Living Biographies of Great Composers

by Henry Thomas, Nadia May (Narrator)

Vidas de Grandes Compositores, por Henry Thomas e Dana Lee Thomas, revela, numa síntese inteligente e bem conseguida, os meandros das vidas, tantas vezes singelas, dos homens que, pela música, deixaram a história da Cultura presa aos seus nomes. Mas não se creia que foi a música, apenas, o que nesses homens, quase divinizados, constituiu a razão absoluta das suas vidas. Deuses não foram, certamente, ma spessoas comuns, preocupadas com a sua obra, arrastadas por problemas do dia-a-dia, em luta constante com o próprio destino, com a adversidade e com a incompreensão. Homens de carne igual à de todos os homens, todos eles grandiosos, mas amarrados ao mesmo e trágico trajecto humano que estas biografias recordam indelevelmente e que fica, para sempre, vinculado ao próprio conhecimento da música que conceberam, motivando-a talvez, explicando-a certamente.

Genres: Music

Audiobook

First published January 1, 1940

About the author

1888(?)-1970

Henry Thomas Schnittkind (1886-1970) was the full name of the American author who also wrote under the pen name Henry Thomas. Highly educated, with a PhD from Harvard, his subjects ranged from mathematics and politics to biography and philosophy. In a Who's Who entry from the late 1930s, he listed his hobby as "education of the masses."

Reviews

[Tom Schulte · Rating 4 out of 5]

I very much enjoyed this collection of brisk composer anthologies. It is basically chronological from JS Bach to Stravinsky with a focus on personality and personal life. The lives often overlap and there is plenty on interaction and inspiration between the geniuses. There is interesting if trivial commonalities such as invaluable handwritten sheet music treated as scrap paper (JS Bach, Handel) and ignoble penury (JS Bach, Mozart, Schubert).

As a fan of much music that would be deemed difficult by many, I appreciate the quote here ascribed to Stravinsky. I am unable to source it outside of this book:

Don't coddle your audiences; make them toil . Labor is the surest way to happiness. There is nothing so pleasurable as painful music. Life is always so tragic; let's for a change make it grotesque.

[Leslie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I last read this when I was ten, so time for a renewal, so to speak. My piano teacher made me read it and to my great surprise I really enjoyed it as it brought the composers to life for me as real people.It has just come into my life again, do this should be exciting to read again.

[Miriam Drori · Rating 4 out of 5]

"There are two types of biography," say the two authors of this book, only one of whom is credited above. "The first type is the story of a man’s mortal life. The second is the picture of his immortal personality." They do a wonderful job of creating the second in this "collection of personality portraits" of some of the greatest composers our world has known.

They also don't hesitate to express their own views. On Beethoven, for example, they say, "Deafness and romance have never yet been on speaking terms. Tender words of affection are meant to be whispered, not shouted." I doubt all readers would agree with this, but it possibly helps to explain why Beethoven never found love.

One reviewer wonders whether one particular composer actually said the words attributed to him. I wondered about all the quotations, and whether the authors simply used them to enhance their pictures of immortal personality. If they did, I, for one, didn't mind.

The best paragraph of all is the final one of the book. I don't think revealing it would be classed as a spoiler, but I won't.