The Operas of Alban Berg, Volume II Lulu [Paperback]

"The first volume of Perle's magnificent study focused on Wozuck ... .Its successor, equally painstaking and perceptive, is if anything more invaluable, for the clouds of mystery around Berg's second opera are only now beginning to disperse, and the work is coming to be regarded properly as the climax of the composer's achievement."

--Andrew Clements,Opera

 

"Perle's books have laid the groundwork for a thorough exploration of the remarkably successful ways in which Berg was able to marry a powerful intellectual grasp of a richly developing language to an instinctive feel for dramatic shape, a process that marks him out as one of the few genuine opera composers this century."

--Michael Taylor,Music and Letters

 

"The first volume, Wozzeck .... was universally recognized as being a work of outstanding scholarship. The Lulu volume is an even more impressive achievement. In its analytical sophistication, its critical insights and in the implications which it has for our understanding not only of Berg but of a whole body of post-diatonic music, Perle's Lulu is one of the most exciting and important books on music to appear for many years."

--Douglas Jarman,Times Literary Supplement

 

"With the second of his books on The Operas of Alban Berg, this American musicologist and composer has now taken advantage of all this new material to consolidate his own research and present us with the most sophisticated musical analysis yet made of the composer .... As Perle shows, Lulu represents the highest point of development in Berg's music from the point of view of ambiguity of fabrication."

--Stephen Reeve,Classical Music

 

"Nothing I've read in the past year makes as important a contribution to this literature as The Operas of Alban Berg:l£U