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| Bach, Beethoven and the Boys - Tenth Anniversary Edition!: Music History As It Ought To Be Taught | 
| Author: David W. Barber
Creators: Dave Donald, Anthony Burgess
Publisher: Sound And Vision
Category: Book
List Price: $17.95
Buy Used: $3.97
You Save: $13.98 (78%)
New (17) from $6.97
Avg. Customer Rating:  18 reviews
Sales Rank: 38402
Media: Paperback
Edition: 10 Anv
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 160
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 9 x 6 x 0.5
ISBN: 0920151108
Dewey Decimal Number: 780.9
EAN: 9780920151105
ASIN: 0920151108
Publication Date: September 1, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Creased Cover;Book Bent Or Slightly Warped Giving great service since 2004: Buy from the Best! 4,000,000 items shipped to delighted customers. We have 1,000,000 unique items ready to ship! Find your Great Buy today!
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| Customer Reviews:
| Showing reviews 1-5 of 18 | | NEXT » |
 The best introduction to classical music. June 24, 2008
Our family loves this book so much we keep buying copies to give to friends.
Informative AND funny... music history as it ought to be taught INDEED! August 10, 2007
This is one of the funniest books I've read in a while, which would be reason enough to praise it, but I actually learned a lot in between the laughs.
The book is written in a very conversational tone, as opposed so something dry and academic, or (worse) rife with hero worship. Since the book covers a lot of ground, the entries are necessarily brief, but they serve as great introductions and still manage to convey quite a bit of information. Barber has fun with the subjects, and seems to take delight in cataloguing eccentricities with a playfully acerbic tongue.
Obviously, there is some debate over just how "true" some of the information in this book is. A couple of the claims seemed too bizarre to be real, such as Richard Wagner once writing a pamphlet stating there were vegetarian panthers in the swamps of Canada. I actually spent a few minutes Googling that, and yes indeed he did (in a tract called "On Art and Music.") So Barber passes a couple of accuracy spot-checks, but I can't vouch for the entire book.
If you love classical music, it's a fun resource to give you trivia about some of your favorite composers. If you hate classical music, it's likewise invaluable for giving you the quirks and foibles of the "greats" you loathe so much.
Highly recommended, and if you like this one, Barber's other books are equally enjoyable and informative.
This is a book of HUMOR! May 22, 2007
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Um . . . this is a book of humor, not a book on music history. Well, maybe you have to be a music teacher who has struggled with teaching music history to 12-year-olds who are forced to be in your class to fully appreciate it all. I thought it was hilarious, but then, music teachers who have 2000 students a week think nearly anything is hilarious. Go elsewhere for accuracy or historical facts, but for some reason or other, it seems necessary to point out that this IS a book of humor.
 I'm sure November 4, 2006
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
I'm sure that the material is very fun to read. My library has an online copy of this and that's how I got access to it. There was one name in my general music history class that our professor stressed for us to spell right and it was that of Johannes Ockeghem. Now, as I was reading the chapter on Josquin des Prez, the word O-K-E-G-H-E-M jumps out at me like a cat out of water. If you're going to include tne name of a composer, at least spell his name right.
An Entertaining Romp Through the History of Music May 18, 2005
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
"Bach, Beethoven and the Boys" is a quick and fun read, particularly for someone who already knows a thing or two about music history. Author David W. Barber's attempt to show some of the great classical composers as regular guys is refreshing. Unfortunately, his impartiality falters from time to time, such as in the sections on Wagner, opera, and twentieth century music. There are also a couple of factual errors and occasional passing references to a composers without further explanation (such as Mahler), and Barber's penchant for putting most of his funny lines in footnotes becomes annoying after a while.
This is not a book for introducing children or students to music history. It would be most enjoyable for someone who is already somewhat knowledgeable about music history.
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