Customer Reviews

Talks With Great Composers

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I have to give this little book very high marks. It taught me a lot. The prose can be stilted, it can be repetitive, and it was astonishing for me. I recommend it to anyone interested in the workings of great minds. I have no works with which to compare it, but one needs to start somewhere.

I want to honest about this. I was astonished when I read the Brahms interview. The prospect of a creative man, however great, consciously and deliberately asking God to speak through him to the man's audience floors me. Basically all of the composers whom Abell treats carried out the same or similar invocation, so perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. I was though.

I've given the book to others, and I've asked for their reactions to it. Remarkably, for me at least, no one else admitted to surprise on finding that Brahms speaks with the authority of the almighty Himself. That was a really cool revelation too,in it's own way. We must live in a world with a lot more mystic connections than a reprobate such as me appreciates. Many people in this second audience I created wished to dispute Brahms on his theology, but no one seemed surprised by his activities or reacted to them as a first response. I had to drag responses out of these individuals, and they gave them up with reluctance. Something really personal is going on here, and if you read this little book, you can get in on it.

I'm currently in a position to lead a discussion group at a university. For fun I'm going to speak on spirituality in teaching and in the classroom, and I'm going to try to do an end run around the syllabus and introduce the Brahms conversation from this little book. I'm sure it's going to be interesting, and I may come away from the event not only surprised but also a little better informed. Wish me luck.

The skeptics raise ligitimate questions about the accuracy of this work, but they are overwrought in their judgment. For the last 2000 years, almost all of the great artists have believed that their inspiration came from God. Why should they be so upset that Arthur Abell claims that Brahms was part of this tradition?

True, Brahms was very reticent about his religious beliefs and the Cambridge Companion to Brahms says that "most" Brahms scholars "question" the account solely because of that reticence, but Abell met Brahms near the end of his life and some people become garrulous as they sense the end coming. Also, Abell was introduced to Brahms by a very close friend which may have loosened him up a bit. What's more, the Cambridge Companion concludes that accounts of other composers in this book are correct. And Patrick Kavanaugh reaches the same conclusion as this book about Brahm's spirituality without relying on Abell, so there is plenty of material to suggest that Abell's account is accurate in its main premise.

Abell was a prominent music critic for more than 20 years and got to know many composeers very well. He wrote this book from memory many years after his conversations with these composers, with all the unreliability that creates. But that's different than fabrication.

This book is charming, instructive and covers more than the spiritual values of the composers. Puccini's account about his first meeting with Caruso is alone worth the price of the book.

One should be skeptical of everything one reads, but don't pass this one up.

This is an excellent book, which I love to give to my personal and musical friends.The interviews are true and facinating with a unique insight to the composers creative inspiration. Stick with the soft cover the hard cover production is inferior. Not easy to find.

It is a very rare insight into the spiritual motivation of so many of our musical Masters in centuries gone by. Mr. Abell did the world of music lovers, composers and conductors a great service in his preparation and release of this book. It should be required reading for every Music History 101 course in college. It can be read over and over with new insight gained each time.

Brahms scholarship has established that Abell embellished Brahms views with his own. Many of the statements attributed to the composers are in fact fabrications.
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The information is, at best, suspect. The prose is labored, the organization of the book almost laughable. Interesting if only to see what passed for musicology about a hundred years ago.

I can think of no other book I would give as a gift to an aspiring musician. A very dear friend of the family gave me a copy of this book (a very special gift indeed). Although the other composers in the book are considered "minor", like Grieg, the insights they offer are indispensable for those seeking to understand the workings of the creative process in music.

I have to admit, some of what is said in these interviews is a bit over dramatic, but who, if not romantic composers, was not dramatic? Brahms words speak to the art of composition, not just of his own art, but that of Beethoven and others. This oral history falls into the realm of importance for sociologist, musicologist, composer and performer.

Imagine, as a reporter, Abel interviews one of the greatest talents in the history of music, and is forced to keep the interview unpublished for fifty years, only to be thwarted by World War II, amazing! This book had to come a long way before it got to fruition. Read this book, you atheists, agnostics and all others. The religious beliefs expressed will speak to you of the spark of inspiration you must feel inside to compose works of merit (and to understand them).

This patently fraudulent book was concocted by its author with a clear agenda. Its bogus-ness is clarified by the scholarly article by Jan Swafford "Did the Young Brahms Play Piano in Waterfront Bars?". Do not get taken in by its nonsense as it has no root in authenticity whatsoever. How convenient that not one of the composers could argue what is written here; there is not a single document other than the mythical discussions this charlatan is posing as truth that supports that these composers had any position such as those written here.

I became suspicious when I opened the book and saw no foundations for the different interviews, how Abell obtained them, place and date, that would have lent a bit of authenticity to the endeavor and exposed his resourcefulness to achieve these encounters. That the author had managed to talk to all his contemporary" giants in the music world, like it was the most natural thing, was astounding and suspicious.

And then... Wow! The pervasive leit-motiv of the entire book: divine inspiration! For everything and everyone...and claimed by all the interviewees. Like Beethoven, or Brahms or the rest would have ever claimed that his ideas came from God.... (something only Bush would do... ).

Those great composers were rather modest and prosaic, and many a work by Puccini, for example, is mockery and cynicism at the idea of divine intervention ...(think of Gianni Schichi...).