Customer Reviews

The Symphony: A Listener's Guide

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4 star:		(3)
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2 star:		(1)
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The other reviewers here have given you the perspective of die-hard classical music fans. I am not really expert enough to comment on ommisions and such. But I would like to present another possible reason to purchase this book. Classical music can seem kind of inscrutable to the outsider, but this book sort of walks the reader (and listener) through each piece. I've used it to pick what piece to track down next. This book will enrich the listening experience and the listening skills of the musically minded amateur i think. It did for me.

A wonderful book. Michael Steinberg is probably the premier writer of program notes for symphony orchestra concerts in the English-speaking world, and his two books, The Symphony: A Listener's Guide (Oxford University Press, 1995, 678 pages), and its companion volume The Concerto: A Listener's Guide (Oxford UP, 1998, 506 pages), are probably the two best collections of program notes on the symphony and the concerto that have ever been published in English. Steinberg formerly wrote the program notes for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and currently writes them for the New York Philharmonic and the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. He was music critic of the Boston Globe for twelve years. These two books come with glowing recommendations from such distinguished musical figures as Seiji Ozawa, Michael Tilson Thomas, Andre Previn, Herbert Blomstedt, Roger Norrington, and John Adams. Speaking as one who has attended countless symphony orchestra concerts on the East Coast, West Coast, and in Dallas for more than forty years, and has always read the program notes, I can say that I've never read any as good as these. They are readable, learned, witty, accessible, and delightful, full of important biographical and historical information, and of course musical description, evaluation, and analysis that is genuinely illuminating and enlightening, without being so technical you need to be a musicologist or seated at a piano to understand it. (Inevitably, there are some musical examples, but these are relatively few, usually fairly simple, and you don't have to understand them to grasp the meaning of the text.) I would recommend these two books strongly to any lover of classical music, anyone who attends symphony orchestra concerts.

Having said this, I can't help noting a few unfortunate omissions. The Symphony is a thick book and perhaps one is ungenerous to cavil at such a generous and generally inclusive and comprehensive volume. All the Beethoven symphonies are included, of course, as are all the symphonies of Brahms and Schumann, and all the major symphonies of Haydn (only two symphonies before No. 86), Mozart (no Mozart symphonies earlier than No. 35, "Haffner"), Tchaikovsky (three symphonies), Dvorak (four symphonies), and Bruckner (six symphonies). The two greatest twentieth-century symphonists, Mahler and Sibelius, are covered in full, including all of their published symphonies and the unfinished Mahler Tenth (but not the early Sibelius "Kullervo" symphony). The third great twentieth-century symphonist, Shostakovich, is represented by seven of his fifteen symphonies. Both Elgar symphonies are included. The most striking lapses are in the French repertoire: the Franck D minor symphony and the Saint-Saens Third ("Organ") are unaccountably omitted, and these are serious omissions. The Schubert Fifth is omitted. Copland is represented by his Second ("Short Symphony"), not his much better known and more frequently performed Third. The same can be said of Hanson, who is represented by his Fourth ("Requiem"), not his Second ("Romantic"). Among the moderns, there are some strangely arbitrary (and, one suspects, personal) choices and omissions: for example, Roy Harris' Third is omitted, although symphonies by Harbison and Hartmann are included; the Harris is surely better established in the standard repertoire than either of these composers. For Vaughan Williams, two of his most popular and accessible symphonies, the First ("Sea") and Second ("London"), are omitted in favor three later symphonies (only 4, 5, and 6 are covered).

Despite these omissions, I recommend this book and its companion volume warmly and wouldn't be without them. Now I wish Mr. Steinberg and Oxford University Press would give us a third volume, covering the large body of orchestral music that is neither symphony nor concerto (such as tone poems and symphonic suites and dances, ballets and ballet suites, incidental music to plays and pageants, major overtures and preludes, et al.).

I greatly enjoyed this book: Steinberg's style is lively and full of wit, but authoritative nonetheless, which is rare. As a reference book, this is an invaluable "tool" for the music lover and the scholar alike. As a fan of British and American music I found the Elgar, Vaughan Williams and Schuman chapters really praiseworthy. So, why not 5 stars? I think that, if you write such a kind of book (a "guide"), you should try to find a balance between the objective and the subjective, Steinberg tends decidedly to the subjective, which is good when he gives us so many insights about composers or conductors he met, much less so when this affects the selection criteria. For example, talking about American music, he spends pages talking about the Steinberg-dedicated Harbison Second (I bought the CD after I read the book and I found it very empty and rambling) and just a few (denigratory) lines about the Copland Third, which is a a classic , like it or not. And what about the almost total omission of the French symphonies? You won't find Franck and Bizet, as Amazon points, but also Saint-Saens is missing , and I don't think a book about symphonies can be without his Third. All in all, an indispensable issue, but with some flaws.

I couldn't help but notice the seemingly endless complaints about works that aren't included in this book. Well, let's turn to the first page of Michael Steinberg's introduction, where he states that "Most of these essays began life as program notes for symphony concerts." In other words, he wrote about what the Boston and San Francisco Symphony Orchestras, which he worked for, were actually playing in the 1970s and '80s. If the Franck Symphony and the Copland Third, let alone any of C.P.E. Bach's twenty or so symphonies, aren't among the "electives" in this book, blame it on the orchestras' music directors, or perhaps the purchasers of season tickets.

