Greetings from Amazon.com Delivers Classical Music Books and Scores Editor, Thomas May FEATURED IN THIS E-MAIL: * "Richard Strauss: Man, Musician, Enigma" by Michael Kennedy * "Richard Strauss and His World" edited by Bryan Gilliam * "Opera: Desire, Disease, Death" by Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon * "Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance" by Richard Taruskin * "My First 79 Years" by Isaac Stern, with Chaim Potok To many music lovers, Richard Strauss stands as one of the most significant composers of this century and--to operaphiles in particular--perhaps the unsurpassed master, whose dramatic acumen and writing for the female voice resulted in works of incomparably ravishing beauty. This September the music world officially commemorates the 50th anniversary of Strauss's death. In honor of that occasion, our selections this month include Michael Kennedy's critical reassessment of Strauss--the first significant biography of the composer to be published in English in several decades. You'll also find a fascinating collection of essays edited by Bryan Gilliam (whose own biographical study of the composer is soon to be published). Meanwhile, opera lovers interested in the genre's intellectual and social history will be intrigued by "Opera: Desire, Disease, Death," a richly discursive study of the sociological context of operatic suffering. This month we also salute Richard Taruskin's seminal critique of the historically informed performance movement. Finally, Isaac Stern's memoirs-- polished to a smooth style by coauthor Chaim Potok--recount a musician, not unlike Strauss, devoted to his art as a means to transcend barriers. "Richard Strauss: Man, Musician, Enigma" by Michael Kennedy http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0521581737/entertainmentsit Michael Kennedy here undertakes to penetrate Strauss's contradictions and see the man whole. Through his impressive access to diaries, letters, and living relatives, he posits an underlying consistency of attitude that made "art the reality in [Strauss's] life." The central enigma about the composer that fascinates Kennedy is the "disparity between man and musician," the paradox that this fundamentally aloof and reserved person, dedicated to bourgeois stability, could produce music of such overpowering passion. While steering clear of an overbearingly Freudian analysis, Kennedy reveals the crucial significance of Strauss's mother's nervous instability and the centrality of the work ethic inherited from his father. The result was to make music "Strauss's means of escape ... and in much of his music he wore a mask." Yet for all his aloofness, Strauss "let [the mask] slip"--another aspect of the enigma surrounding him--in such compositions as "Don Quixote" ("the most profound" of his orchestral works) or the pervasively autobiographical "Capriccio," which Kennedy counts as Strauss's greatest achievement for the lyrical stage. He is particularly persuasive in his high estimation of the post-"Rosenkavalier" output and the undiminished quest for artistic innovation that they continued to exemplify--above all in Strauss's development of a fluently conversational style in his operas. Kennedy similarly demystifies much of the received opinion that has developed around the composer, particularly in the level-headed portrait of his wife, Pauline. The fundamental happiness of their lifelong relationship emerges as a context indispensable to Strauss's creative focus. Kennedy devotes a significant portion of the book to the composer's position as president of the Reich Music Chamber and subsequent fall from grace both with the Nazis and in world opinion. In his view, Strauss becomes a "tragic figure, symbolizing the struggle to preserve beauty and style in Western European culture" against emerging barbarism. This biography largely succeeds in pointing to a greatness that "has not yet been fully understood and discovered." "Richard Strauss and His World" edited by Bryan Gilliam http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0691027625/entertainmentsit When these essays were first published in 1992, Timothy L. Jackson's thoughts on the "Four Last Songs" got the most attention. Jackson argues, quite persuasively, that the four songs were originally five, with the orchestral song "Ruhe, meine Seele!" to be heard before "Im Abendrot." Elsewhere, Leon Botstein contributes the "keynote address," taking up the odd disjunction of Richard Strauss's life versus his music. He demolishes the idea of Strauss having stylistic shifts. Michael Steinberg takes on Strauss's behavior during the Nazi era. Like Kirsten Flagstad, Karl Boehm, and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Strauss will always be linked to his politics. James Hepokoski offers a look at "Macbeth," Strauss's first tone poem. In general, the lesser-known works such as "Intermezzo" and the "Burleske" for piano and orchestra come up more than you would expect, with correspondingly less on "Don Juan" or "Ariadne auf Naxos." Two chapters offer selections from the composer's correspondence, nicely translated by Susan Gillespie. The essays are quite fine individually; taken together they offer nothing less than a wholesale reevaluation of the composer. Focusing on the "middle period" after "Elektra," editor Gilliam asks for a separation of style from historical era, and it is the key to a much deeper understanding