The Indispensable Composers: A Personal Guide

by Anthony Tommasini

Overview

An exploration of the question of greatness from the chief classical music critic of The New York Times

Anthony Tommasini has devoted particular attention to living composers and overlooked repertory. But, as with all classical music lovers, the canon has remained central for him. Tommasini resists the neat laws of canon formation—and yet, he can’t help but admit that these exalted composers have guided him through his life, resonating with his deepest emotions and profoundly shaping how he sees the world.
 
Now, in The Indispensable Composers, Tommasini offers his own personal guide to what the mercurial concept of greatness really means in classical music. As he argues for his particular pantheon of indispensable composers, Tommasini provides a masterclass in what to listen for and how to understand what music does to us.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780143111085
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	11/05/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	512
Sales rank:	264,339
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Anthony Tommasini is the chief classical music critic for the New York Times. He graduated from Yale University, and later earned a Doctorate of Musical Arts from Boston University. He is the author of three books, including a biography of the composer and critic Virgil Thomson. As a pianist, he made two recordings of Thomson’s music on the Northeastern label which were supported by the National Endowment for the Arts.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xiii

Introduction: The Greatness Complex 1

1 Creator of Modern Music: Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) 19

2 Music for Use, Devotion, and Personal Profit: Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) 39

3 "Vast Effects with Simple Means": George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) 65

4 The "Vienna Four": An Introduction 91

5 "I Had to be Original": Franz Joseph Haydn (1732-1809) 97

6 "Right Here in My Noodle": Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1 791) 113

7 The Gift of Inevitability: Ludwig Van Beethoven (1770-1827) 145

8 "When I Wished to Sing of Love it Turned to Sorrow": Franz Schubert (1797-1828) 175

9 An Unforgettable Day in 1836: Fryderyk Franciszek (Frédéric François) Chopin (1810-1849) Robert Schumann (1810-1856) 205

10 The Italian Reformer and the German Futurist: Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) Richard Wagner (1813-1883) 247

11 The Synthesizer: Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) 307

12 The Refined Radical: Claude Debussy (1862-1918) 339

13 "The Public Will Judge": Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) 369

14 New Languages for a New Century: Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) Béla Bartók (1881-1945) 397

Epilogue 433

Recommended Recordings 441

Acknowledgments 447

Notes 449

Illustration Credits 465

Index 467

Editorial Reviews

[Tommasini] defends the value of distinguishing the great from the merely good…Tommasini does a fine job of conveying the inner life of a piece, through his rhythmic sentences and sculpted paragraphs…One cannot help coming away from it with a more rounded understanding of classical music at its peak.”—Phillip Lopate, New York Times Book Review

“Every case [Tommasini] makes is convincingly argued, and his style is accessible without being patronizing, enthusiastic but never gushily so. It’s a superb read. Indispensable, even.”—Jeremy Pound, BBC Music Magazine

“The story of four centuries of music in essays on seventeen composers, from Monteverdi to Stravinsky…all suffused with memoir and colored by a lifelong love of opera.”—The New Yorker

“Through [Tommasini’s] telling, these masters feel relatable—and their musical feats are made all the more impressive. Tommasini weaves an engrossing narrative, one that musicians and non-musicians alike will enjoy.”—The New Criterion

“A pianist himself, Tommasini infuses his essays with insights from a lifetime of playing and listening.” —San Francisco Chronicle
 
“A must for musicians and music lovers alike.” —Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

 “Tommasini offers his wide personal experience, extensive knowledge, approachable teaching style, and great fondness for the material, along with his well-considered opinion, and takes us on a delightful journey…Tommasini enriches the basic stories of the composers’ complex lives and the place of their works in the evolution of music with his memories and perspectives, makes clear why they were chosen for his pantheon, and engagingly captures the essence of music in words…Anyone interested in exploring the repertoire would find The Indispensable Composers a valuable, informative, and entertaining companion.”—Thomas Bohlert, The East Hampton Star

“A spirited musical compendium to the best of the best…[Tommasini’s] goal is to keep his assessments simple, insightful, and jargon-free, and he succeeds…Entertaining, highly enthusiastic, and very knowledgeable, he’s the perfect guide [to the great composers]…all exuberantly presented for your edification and enjoyment.” —Kirkus 

“This wonderful and indispensable book is written by an indispensable and fabulous music critic, Anthony Tommasini. This marvelous publication is both a great addition to the body of tributes to these magnificent composers and a perfect educational vehicle about the grandiose field of opera. It is a pleasure to add my voice to the others singing its praises”—Leontyne Price

“Insightful…Tommasini twines engaging biographical sketches of the maestros and their tragic ailments, love affairs, and endless scrambles for money with appreciations of masterpieces, the latter enriched by his memories of hearing and performing them…he excels at the difficult task of capturing music in words…The result is an engrossing study that will appeal to both classical music aficionados and novice listeners who want a road map.”—Publishers Weekly
 
“A treasure trove of biographical information and a primer on the language and notation of music itself…Tommasini makes a potentially dry and academic subject accessible.”—Library Journal

“Anthony Tommasini’s book is itself indispensable—not only for those who already know how immortal are Monteverdi, Bach, Haydn down to Schoenberg, Stravinsky, and Bartók, but for those who want to read Tommasini’s take on what makes our great composers lifelong companions we like to take wherever we go and would ask/want nothing more than to hear a few last notes from before leaving them forever.”—André Aciman, author of Call Me by Your Name