Steinberg has the rare talent of writing about music in prose as precise and informed as it is imaginative and informal. He opens our ears to music that so often passes as background noise that we've nearly forgotten how to listen to it. Here, for example, is a stunning passage about the slow movement of Haydn's Symphony no. 102 in B flat:

"For the Adagio, Haydn borrows a movement from the Piano Trio in F-sharp minor he had written earlier that year...The actual sound of the movement is the most remarkable that Haydn ever imagined. Trumpets and drums are muted, a solo cello injects its gently penetrating timbre into the middle of the texture, and just before the end, the two trumpets in their lowest register contribute a sound so extraordinary (literally) that it still tends to frighten conductors, many of whom remove it."

A lifetime's worth of listening, learning, and writing have been distilled into this book, and gems of observation are on nearly every page. Try Steinberg on the question of Nowak vs. Haas in the slow movement of the Bruckner Eighth: "I am talking about thirty-five seconds of music, but the difference is stunning." Then there's the question of "composer approved" cuts in the Rachmaninov Second: "Some of the standard deletions consist of petty impatiences like reducing the four measures of accompaniment at the start of the first Allegro to two, but they have also entailed such brutal surgery as the removal of the entire principal theme from the recapitulation of the Adagio. Cuts do not solve formal problems: they merely shorten the time you have to spend dealing with them."

We also learn of Schumann's homage to Bach in the Second Symphony, and of how much Mahler learned from Schumann's example; of the surprising parallels between Beethoven's rollicking Eighth Symphony and his "Serioso" opus 95 string quartet; and on the seemingly intractable second movement of the Sibelius Third: "Not only can you yourself reverse your hearing of the melody much as you can make the tick-tock of a clock change step, but Sibelius also calls in the basses ever so softly to contradict the flutes and clarinets or the violins in their rhythmic reading. And those basses, though they hardly ever rise above mezzo-forte, want very much to be heard."

Steinberg tells an irresistable anecdote of how Leonard Bernstein, having read one of his program notes for the first time, accosted him at Tanglewood, saying "You -- you have always been such a bitch to me, but now it turns out you love music." Steinberg certainly does, and that love is evident on each page of this book.

Since the glories of this book have already been trumpeted enough, I'll just suggest some great works that I think merit inclusion when Mr.Steinberg gets around to revising.


As has been pointed out: Copland's Third, Saint-Saens' Third, Franck D minor...

but also Chausson's B minor, and even D'Indy's "French Mountain Air" symphony.
Symphonies by Bax, Arnold, Rubbra, Simpson, and Bliss.

Not to mention Liszt's "Faust Symphony"!

And for a good read-about at the very least: Havergal Brian's "Gothic", which is a great work.

Good and easy to read review. I bought it as I try to update my understanding of Mahler, especially with the new or renewed interest. Some of the tomes appear to be overwhelming. Here although brief the discussions of the compositions are well thought out.

After reading this book, I made a long playlist of every recording I had of any piece the author mentioned. What an incredible journey through the sound of the symphony orchestra. I have now been exposed to compsers I was ignorant of, and have discovered a lot of great music.

The writing is outstanding, very informative and it's obvious that the author has not only done his homework, but has acquired a passion for orchestral music that is incredibly contagious.

When I first opened this book, it began with symphony number 1 of Beethoven. And "go to beginning of book" in the index menu brings me to the same point. No introduction, table of contents, or introduction to Beethoven. I didn't know how to go to another symphony without paging through the whole book (search did not work very well).

However, as I eventually discovered, if you press "previous page" at the beginning, you get the prior missing parts of the book. And "Table of Contents" in the index takes you to the Table of Contents, which is selectable so you can go right to the symphony you want.

Once I figured out how to use the book I was pleased with it.

The other reviews have addressed the content in some detail. Readers are warned that the Kindle edition of the book is of poor quality. Text appears to have been scanned without proper conversion. Unlike other Kindle books legibility is poor and text scalability is limited. This is really unacceptable and should be an embarrassment to the publisher.

I got this book nearly a decade ago, and valued it a lot at the time. I hadn't seriously used it in quite some time, then, while reviewing some books I had just read, decided to post one about it.

When I got online, I first noticed the comments in the line of "It's too bad that 'Composer X' gets omitted."

But, this is a book about music, I was thinking, and "de gustibus non disputandum" will always be the rule in the arts.

Then, I started looking through my current collection of nearly 500 classical CDs and said, "Whooah, there."

First, Steinberg appears to operate with a narrow definition of what is a symphony, perhaps. Why else is Rachmaninov's "Symphonic Dances" omitted, for example? Or Hindemith's "Four Temperaments" or "Symphonic Variations"?

On symphonies themselves, where is Stravinsky's "Symphony of Psalms"? Or anything by Schnittke, the best symphonist of the last third of the 20th century? Or Malcolm Arnold? Or Nicolai Myaskovsky, a great contemporary of Prokofiev? Or Ernst Krenek? Or Szymanowski? Or Hovhaness, as "pop" as he may be to some?

And why so much Haydn?

In other words -- and this is why Steinberg's book started falling like a rock for me -- his "playlist" is quite conservative. I don't think either Boston or San Francisco (he served as orchestra program annotator in both places) are that conservative musically, so why is he?

I mean, someone could do a separate volume just out of all the 20th century composers he omitted.

As my title notes, this is an in-depth book for what it covers, but it fails in what could have been a great didactive exercise. I moved my classical music boundaries beyond 1900 through dint of my own open-mindedness, but sure would have loved the help of a book like Steinberg's that analyzed more 20th century symphonic works.

If your "playlist" is stuck where many heartland American classical listeners' may be, then this book could be just for you. But, if you want to learn a lot about modern symphonies, skip it.