Imogen Holst's Tune (Faber, 1962) is a searching enquiry into the invention of tune and at the same time a comprehensive anthology of tunes from folksong to the present day. Plainsong, street-cries, the songs of the English lutenists, Bach's dances, and Mozart's arias - whatever the origins and character of the tunes in question, Imogen Holst (daughter of the composer, Gustav Holst) has something fresh and revealing to say about them.And she does not confine hersel...

Gustav Holst was a leading figure in the new age of English music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. His most celebrated work, The Planets, is an orchestral tour de force, but he wrote music of startling originality in many forms, drawing inspiration from sources as varied as English folksong, oriental melody, the Apocrypha and Sanskrit literature, as well as from writers such as Keats, Hardy, Bridges and Whitman.This biography, by his daughter Imogen, was...

Metallica have sold in excess of 100 million albums and won seven Grammys. Their journey from scuzzy Los Angeles garages to the stages of the world's biggest stadia has been an epic and often traumatic one, and one of the few truly great rock 'n' roll sagas.No music writers have been afforded greater access to Metallica over the years than Paul Brannigan and Ian Winwood, two former editors of Kerrang. Having conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with the band, ...

Ashley & Cheryl Cole - Where Did It All Go Wrong? is a quick-read biography, focusing on Cheryl and Ashley's relationship, marriage and divorce. It looks at the parallels in their careers, the ups and downs, and investigates Ashley's alleged cheating with numerous women. Ultimately it asks the question 'Where Did It All Go Wrong' - could anything have been done to prevent the break-up, or was the marriage doomed from the beginning.

'A glorious plum-pudding of a book, to be consulted, with pleasure and profit, over and over again' Sir Jeremy IsaacsMichael Steen's 'Great Composers' was originally published in 2003. A lifetime's work and almost 1000 pages long, it has since become 'the' reference point and key read on the biographical backgrounds to classical music's biggest names.Authoritative and hugely detailed - but nonetheless a joy to read - this new edition will expand its readershi...

Joy Division's vocalist Ian Curtis tragically took his own life in 1980 leaving behind just two haunting albums and a depleted band that would famously evolve into New Order. Over twenty-five years later the cult surrounding Curtis shows no signs of fading. Fans make regular pilgrimages to his hometown of Macclesfield and to Manchester where the legacy of Joy Division and Factory Records has passed into legend. The authors of this new biography are uniquely qualified to reveal the extraord...

Biography of the composer. According to Wikipedia: "George Frederic Handel (23 February 1685 14 April 1759) was an English Baroque composer of German birth who is famous for his operas, oratorios, and concerti grossi. Born as Georg Friedrich Händel in Halle, the native German spent most of his adult life in England, becoming a naturalized subject of the British crown on 22 January 1727.[3] Perhaps the single word that best describes his life and music is "cosmopolitan": he was a German com...

Since the 1960s, British progressive rock band Jethro Tull has pushed the technical and compositional boundaries of rock music by infusing its musical output with traditions drawn from classical, folk, jazz, and world music. The release of Thick as a Brick (1972) and A Passion Play (1973) won the group legions of new followers and topped the Billboard charts in the United States, among the most unusual albums ever to do so. Tim Smolko explores the large-scale form, expansive instrumentatio...

The fascination with tragedy and the subsequent theatre of voyeurism are part of human nature especially when it involves our icons celebrities and musicians. Knocking On Heavens Door is the definitive book of rock n roll pop R&B and blues deaths. Often only the biggest selling artists are written about and sometimes it is the death of a personality that cements their iconic status. Knocking On Heavens Door not only covers the rock legends who lived hard and died young this detailed refere...

Welcome to The Independent's new ebook series The Great Composers, covering fourteen of the giants of Western classical music.Extracted from Michael Steen's book The Lives and Times of the Great Composers, these concise guides, selected by The Independent's editorial team, explore the lives of composers as diverse as Mozart and Puccini, reaching from Bach to Brahms, set against the social, historical and political forces which affected them, to give a rounded portrait of what it was...

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. Wi...

The life and times of American singer Billie Holiday.