“Anthony Tommasini is an engaging, authoritative guide to the careers and works of great composers.  Writing accessibly about even the more technical aspects of the music, he shares what these creations have meant to him in ways that should also make them essential listening for his readers."—Walter Frisch, H. Harold Gumm/Harry and Albert von Tilzer Professor of Music at Columbia University and author of Arlen and Harburg’s Over the Rainbow

“Few critics in history have been as rigorously trained or deeply versed in music as Tony Tommasini. Page after page of this exuberant book show not only his comprehensive knowledge — he writes with the music under his fingers — but also his infectious love for the great classical repertory.”  —Alex Ross, author of The Rest is Noise

From the Publisher

The point is not to get stuck arguing over Tommasini's choices, but to accept the book as a vehicle for a writer of immense musical knowledge to share his insights about many favorite pieces…Music is notoriously difficult to write about—how to convey changes in a composition, both formal and expressive, using words instead of sounds? Tommasini does a fine job of conveying the inner life of a piece, through his rhythmic sentences and sculpted paragraphs. Even when a novice may find it hard to follow his analysis, one is carried forward by the gusto of his prose…[The Indispensable Composers] feels appealingly human, not like a textbook written by committee…One cannot help coming away from it with a more rounded understanding of classical music at its peak.

The New York Times Book Review - Phillip Lopate

09/03/2018
Seventeen classical composers are celebrated in these insightful critical essays. A concert pianist and New York Times classical music critic, Tommasini (Virgil Thompson: Composer in the Aisle) expands on a series of his newspaper articles to present a roster of favorites, including Renaissance pioneer Monteverdi; repertory pillars Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, Mozart, and Schubert; opera auteurs Verdi and Puccini; and the high modernist Schoenberg, whose atonal music he loves. Tommasini twines engaging biographical sketches of the maestros and their tragic ailments, love affairs, and endless scrambles for money with appreciations of masterpieces, the latter enriched by his memories of hearing and performing them. The portraits merge into a metanarrative about the emergence of the classical tonal language of comprehensible keys and lucid harmonies and its decay (or liberation) into unmoored dissonance. Tommasini’s interpretations sometimes overreach—he detects a “gay sensibility” (as have other critics) in the music of Schubert, because “seemingly happy passages contain disquieting subliminal elements”—but he excels at the difficult task of capturing music in words. “ gnarly, slow theme, like the grim song of a Slavic bass” with “hulking, weighty, strange intervals and chords” nails Chopin’s Prelude No. 2. The result is an engrossing study that will appeal to both classical music aficionados and novice listeners who want a road map. Agent: Andrew Wylie, the Wylie Agency. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Several people have famously said that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” Even with Mark Bramhall's fine narration, there are stretches here where non-musician listeners will not quite get what Tommasini is talking about. Nevertheless, with Bramhall's help we do learn which composers the NEW YORK TIMES music critic considers indispensable, from Monteverde to Bartok, and why. The book draws on the author's personal contacts with the music under discussion, and Bramhall conveys the controlled but authentic enthusiasm of someone who loves music enough to make it his life. One might argue with Tommasini's choices, but he supports them with rational arguments, providing a basic background in music history and theory along the way. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2018 - AudioFile

Several people have famously said that “writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” Even with Mark Bramhall's fine narration, there are stretches here where non-musician listeners will not quite get what Tommasini is talking about. Nevertheless, with Bramhall's help we do learn which composers the NEW YORK TIMES music critic considers indispensable, from Monteverde to Bartok, and why. The book draws on the author's personal contacts with the music under discussion, and Bramhall conveys the controlled but authentic enthusiasm of someone who loves music enough to make it his life. One might argue with Tommasini's choices, but he supports them with rational arguments, providing a basic background in music history and theory along the way. D.M.H. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

NOVEMBER 2018 - AudioFile

2018-08-20

A spirited musical compendium to the best of the best.

New York Times chief classic music critic Tommasini (Opera: A Critic's Guide to the 100 Most Important Works and the Best Recordings, 2004, etc.) picks the "unfathomable achievements of indispensable—and indisputably great—composers." His goal is to keep his assessments simple, insightful, and jargon-free, and he succeeds. The author draws on biographical and historical materials, revealing anecdotes, and his extensive personal exposure to innumerable musical performances and skill as a pianist to provide succinct, highly readable miniprofiles of the greats. Entertaining, highly enthusiastic, and very knowledgeable, he's the perfect guide. Tommasini begins in the 16th century, with Monteverdi, the "creator of modern music," and ends in the 20th with a "modernist master," Bartók. The author is awestruck with the "staggering genius and superhuman achievement" of Bach's "innate musical talents of astonishing depth." For "all [of Handel's] genius as a musical dramatist," Tommasini suggests, he had his "show-biz side," and "reaching the public was crucial to his aesthetic." The author marvels that over a 75-year period, one city, Vienna, "fostered the work of four of the most titanic composers in music history": Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Schubert, that "uncanny…hypersensitive outcast (a gay outcast?)." Recalling an "extraordinary" performance of Beethoven's Fourth Concerto, Tommasini can't help himself: "This is Beethoven! This is life!" If the author could go "backward in time to hear just one legendary composer in performance," it would be Chopin, "for sure." He encourages listeners to "see through the nastiness of Wagner the man to the beauty of his art." And "if there is one word that gets at the core of Brahms's music for me, it's breadth."

Also starring Schumann, Verdi, Debussy, Puccini, Schoenberg, Stravinsky and, briefly, some up-and-comers like Philip Glass and George Benjamin, all exuberantly presented for your edification and enjoyment.

Kirkus Reviews