For the Love of Music: Invitations to Listening

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 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.

Once you've sampled one of the warm and witty essays in this book, you'll want to devour the rest at a single sitting. Rothe and Steinberg provide vivid and evocative accounts of their falling in love--or not--with various musical works. At the same time, they offer fascinating details about the all-too-human composers of those pieces. The passion that the authors bring to their descriptions of music and its creators will make readers eager to encounter the works themselves. Just as Steinberg mentions that he has learned that "music repays repeated listening," I believe this book will amply repay repeated reading.

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.

Music has always been my main interest. Not just listening to classical or ballads (which i enjoyed the most), but participating in the amateur world of music in my town. What would we music lovers do for the "love of music." We would devote out entire lives and devotion to music. It is the language of love. Opera is a genre of music only the affenadios cultivate. It is not my cup of tea, nor is ballet -- though Katrina is now a pro in Cincinnati. Music has t he power to soothe the restless beast. My inner self is totally music. A radio listener since childhood, I grew up in a world of music. My dad's family were musically inclined in diverse ways and I came along at just the right time to develop my talent on my own with no help except my trusty radio. I could sing the pop songs just as they sounded on the radio, and had a short career as a high school student, with a little help from my true friends. I will forever be grateful that they indulged a small, mother-less girl who wanted to grow up to be a singer! Imagine that -- a poor girl becoming a famous singer. Music in all of its forms is the basis of life. Dancing was denied be due to religious beliefs, but as an older woman, i showed my stuff at a free Al Curtis dance, and even a UT student asked me where I had learned to dance. I told her that I never did, it was just the music in me coming out. I could not dance with a man, as I always tended to "lead," which they did not like. Young students should be required to take a music course or two, even Girls' Glee Club was helpful, though it ended my career. Some people are musically talented in many ways. My friend, Juanita, had a lovely voice and we tried a duet on t.v. which bombed. Needless to say, i was a loner when it came to music. The radio has always been a must in my life. I have discovered a "high school" station which is fantastic. After listening to it for a month or so, I heard them say that Falcon Radio was from Fulton. I called and talked with the teacher and said that I could not possibly believe that high school kids would play that kind of music, what I had listened to twenty years ago. It is always rewarding to find some new network or local station which makes you feel good and young again. Westwood One did the trick in 1999; then came mYL in 2000, EZ88 played Michael Feinstein for me, and now 91.1 FM is the best. You can't call it relaxing music as it brings back too many memories of the good times and makes you want to sing and dance like you did as a young girl.