Books by Fiona Maddocks
“Hildegard came into our lives about 40 years ago with a recording called ‘A Feather on the Breath of God’, which is a line of Hildegard’s, by Gothic Voices…Hildegard was an extraordinary figure. She was an abbess who ran an abbey in the Rhineland in the 11th- 12th century. She was an administrator, but also a scientist, a medic, a philosopher, a theologian and quite an interesting writer. She wrote poetry, she wrote plays, and she wrote what is almost the first opera, although she wouldn’t have known that that’s what it was—a kind of sung play.” Read more...
Andrew Ford, Musicians, Music Critics & Scholar
Interviews where books by Fiona Maddocks were recommended
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1
Hildegard of Bingen
by Fiona Maddocks -
2
Arnold Schoenberg
by Charles Rosen -
3
Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth Century
by Paul Kildea -
4
Elisabeth Lutyens and Edward Clark: The Orchestration of Progress in British Twentieth-Century Music
by Annika Forkert -
5
Becoming Ella Fitzgerald: The Jazz Singer Who Transformed American Song
by Judith Tick
The Best Music Biographies, recommended by Andrew Ford
The Best Music Biographies, recommended by Andrew Ford
Biographies of musicians are a good way to learn more about music without getting too technical, argues musicologist and composer Andrew Ford, author of the brilliant Shortest History of Music. He chooses five of his favorite music biographies, books that set “a life in the context of the times and a musical life in the context of the music.”
