews of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This act of listening was considered to be an invisible and amorphous phenomenon, a naturally given mode of perception. This narrative influenced the conditions of listening from the selection of repertoire to the construction of concert halls and programmes. However, as listening moved from the concert hall to the opera house, street music, and jazz venues, new and visceral listening traditions evolved. In turn, the art of listening was shaped by phenomena of the modern era including media innovation and commercialization. This Handbook asks whether, how, and why practices of music listening changed as the audience moved from pleasure gardens and concert venues in the eighteenth century to living rooms in the twentieth century, and mobile devices in the twenty-first. Through these questions, chapters enable a differently conceived history of listening and offer an agenda for future research.

Tori Merrill detests Halloween. All the fake blood, creepy crawlies, and ghastly ghoulies make her squeamish. But as a partner in a new candy business, Halloween is a holiday she can't ignore. When her partners encourage her to attend the local Haunted Barn event and hand out candy samples to trick-or-treaters, against her better judgment, she agrees. But first, she has to convince someone to care for her spoiled, cranky dog, Ginny--preferably someone who has never heard Ginny bark. Scarred by long-ago events, Dale Holbrook has made a point of avoiding anything to do with his family's toy business with two exceptions: he voices the company mascot, Harvey the Penguin, and he helps with the Haunted Barn because it benefits his family's charitable foundation. Decked out in a grotesquely pink Little Bo Peep outfit at the Haunted Barn, Tori crashes headlong into Robin Hood, Zorro, and Holbrook family dramas. Amid grisly gnomes, creepy clowns, chainsaw-wielding zombies, and barfing dragons, Tori confronts her long-held beliefs about Halloween, hoop skirts, truth, and love.