William Mathias - (Bio-Bibliographies in Music) Annotated by Stewart R Craggs (Hardcover)

About the Book

Taking piano lessons at three years of age and composing by five, William Mathias became one of Britain's leading 20th-century composers. (He was invited to compose the wedding anthem for the marriage of the Prince of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer.) This work provides, for the first time in one volume, up-to-date and comprehensive details of the composer's life's work. It includes a biography, a complete list of works and performances, a discography of sound recordings, and an annotated bibliography, along with useful appendixes and an index. This book will be of interest to musicologists, students, and 20th century music buffs alike.

Mathias was a prolific and versatile composer whose works included opera and music for orchestra, chamber groups, solo instruments, organ, brass ensembles, choral, church, and children's groups. His wedding anthem for Prince Charles and Lady Diana was heard by over 750 million people around the world on television--probably the largest audience for any first performance of a new work.

Book Synopsis

Taking piano lessons at three years of age and composing by five, William Mathias became one of Britain's leading 20th-century composers. (He was invited to compose the wedding anthem for the marriage of the Prince of Wales to Lady Diana Spencer.) This work provides, for the first time in one volume, up-to-date and comprehensive details of the composer's life's work. It includes a biography, a complete list of works and performances, a discography of sound recordings, and an annotated bibliography, along with useful appendixes and an index. This book will be of interest to musicologists, students, and 20th century music buffs alike.

Mathias was a prolific and versatile composer whose works included opera and music for orchestra, chamber groups, solo instruments, organ, brass ensembles, choral, church, and children's groups. His wedding anthem for Prince Charles and Lady Diana was heard by over 750 million people around the world on television--probably the largest audience for any first performance of a new work.

Review Quotes

?Craggs provides in his neat package of the composer a preface, a rather succinct biography of the composer, a detailed and informative section on the composer's works and preformances, a discography, a sparsely annotated bibliography, an alphabetically arranged list of compositions, a chronologically arranged list of compositions, and a name index. The most notable unit in this volume is the list of the composer's works; it contains all the essential data reguarding mathias's compositions, including dates of first preformances, artists who participated in the concerts, instrumentation, duration, publishers, and the like. The text will be of special interest to composers and choral conductors, and should be included in music library reference divisions.?-ARBA

"Craggs provides in his neat package of the composer a preface, a rather succinct biography of the composer, a detailed and informative section on the composer's works and preformances, a discography, a sparsely annotated bibliography, an alphabetically arranged list of compositions, a chronologically arranged list of compositions, and a name index. The most notable unit in this volume is the list of the composer's works; it contains all the essential data reguarding mathias's compositions, including dates of first preformances, artists who participated in the concerts, instrumentation, duration, publishers, and the like. The text will be of special interest to composers and choral conductors, and should be included in music library reference divisions."-ARBA

About the Author

STEWART R. CRAGGS is Deputy Site Manager, Chester Road Library at the University of Sunderland in England. He has had a lifelong interest in music, particularly British. His earlier Greenwood bio-bibliographies include Arthur Bliss (1988), Richard Rodney Bennett (1990), John McCable (1991), and Alun Hoddinott (1993).