Alfred Einstein in Essays on Music brings his far-ranging scholarship, his writing abilities, and his wit and humor to bear on a variety of musical subjects, such as the mortality of opera, early concert life, words and music, Strauss and Hoffmansthal, Wagner and Ludwig II, Opus I and Opus Ultimum of many famous composers, together with a series of essays on Mozart. With his sharp eye for problems and an uncanny instinct for their solutions, Dr. Einstein has here made not only significant additions to musical letters, but also enjoyable and rewarding reading for the music lover. Alfred Einstein, one of the great musical scholars of this century, was the editor of the third edition of Köchel’s Mozart catalogue. His tremendous three-volume history The Italian Madrigal, summing up forty years of work, is a veritable monument of Renaissance music. He was equally at home in the Romantic world, as he demonstrated in his Music in the Romantic Era.
