Experiencing Chopin

Christine Lee Gengaro is professor of music at Los Angeles City College, where she teaches music theory, music history, and voice. An avid writer and researcher, she is a blogger and the program annotator for the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra. She published her first book, Listening to Stanley Kubrick: The Music in His Films, with Scarecrow Press in 2013.

• Series Editor ForewordPrefaceIntroductionAcknowledgmentsTimelineChapter 1: The Piano LessonChapter 2: Adventures AbroadChapter 3: Two Pianos, Four HandsChapter 4: The Artistic Process of the RomanticChapter 5: “Cannons Among the Flowers”Chapter 6: Yours With All DevotionChapter 7: Chopin and the VoiceChapter 8: Influences, Past and ContemporaryChapter 9: Physical and Mental HealthChapter 10: Chopin in the Twentieth and Twenty-first CenturiesSelected ReadingSelected ListeningGlossaryAbout the Author

Experiencing Chopin is one of the many volumes in "The Listener’s Companion” series, edited by Gregg Akkerman. The present volume is meant to guide nonspecialists in a meaningful foray into the music of Frédéric Chopin. Gengaro (Los Angeles City College), a historical musicologist, writes clearly and with considerable detail about Chopin’s life, loves, family, and piano compositions along with the things and people who influenced him. Very readable and engaging, the story of Chopin’s life and career unfolds in a gentle, flowing manner and gives even specialists a good refresher on this topic. Starting with an annotated time line, Gengaro intersperses discussion of specific piano works with details about Chopin’s life and work, including his teaching, his pianos, his friends, his concertizing, and his ill health. This is not a directed listening experience book with printed musical snippets and an exhaustive discography but rather a guide that suggests music to listen to and to experience. Gengaro draws references from the past and gives considerable space to more current examples of Chopin’s influence in films and video games.Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates; general readers.