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Rating: 
Summary: An wonderful introduction to a complex composer
Review: This book is a fabulous introduction to the music of a man whose compositions are often a bit difficult to understand. Kenneth Chalmers eloquently takes the reader on a journey through Bartok's life and music. In spite of the fact that there are some musical details, Chalmers did not get bogged down in alot of the compositional jargon that might dissuade one to read this particular biography.All in all, this book gets my highest praise and I enthusiastically encourage anyone who wants to learn a little more about Bartok, one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th Century, to read it.
Rating:
Summary: An wonderful introduction to a complex composer
Review: This book is a fabulous introduction to the music of a man whose compositions are often a bit difficult to understand. Kenneth Chalmers eloquently takes the reader on a journey through Bartok's life and music. In spite of the fact that there are some musical details, Chalmers did not get bogged down in alot of the compositional jargon that might dissuade one to read this particular biography. All in all, this book gets my highest praise and I enthusiastically encourage anyone who wants to learn a little more about Bartok, one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th Century, to read it.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Information, Poor Delivery
Review: This publication offers excellent biographical information on the life of Béla Bartók. Chalmers eloquently describes the composer's most famous compositions, concentrating on the aspects of his personal life that influenced their genesis rather than their fastidious technical complexities. If you are interested in the theoretical aspects of Bartók's music, I instead recommend Elliott Antokoletz's "The Music of Béla Bartók: A Study of Tonality and Progression in Twentieth-Century Music." The most unfortunate element of the book reviewed here is the authors prose. The publication is littered with incomplete, run-on and just plain terrible sentence structure. Overall, this is a quaint and interesting book, but Chalmers' prose is incredibly difficult to comprehend. I, personally, do not enjoy having to read a simple sentence two and three times to understand a simple thought that could have been portrayed in a straight-forward form.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Information, Poor Delivery
Review: This publication offers excellent biographical information on the life of Béla Bartók. Chalmers eloquently describes the composer's most famous compositions, concentrating on the aspects of his personal life that influenced their genesis rather than their fastidious technical complexities. If you are interested in the theoretical aspects of Bartók's music, I instead recommend Elliott Antokoletz's "The Music of Béla Bartók: A Study of Tonality and Progression in Twentieth-Century Music." The most unfortunate element of the book reviewed here is the authors prose. The publication is littered with incomplete, run-on and just plain terrible sentence structure. Overall, this is a quaint and interesting book, but Chalmers' prose is incredibly difficult to comprehend. I, personally, do not enjoy having to read a simple sentence two and three times to understand a simple thought that could have been portrayed in a straight-forward form.
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