{"product_id":"the-lives-of-the-great-composers","title":"The Lives of the Great Composers","description":"599 pp. This history of classical music, from Bach to Schoenberg, not only unravels the evolutionary patterns of musical development, but reveals the composers themselves - their lives and states of mind, their private defeats and public triumphs. From Schumann, who believed angels were dictating his harmonies, to J.S. Bach who had a cantata deadline to meet every Sunday in order to feed nine children, we can discern the various sources of inspiration. This book is designed to be used as a reference to many of the major composers and their music, but is also a source of relevant biographical detail. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: \"Harold Charles Schonberg (November 29, 1915 - July 26, 2003) was an American music critic and journalist, most notably for The New York Times. He was the first music critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for criticism (1971). He also wrote a number of books on musical subjects, and one on chess. Schonberg joined The New York Times in 1950. He rose to the post of senior music critic for the Times a decade later. In this capacity he published daily reviews and longer features on operas and classical music on Sundays. He also worked effectively behind the scenes to increase music coverage in the Times and develop its first-rate music staff. Upon his retirement as senior music critic in 1980 he became cultural correspondent for the Times. Schonberg was an extremely influential music writer. Aside from his contributions to music journalism, he published 13 books, most of them on music, including The Great Pianists: From Mozart to the Present (1963) — pianists were a specialty of Schonberg — and The Lives of the Great Composers (1970; revised 1981, 1997) which traced the lives of major composers from Monteverdi through to modern times. Schonberg was highly critical of Leonard Bernstein during the composer-conductor's eleven year tenure (1958-1969) as principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic. (These were the years that Bernstein's name became a household word because of his appearances on CBS in the Young People's Concerts.) He obliquely accused Bernstein of showing off by using exaggerated gestures on the podium, and more directly, of conducting a piece in a way that made its structure overly obvious to audiences, and, by implication, to music critics, who supposedly already knew all about the particular piece being conducted. One of his most famous criticisms of Bernstein was written after the famous April 6, 1962 performance before which Bernstein announced that he disagreed with pianist Glenn Gould's interpretation of Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 1, but was going to conduct it anyway because he found it fascinating. Schonberg chided Bernstein in print, suggesting that he should have either backed out of the concert or imposed his own will on Gould, and called him 'the Peter Pan of music.' (In the chapter on Bernstein in his 1967 book The Great Conductors, Schonberg quotes the remark, but does not admit that he was the critic who had made it.) It was commonly said that Schonberg was carrying an ongoing feud with Bernstein.\" -- Wikipedia","brand":"W.W. Norton \u0026 Company","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":20536926634054,"sku":"2278342","price":15.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1232\/9510\/products\/2278342.jpg?v=1571426267","url":"https:\/\/ym-demo.myshopify.com\/products\/the-lives-of-the-great-composers","provider":"Yesterday's Muse","version":"1.0","type":"link"}