FOR THE LOVE OF MUSIC

A warm introduction to the world of classical music.

Mauceri (Maestros and Their Music: The Art and Alchemy of Conducting, 2017), who has won a Grammy, a Tony, and three Emmys, invites us into his beloved world of music. Aimed at novices, his book “attempts to sum up a lifetime of feelings” about classical music, which “contains within its two words an immensely varied cache of organized sound.” The author’s joy for music is infectious. He wants to share the love of classical music he first discovered in 1956 as a 10-year-old listening to the “cosmic power” of Beethoven’s Eroica for the first time on a TV show. Beethoven’s “nine symphonies,” he writes, “constitute the greatest sequence of symphonies ever composed.” Classical music began with the “towering achievements” of Bach, the “divinely inspired architect,” and Handel, the “great cosmopolitan entertainer,” both born in 1685. More talented Germans, including Hayden and Schubert, followed. After a concise chronological history of musical instruments, from the winds to percussion, bells and cymbals, the keyboard, shaped for the human hand, and the strings, Mauceri explores the nature and structure of music as metaphor and the process of listening: “The audience is always the ultimate translator of music.” Within the subjective territory of music and morality, he argues that classical music can “make us better.” It’s a “force of good” and “projects optimism.” Kenneth Clark had his art and architecture, but Mauceri writes that classical music “stands as the pillar of who we are as a civilization.” The last chapter confronts diversity in classical music, and historically, the author admits, it has come up wanting. However, “gender and racial balance within orchestras has significantly improved,” and Mauceri notes the number of black and non-European conductors who “broke racial barriers” in recent years.

Even those who know classical music well will learn something from this lively and enthusiastic primer.