For The Love of Music
Invitations to Listening
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- $17.99
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- $17.99
Publisher Description
The power of music, the way it works on the mind and heart, remains an enticing mystery. Now two noted writers on classical music, Michael Steinberg and Larry Rothe, explore the allure of this melodious art--not in the clinical terms of social scientists--but through stories drawn from their own experience. In For the Love of Music, Steinberg and Rothe draw on a lifetime of listening to, living with, and writing about music, sharing the delights and revelatory encounters they have had with Mozart, Brahms, Stravinsky, and a host of other great (and almost-great) composers. At once highly personal and immediately accessible, their writings shed light on those who make music and those who listen to it--drawing readers into the beautiful and dangerous terrain that has meant so much to the authors. In recounting how they themselves came to love music, Steinberg and Rothe offer keys for listening. You will meet the man who created the sound of Hollywood's Golden Age and you will learn how composers have addressed issues as contemporary as AIDS and the terrorist attacks of September 11.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In his chapter on Sibelius and Mahler, Rothe asks how music might have progressed if these giants had composed more, noting "such speculation might be more suited to the late hours of a cocktail party." Rothe thus captures the flavor of this entire volume, in which he and Steinberg expound on subjects ranging from their burgeoning interest in music to George Perle's life and work to poor audience behavior. These are not analytical pieces on specific works, but broader essays, most of which originally appeared in San Francisco Symphony programs. Steinberg's essays are the stand-outs here, including his informative and inspiring "Salute" to conductor and impresario Theodore Thomas and his recommendations on acquainting oneself with Robert Schumann's music. Rothe is less consistent: his "Vienna Trilogy" begins as a colorful tourist's guide but devolves into a silly postulation of a dinner shared by Mahler, Schoenberg and Freud, and his essay about Mahler and Sibelius contrasts Sibelius's "profound logic" with Mahler's "all-embracing" grandiosity, neglecting the profound inner logic of Mahler's works. The writing is engaging and easy to read, but dates for each essay would have established helpful contexts.
