Customer Reviews

Secret Lives of Great Composers

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4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
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Artists, authors and now composers. The dryly humorous series continues, telling you things that would have music class much more interesting had the teacher only known. It, albeit unintentionally I'm sure, humanizes its subjects and blows the dust off of their histories. Wagner in pink lingerie indeed....

As a musicologist I think this book gives a glimpse into the more human side of the composers in question. Too often their lives read like a hero story, and usually not a particularly good one at that. This doesn't do the music any favour, I believe, since most of us are human enough to be more interested in music made by a person whose life story we can identify and, at least to a certain degree, sympathise with (this, I believe, can work the other way around too; Wagner's music is given a fascinating sheen because the character who made it is so utterly repulsive). While perhaps not always pleasurable, these anecdotes show how composers also were men, who, for all of their pockmarks, is far more interesting than the marble statues their mothers would not have been able to recognise.

I would certainly recommend this book to everyone interested in classical music, middle school teachers desperate for something to make the pupils pay attention in music classes, and, perhaps most importantly, as a gift to your local conservative who upholds the classical tradition as a moral alternative to corrupt popular culture.

Sometimes, there comes a point in reading a book when the reader stops reading for new information and starts noticing all the errors. This is one of those error-prone books that could have used a proofreader. French-born George Sand is not an English novelist. (p. 86) Puccini's Turandot is not "Turnadot." (p. 156 and p. 158) Madame Butterfly is not a slave. The author has her confused with Liu. (p. 153) Rossini's Barber of Seville is only two acts long. ("...hissed and jeered every act." p. 60) SpellCheck cannot catch homophones the way a human can, so we get incredibly bizarre errors. There are multiple uses of "lead" as the past tense of "lead."

The book gives us juicy stories about composers from Vivaldi to Glass, but the heavy sarcasm of the author's voice gets very old very fast. This is the sort of thing that might be enjoyed just one chapter or two at a time. Some of the material is old and well-known (Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Bernstein). Other material touches on semi-fresh ground, to me at least, such as Ives and Elgar.

"The Secret Lives of Great Composers" is lots of fun. There are many behind-the-scenes stories
about composers which make you smile (even laugh),
make you think "my goodness!", and make you wonder
why some of these things are not better known.
I did miss something on Sir Arthur Sullivan, but
maybe he'll be in a sequal?
The author has done a lot of research to bring these stories to the public, and has the gift of
making his stories so interesting that the reader
must go on to the next one right away.
Be ready to say "I didn't know that!"
Thanks to Amazon for advertising this book.

My review of this book will be short -- this was a well written and
especially insightful study of things great composers did and didn't
do that you never hear of (some really outrageous, others informa-
tive but not so far out) -- being a great admirer and lover of
Classical Music, this was an outstanding book for my library --
I enjoyed it so much that i ordered more copies to send and share
with my sons and some friends-- well written and the drawings and
visual sketches were delightful and as outrageous as things you
find out through the written text -- Thomas Seawell

Once I started reading this book, I couldn't put it down. It contains all the juicy details (and then some) of some of the greatest composers of Classical music. Basically, as you read about each composer, you'd think they were immune to the kinds of things mentioned in the book - theft, illness, bizare ways of thinking, etc. I always thought my favorite composers were untouchable to such things.

The down side is that not all composers were covered in this book, which is why I'd strongly encourage Elizabeth Lunday to write a SEQUAL to the first book, including composers such as:

Franz Schubert
Camille Saint Saens
Johan Strauss Snr & Jnr
John Philip Souza
Nicolo Paganini
Benjamin Britten
Bela Bartok
Khachaturian
Edvard Grieg
George Bizet
Pierre Boulez
Jacques Offenbach
Nicolay Rimski-Korsakov
Modest Mussorgsky
Steve Reich
Henry Purcell
Claudio Monteverdi
Stockhousen
Giovanni Battista Pergolesi
Francis Poulenc

...and many more!!!

Good book. Full of facts you probably never really wanted to know but a good read. Interesting facts.

I gave this book to my college aged nephews, both of whom are musicians and composers themselves. They loved it!