Harold C. Schonberg (1915–2003)

It's rare for a writer to express strong opinions without running off the rails with the facts. Schonberg's biographies of composers (I have the 1981 edition) is strongly opinionated and yet (as far as I can tell) factually accurate. You may disagree with him, even be infuriated with him, but you'll get a lot of information about the composers and their connections with each other. I hadn't previously known that Debussy liked cats better than people (clearly a wise man). The descriptions of how composers were received in their own time are especially interesting. There were rivalries and alliances, just as there are today. The book should be findable in used bookstores or on eBay.… (mere)

First published in 1971, this magisterial one-volume book contains brief but erudite commentaries on the bulk of composers anyone would really want to know about.

In a 'Postlude', Schonberg comments on classical music post-World War II and says that none of the post-war composers have made any impact on the bulk of the classical repertoire, or the consciousness of the public. He declines to offer a view as to whether some musical form or other will capture that imagination, though he hints that the film composer might well fill part of that void. But overall, he says that there has been "a hiatus" in the stream of great composers which stretched unbroken from the time of Bach.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. Shostakovich was still alive and composing in 1971; and there have been a few contemporary superstars that have arisen since then - Tippett, Williamson, Maxwell Davies, Lutoslawski, Stockhausen, Rorem and Turnage are just a few that come to mind. Oddly, Benjamin Britten is relegated to a virtual footnote on opera since Puccini. The Minimalists - Glass, Adams, Reich and Nyman - were a few years in the future and still brash young students when Schonberg was writing. And it's always possible to argue for re-discovered composers - Alkan, Brian and Lloyd are my candidates.

But these are minor quibbles. By the time anyone gets round to enthusing over the names I've mentioned, they're already well-immersed in the world of classical music. But this book should be the back-stop on their shelves as it is on mine.… (mere)