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"Gregorian Chant: Songs of the Spirit"
edited by Huston Smith
REVIEW
One of the most surprising musical fads of recent years is
the craze for Gregorian chant, a musical form whose
recordings were once largely restricted to the pages of the
Musical Heritage Society catalog and the output of obscure
religious labels. Now, chant in its various permutations is
big business and something to be greatly hyped by mainstream
record companies. Hopping onto the plainsong bandwagon is
"Songs of the Spirit"--published as companion to a PBS
special on chant. It's a handsomely illustrated volume of
essays and thoughts on assorted styles of chant, complete
with a compact disc of examples tucked into a sleeve in the
back. This book should satisfy any curiosity on the subject
for most people who are neither monastics nor musicians.
"Jon Vickers: A Hero's Life"
by Jeannie Williams
REVIEW
Although Jeannie Williams was not able to get cooperation
from Jon Vickers for her new biography of the tenor, he
should hardly be displeased with the result. What emerges
from this life story is a great artist who is surprisingly
simple, true to his beliefs from the very start, and
dispassionately aware of the value of his gifts. Williams
gives us a man who encompassed three of opera's most
demanding roles (Otello, Tristan, and Aeneas in "Les
Troyens") in one season at the Metropolitan Opera. Through
accumulation of details, Williams conveys a sense of what
made Vickers wild and gripping onstage.
"Johannes Brahms: A Biography"
by Jan Swafford
REVIEW
The brilliant biographer of quintessentially American,
prototypically modern musician Charles Ives proves just as
masterful in probing the life and art of a 19th-century
German composer. Writing with passionate clarity that
perfectly matches the genius of Brahms (1833-1897), Jan
Swafford traces the emotional wellsprings of this secretive
man's music without trivializing art into mere
autobiography. A composer himself, Swafford understands and
lucidly conveys Brahms's unique position in musical history:
beloved by many, emulated by few, the triumphant yet
melancholy heir of a tradition coming to an end in his
lifetime.
"Mozart"
by Peter Gay
REVIEW
In the last 20 years alone, Mozart has been the subject of
two fine books: Maynard Solomon's meticulous study, which
slides Mozart's rather mystifying psyche under the analytic
microscope, and Wolfgang Hildesheimer's more sardonic
effort, in which the author seems determined to strip every
last bit of romantic varnish from the traditional
portrait. Now Peter Gay joins the party with his own brief
life. Weighing in at 177 pages, "Mozart" will never displace
its deep-focus predecessors. But it's a delightful
introduction to the composer, whose entire existence was, as
Gay puts it, a "triumph of genius over precociousness."
"The NPR Guide to Building a Classical CD Collection"
by Ted Libbey
REVIEW
It's back: Ted Libbey's highly regarded guide has been
updated and is now even more full of information than when
it was originally published in 1994. As on his weekly NPR
"Performance Today" segment, Libbey offers sage and witty
advice on 350 core classical works that are essential to a
music lover's collection. The discography has been updated
to reflect important new interpretations and reissues of
classic performances.
"The Four and the One: In Praise of String Quartets"
by David Rounds
REVIEW
Why have so many great composers reserved some of their most
profound, personal music for their string quartets? This
question has always fascinated musicians and chamber music
lovers; in this book, David Rounds--a teacher, writer, chamber
singer, and lifelong quartet addict--suggests an explanation:
the instrumental combination resembles human voices, and
socially the group resembles a family or a gathering of
friends carrying on a conversation. Rounds remarks that the
use of the same phrase to denote the musical form and the team
of players indicates that a quartet performance is created by
the participants' interaction as much as by the written
notes. The author's premise, reflected in his title, is that
in a quartet, four players and four instruments have to become
one unit. To demonstrate the arduous process this requires, he
enlisted the collaboration of the Lafayette Quartet, an all-
women group in residence at the University of Victoria School
of Music in Canada. Attending their rehearsals offered him,
and the reader, a unique opportunity to follow their
discussions and witness the emergence of an
interpretation. The book begins with an introduction to the
development of chamber music and ends with a guide to the
quartet repertoire. Rounds's descriptions of the music are
excellent, though his value judgments can be arbitrary; his
hope is to kindle his own devotion to the string quartet in
his readers.
"Callas at Juilliard: The Master Classes"
by Maria Callas and John Ardoin
REVIEW
Maria Callas conducted 23 two-hour opera master classes in
1971 and 1972; John Ardoin transcribed and arranged these
working sessions on more than 70 arias. Far from the
stereotypical self-serving diva putting in a personal
appearance, Callas was remarkably practical and specific in
her observations. Recurrent themes include diction
(particularly the expressive uses of consonants) and the
necessity of finding a natural flow for the accents of the
words, scrupulously applied to the rhythms of the
notes. Callas offered her own ornaments, cadenzas, alterations
of word placement, and even cuts; all of these are supplied in
musical notation among the copious musical examples in the
book. Although she might have been expected to concentrate on
soprano repertoire, Callas in fact covered not only arias for
all of the other voice categories but also duets. Often what
Callas asked for was more easily said than done, and the
overriding impression is of how exacting the profession really
is. (Fans of the Terrence McNally play "Master Class" will be
interested to know that Callas actually was conversant with
the tenor arias in "Tosca.")
"Shostakovich: A Life Remembered"
by Elizabeth Wilson
REVIEW
This book offers a unique perspective on one of our century's
most complex, enigmatic, and controversial geniuses, set in
the musical and political context of his time. It is a
compendium of official documents, private letters, diaries,
and interviews with Shostakovich's family, friends, and
enemies (in Russia and elsewhere), as well as articles written
especially for the book. The result is a fascinating
first-hand portrait of Shostakovich the man as husband,
widower, father, and friend, and Shostakovich the composer,
who--by turns officially reviled and extolled--became a symbol
for the suffering of his people. Indomitably creative despite
constant fear, repression, bereavement, and debilitating
illnesses, his ultimate tragedy was that the political "thaw"
came too late for his failing health. Many of Wilson's
respondents are musicians who knew that Shostakovich encoded
his music with hidden subtexts to express his secret
thoughts. On the other hand, his political statements, written
and spoken under duress, were often ambiguous and
contradictory, and Wilson quotes both conciliatory and hostile
reactions to them.
"The Urbanization of Opera: Music Theater in Paris in the Nineteenth
Century"
by Anselm Gerhard; translated by Mary Whittall
REVIEW
Grand opera--the genre that flourished in Paris during the
mid-19th century--has had a bad reputation for most of its
history. Wagner dismissed it as "effects without causes."
Characterized by gargantuan choral numbers, schlocky
exoticism, and plenty of blood, it represents much of what we
perceive as 19th-century opera without the depth of the
period's best work. It is rarely performed today. Anselm
Gerhard engages in a rich study of grand opera and places it
in context. He demonstrates what there is to admire in a
genre that led from tragedie lyrique to the achievements of
Verdi and Wagner. Gerhard also explores the form's genesis,
suggesting that grand opera's emphasis on violent historical
events derived from the turbulent history of France after
1789: the 18th century's happy endings gave way to
"horrifying" ones. But Gerhard doesn't oversell these operas;
he assesses their virtues and their considerable
limitations. He persuasively defends the accomplishments of
the much-derided Meyerbeer. And though this book is intended
for readers with some grounding in the subject, he helpfully
includes synopses of these less-than-canonical works.