For The Love of Music: Invitations to Listening

Very encouraging if, like me, you have become a big fan of (classical, concert, serious?) music, but always felt somewhat abashed by lack of training. Neither of these writers is a trained musician, but show that we can still get it enough to "fit in" and even, with effort, make intelligent commentary! The senior writer clearly my preferred critic here, but both have something to offer.

The only prerequisite for enjoying this book is that you honestly love classical music. Each of these marvelous essays show deep appreciation and reverence for the music. They seek to know more and to try harder to comprehend the complexities of their subjects. There are several studies that stand out for me. Larry Rothe's discourse on Erich Korngold uncovered much new information and is a masterfully written piece of work. Other memorable contributions by Rothe include essays on J.S. Bach, Sigmund Spaeth, Brahms and a very entertaining one called "Music, True or False". The late Michael Steinberg was a master at his craft. An annotator of concert programs for the BSO, SFO and New York Philharmonic, his books, notes and critical analysis are admired by some of the greatest musicians and creators in the classical music world. Essays on Lou Harrison, Rachmaninov, Stravinsky and Schumann are excellent. His salute to Theodore Thomas is very illuminating. Thomas was a pioneering maestro who was largely responsible for debuting many great works in America. Between the years 1854 and 1904 he proved to be a tireless advocate for great music in the United States. The book is full of historical references that provide background for many of the essays. Intelligent observations abound. Bottom line: As I stated in my opening, if you honestly love classical music, this book provides a wealth of insight to what makes it great. It is a salute to people who seek to understand its profound mysteries, written by two true believers. Kudos to Larry Rothe and long live Michael Steinberg!

great!

Just what I wanted. Thank you.

It's been a long time since I last read Virginia Woolf, but when I think of the familiar essays she addressed to "the common reader" in the 1920s (surely a misnomer; the common reader, then as now, must've preferred celebrity magazines and thrillers to literary essays), I imagine a readership raised on good books; informed, active readers with good taste, insatiable curiosity, and excellent memories. Woolf assumes, in other words, a refined but not stuffy audience.This, transposed for the music world, is the audience I imagine for the urbane, entertaining essays that Michael Steinberg and Larry Rothe have written and compiled from the program books of their employer, the San Francisco Symphony. There are few things more difficult to do well than to write about music, but these men manage to make it look easy. The distinction between their approaches is rooted in biography: Steinberg, a teenager during WWII, studied music at university and became a teacher and critic; Rothe, a teenager in the 1960s, studied journalism, learning about music through concerts and recordings. Steinberg's musical credentials complement Rothe's instinct for a good story, and they're both keenly insightful writers with a passion for their subject matter."Great music is something for you to do, not just something for you to pay for and have done to you or for you...We are talking here about a human activity of high aspirations in the matter of touching people in their innermost regions." While the aspirations may be high, the manner of address is relaxed. These essays are lyric pieces, not symphonic utterances. The best of them fall under the rubric, "Creators," where we read of Bach, Schumann, Brahms, Mozart, Schubert, Sibelius, and Mahler, among others, treated as men and artists of greater complexity than most CD liner notes and our own selective memories would have us believe. There is a superb essay on the path from Wagner's hyper-Romantic "glorification of the irrational" to the sardonic music of the Weimar Republic. One writer muses on the conundrum of musical complexity and authenticity; the other offers a sociology of concert hall audience noises, and in another piece opines that the distinction between classical music and pop is one of aspiration. This is music journalism for "the common listener" -- an uncommon gift of clarity, passion, and insight from writers to reader.

For those of us in the world who have not yielded entirely to the mass apppeal of pop music in whatever form it takes this book is a gift. I speak for those who listen to classical music without the benefit of an education in the history or theory of music. Rothe and Steinberg bring us a window into the passions and thoughts of composers whose work has endured over decades and centuries. They do so with a robust appreciation for their subjects and amusing insights into their encounters with the work they describe. I cherish the crisp,candid style and knowlegeable background information that fills the pages. It will stay on my shelf as a reference book as well as a re-read for those times when only music will do.

For the Love of Music is a wonderfully accessible look at the world of classical music: the composers, the performers, the music, and the emotions all three manage to produce in listeners. The authors are music professionals, yet their pleasure in music, and their engagement with music, is as clear in these essays as their knowledge of their subjects. The volume contains essays on the greats--Bach, Mozart, Mahler--but also covers some modern and contemporary composers whose work is less known, and less appreciated, by non-specialist listeners. There are also some unexpected notes; in his essay on film music, author Larry Rothe suggests that Beethoven might have been a great film composer, and reminds us that Dino de Laurentiis approached Stravinsky about scoring his epic The Bible! A fascinating book for both the musically literate and those who would like to know more about the music they love.