of the music. "Opera: Desire, Disease, Death" by Linda Hutcheon and Michael Hutcheon http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0803273185/entertainmentsit Opera has never been short on pain and suffering. The diseases that actually appear onstage, however, depend greatly on cultural context. In this provocative academic study, the authors ponder the significance behind the ailments that beset operatic characters. Their division of specialties--she is a literary critic, he is an MD--gives them a built-in perspective on their subject. The Hutcheons do not claim to be musical experts: they quote from scholars to bolster their arguments, which focus on librettos and source material. Operatic diseases are largely those with overtones of moral, not just physical, infection. Tuberculosis was a 19th-century favorite, associated with feverish passion and the self-consuming flame of artistic creativity. The authors contrast tubercular heroines before and after the discovery of the illness's cause, which altered the perception of TB from a disease of temperament ("La Traviata") to one of poverty and overcrowding ("La Boheme"). They also consider syphilis, cholera, and another "pathology," smoking. As the last example hints, the book's true theme is not disease, exactly. These conditions and habits--all linked in some way to emphatic sexuality-- indicated a morally dubious life and marked a character for doom. The authors' thesis encourages the reader to look behind the assumptions in these works. In an epilogue, the Hutcheons discuss plays--there are not yet any operas-- dealing with AIDS. These works suggest a 21st-century model: affirmative, sometimes angry, refusing to exoticize or condemn their diseased heroes. "Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance" by Richard Taruskin http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0195094581/entertainmentsit It is as an essayist and critic (if not a professional gadfly) that Richard Taruskin has made a real impact on American musical culture. Indeed, in early-music circles, and even in the marketing of period-instrument performances by record labels, the word "authentic" has been abandoned almost entirely--and this is due largely to Taruskin's impassioned arguments (and his ability to get them published in places like the New York Times). "Text and Act" is a collection of Taruskin's most important (or, at least, most inflammatory) essays and articles on the subject of authenticity in the performance of 18th-and 19th-century music. These are the pieces that got him a reputation for being a flame-thrower; many fans of what is now called HIP (historically informed performance) have gotten the idea that Taruskin is the enemy of everything HIP stands for. They should have a look at this book: they'll see that he actually applauds many of the HIP movement's achievements. What he skewers mercilessly are the pretensions and a few of the assumptions on which HIP was originally based and that it used to market itself. Readers will also see why Taruskin has deeply infuriated so many people. He regularly makes inflammatory statements at the outset of an essay and then backpedals in the middle. Nevertheless, Taruskin's main points are persuasive. They may even seem obvious, but all too many musicians seem to have forgotten them. "Authenticity" in the sense of a faithful re-creation of the composer's intentions and preferred conditions of performance is simply not an achievable goal. We can't know the composer's real intentions (he or she is almost certainly dead), and re-creating original performance conditions is unfeasible, if not impossible. So for anyone who wants to understand the early-music revival of the late 20th century and the debates surrounding it, this book is indispensable. "My First 79 Years" by Isaac Stern, with Chaim Potok http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0679451307/entertainmentsit The conductor George Szell once told Isaac Stern that if he spent less time doing other things and more time practicing he could be "the greatest violinist in the world." Since those "other things" included saving Carnegie Hall from the wrecker's ball, generously sponsoring young artists like Yo-Yo Ma and Itzhak Perlman, and touring the world as an ambassador of American classical performance, music lovers can only be grateful that Stern settled for being one of the world's great violinists. His appealing memoir reveals a well-rounded man with a gusto for life beyond the concert hall that made his passion for music all the more fulfilling. Born on the Russian-Polish border in 1920, Stern grew up in San Francisco and by age 6 already displayed a precocious musical gift. His assessment of his abilities is refreshingly free of false modesty, while his enthusiastic appreciation for such fellow artists as Pablo Casals, Leonard Bernstein, and Rudolf Serkin keeps him from seeming like an egomaniac. Perhaps because of the contributions of coauthor Chaim Potok (author of "The Chosen" and other novels), the prose here is smoother and less self-conscious than in many performers' memoirs. It limns a vigorous, busy life dedicated to the idea that music has the power to break down barriers between people and nations. ****** You'll find more great books, articles, excerpts, and interviews in Amazon.com's Classical Music Books section at Classical
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