Choral Masterworks: A Listener's Guide
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Choral Masterworks: A Listener's Guide Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥ |
Very Good, but far from complete.
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I am giving Mr. Steinberg Four Stars for his good work.
Mr Steinberg says in his introduction that he regrets omissions, but does not intend to apologize for anything he DID include. Well, if I were him I would retract that; as I will show, he makes some inclusions that are hardly earth-shattering.
He omits Berlioz's Te Deum (one of the works he regrets leaving out), yet he includes several of the smaller Brahms works! I'm not anti-Brahms, but why would you leave out a work like the Berlioz Te Deum in the first place? And however interesting it may be, why include the Mozart-Handel Messiah? If Mr. Steinberg had left that out, the smaller Mozart and Brahms, he would have had space to include Berlioz, Bruckner, Poulenc, Monteverdi, and at least one more Haydn mass, the "Nelson".
There are several great settings of the "Gloria" by Antonio Vivaldi which are wonderful. I would have suggested Vivaldi's "Dixit Dominus". Poulenc's "Gloria" is also a work which deserved to be included, as did Dvorak's Requiem...whatever George Bernard Shaw's opinion of it may have been.
One of the most unforgiveable omissions was Monteverdi's "Vespro della Beata Vergine", but of course Mr. Steinberg doesn't apologize for it's omission like he did for obscure Pfitzner, Gerhard and [less obscure] Delius. A work like Monteverdi's Vespers, even though it is a collection of pieces, is now accepted as one of the greatest choral works.
As I see it, to choose the right works for a book like this, what you do is choose ONE work by each major composer until you have all the big guys covered. Then you expand the amount of works by some of them. In Bach's case, obviously the two Passions should be included in addition to the Mass in B minor. In Berlioz's case, you would expand to include the Te Deum....and so on.
In this book, Steinberg includes "Genesis" by Wuorinen, "Lilacs in the Dooryard Bloom'd" by Roger Sessions, and what I think is an excessive amount of Stravinsky: the Requiem Canticles, Symphony of Psalms, Mass, Sacred Canticle, Persephone, and The Wedding.Obviously Stravinsky should be represented, but six works by him, and only one of Haydn's Masses? I understand that Steinberg was pressured by his publisher to keep the length of this volume small, some indiscretions can be forgiven. But this is a VERY unbalanced book in terms of the choices of works to explore.
But enough criticism. Let's go over the real positives of this book. Now, the actual exploring of the pieces is very good. It is very hard to talk/comment on music without being either too technical, or too rhapsodic and reminiscing. Steinberg strikes the balance perfectly. He starts out most often by interesting you with anecdotes, some of them from his own life. When he goes into detail describing the actual music, he is careful to stick to 'regular people language', even still those areas are a bit sticky for the lay listener. He uses notated musical examples often enough, which make this book more than just a regular read for those who know their music theory.
When Mr. Steinberg gets to do an "update" for his book, I expect to see a far wiser inclusion of great works.
(Note just is case Steinberg reads his Amazon reviews: I'm only critisizing you because I like your stuff.) |
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