Reviews for Famous & Fun for Adults -- Pop, Bk 3: 11 Piano Arrangements of Popular Hits

The average rating for Famous & Fun for Adults -- Pop, Bk 3: 11 Piano Arrangements of Popular Hits based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2019-05-02 00:00:00 Jeremy Gross Pirkko Moisala's book about Kaija Saariaho, published by University of Illinois Press in 2009, is one of the few monographs on the Finnish composer. Unfortunately, it is a great disappointment. The problems are legion. For one, it appears that there was little to no real editing of the manuscript. Typos ("the ensemble L'Itinerairen"), spelling mistakes ("Karl-Heinz Stockhausen") and ungrammatical direct translations from Finland ("from the Finland's Academy") abound. There's hardly a single page without such errors. Moisala's English style is atrocious and I wish she had simply written the book in Finnish to begin with and then had it professionally translated into English. Also, the book is lightweight. Discussion of her music is all generalities. At less than 150 pages long, it still manages to be highly repetitive. How many times do we need to hear the same general statement that Saariaho has incorporated timbre and tone-to-noise transitions into her basic musical grammars? There are sketches of the form of two works, but not a single score sample. I guess that the book does have some value for its trivia (the stuff that isn't mispelt to unintelligibility at any rate), and Saariaho provides something of an apology for why she no longer uses electronics as much as before. Still, anyone interested in Saariaho's life and work can get the same information as here, and much more detailed analysis of her music, by simply doing a search at JSTOR and reading the articles which the Finnish Music Information Centre has placed online. The IRCAM publication about her music (ISBN 2858508003) also has some lovely discussion of certain works.

Review # 2 was written on 2017-12-21 00:00:00 Susan L Morris This book is great for beginners. my son really enjoys learning and playing the songs.