Our critics cast their eyes over this month’s selection of books on classical music
Carmen Abroad
Richard Langham Smith Cambridge University Press 978-1-10848161-8 350pp (hb) £75
Having met Carmen in the 1950s,
I’ve long assumed I had a fairly good idea of what the opera was ‘about’. This wonderfully illuminating and widely researched volume proves we all have our fantasies. One of the key subjects is ‘alienation’. I had never taken in that all the main actors are ‘playing away’: soldiers go to where they’re posted, gypsies, smugglers and bullfighters to where the money is. Alongside this goes the alienation between the Basque
Don José and the Andalusian Carmen (she claims to be Basque, but this seems to be one of her lies), a contrast which naturally played into the Basques’ long desire for independence. Finally, on the largest scale, it informs the field addressed in the book’s title, there being no continent except Antarctica that remains Carmen immune. A witch, or a proto-feminist paying men back in their own kind? Or both? The general reader can easily pass over the more erudite paragraphs (names and dates) to reach the many fascinating insights this book provides. No question, my Book of 2020. Roger Nichols ★★★★★
George Frideric Handel – Collected Documents, Vol. 4: 1742-1750
Ed. Donald Burrows, Helen Coffey, John Greenacombe, et al Cambridge University Press 978-1-10708021-8 986pp (hb) £140
The fourth volume of the Handel Collected Documents encompasses the years between 1742 and 1750. As well as revivals of major works, these years witnessed the premieres of many of his greatest oratorios, notably Samson, Semele, Hercules, Belshazzar, Judas Maccabaeus, Solomon, Theodora and the first London performance of Messiah. The surviving documents concerning these and many other events make for compelling reading. Many will be familiar to seasoned Handelians but there is much that sheds fresh light on the preparation and performance of Handel’s music.
Among material meticulously assembled by Donald Burrows and his team is that which furthers our knowledge of Handel’s prestigious reputation abroad. Translations are provided where necessary, as for commentaries by Lorenz Mizler and Johann Adolf Scheibe, as well as for a splendid Ode for Handel’s 65th birthday. Comparably valuable is the light which these documents shed upon musical contemporaries, such as William Boyce, who were not connected with Handel’s own productions. Boyce’s fine set of trio sonatas was issued in 1747. The final volume of this impressive undertaking is well on the way and is eagerly anticipated.
Nicholas Anderson ★★★★★
The Heart of a Woman –
The Life and Music of
Florence B. Price
Rae Linda Brown
University of Illinois 978-0-252-04323-9 336pp (pb) £22.99
It’s a relief to read in the introduction to this pioneering book about the recently highlighted African American composer Florence
Price (1887-1953) that the author would not be ‘entering aggressively into theoretical explanations of the relationship between identity, cultural politics, and musical expression.’
For the late musicologist Rae Linda Brown, the first essential was simply establishing the facts of Price’s life, music and social context. And facts are certainly here in abundance, from precise details of works composed, concerts given and clubs joined, to the number of grocers in late 19th-century Little Rock or her dentist father’s debt of eight dollars over a set of false teeth.
The results of Brown’s scrupulous research over decades may slow the narrative’s progress, yet the life’s salient features remain clear: quiet determination and courage, a difficult private life, some fame, though only limited progress in breaking barriers of race and gender. Key symphonies and the piano concerto are closely evaluated, with their soulful melodies and striking orchestration proudly displayed and their structural flaws generously ignored. A worthwhile book.
Geoff Brown ★★★★
Mozart – The Reign of Love
Jan Swafford
Faber & Faber 978-0-571-32324-1 832pp (hb) £30
‘Who wants to read about a happy man?’ asks Jan Swafford in the introduction to his terrifically engaging new biography of Mozart. Certainly the Mozart conjured by those ‘mythmakers’ of the 19th century was an enthrallingly tragic figure, steeped in penury and neglect. Swafford, however, refuses to take the bait and having written acclaimed biographies of Beethoven, Brahms and Ives, declares Mozart to be the ‘sanest’ of the lot. This new biography is thus crucially low on drama: Mozart is presented as neither a revolutionary nor victim, but rather a ‘jolly and informal man’ who was ‘supremely fastidious’ in his music-making. Swafford’s gifts as a biographer mean that this warm-spirited account of an essentially ‘happy man’ could not be more engrossing.
Packed with musical analysis and meticulous historical research, the book is written with a wit, grace and compassion that well befits its subject. For Swafford, the enduring power of Mozart’s music lies in the composer’s profound understanding of the human condition and in his tremendous capacity for love: of music, of his wife and of ‘humanity in all its gnarled splendour’.
Kate Wakeling ★★★★★