Synopsis
"Of the greatest significance . . . . The first volume of George Perle's two volume study on the two operas of Alban Berg ... is one of those few works of scholarship and analysis you can label 'definitive'; it may in time be supplemented, but not superseded."
--Richard Dyer, Boston Sunday Globe
"It is difficult to see how Professor Perle's exhaustive study can ever be superseded. . . or how such future work as may appear can do anything but add new details to his exposition of the basic clements of the work's musical language. . . . After twenty years' work on the composer he brings to this study of Wozzeck not only a penetrating analytical mind, great scholarship and a comprehensive knowledge of the music but an almost uncanny insight into what seem to be the inner workings of Berg's mind."
--Douglas Jarman, Music and Letters
"If you have ever had any questions about Berg's opera Wozzeck, Mr. Perle probably answers them for you in The Operas of Alban Berg: Volume One/Wozzeck. . . An indispensable work on Berg's life as reflected in his work."
--Donal Hcnahan, The New York Times
"As with Perle's previous books, one notes with pleasure how well written is this one, how simultaneously economical and comfortable the prose, even when the subject is as complex and manifold as Wozzeck."
--Mark DeVoto, Music Library Association Notes
"A great and unique contribution .... [Perle] is a leading authority on Berg, and his analysis of Berg's compositional methods in the two operas is likely to be definitive."
--George Martin, The Opera Quarterly
"George Perle has contributed more than anyone of any nationality to a true understanding of Berg's music."
--Douglass Green, Journal of Music Theory
"George Perle ... possesses the kind of complete credential required for this study. [Volume I: Wozzeck] is a model of scholarly writing. Every paragraph, each quoted music example, each analysis moves the argument forward in a clear incisive manner .... Essential reading for the serious student of the music of Alban Berg."
--Choice
About the Author
George Perle is a distinguished composer and Professor Emeritus of Music at the City University of New York. His books include Serial Composition and Atonality: An Introduction to the Music of Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern (Sixth Edition, California, 1991); The Operas of Alban Berg, Volume 1, Wozzeck (California, 1980) and Volume 2, Lulu (California, 1985); and The Listening Composer (California, 1990). He has been a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship.
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