A sturdy foundation of research and musical knowledge (and love) underlies this inspiring and wrenching account of a man who...
A guided tour through the life and work of Robert Schumann (1810-1956), a musical genius who viewed the sublime before a decline into a syphilitic madness.
Chernaik (Mab’s Daughters, 1991, etc.), who has taught at Columbia, Tufts, and elsewhere, has clearly devoted years of research to this lush life. Although she asserts in the introduction that she is aiming her work at “the general reader,” there are many places—especially in her analyses of individual works—where general readers will require some fairly sophisticated understandings of music. That caveat aside, Chernaik rewards those who do journey through these pages with insights and conclusions that make the reading experience both enjoyable and educative. She teaches us a lot about Schumann’s world and life, including details about his boyhood and his early love for Clara Wieck (the gifted pianist whom he would later marry), whose father’s angry opposition to their relationship courses throughout the early sections. (They had to go to court to obtain legal permission to marry.) Throughout, the author shows us a complicated composer. Fond of drink and of women, he had difficulty settling down; in later sections, we see his inability to conduct less-than-gifted musicians during a stint in Düsseldorf. Chernaik also chronicles his friendships with numerous other musical luminaries and legends, including Chopin, Mendelssohn, and Brahms. Brahms also developed a crush on the older Clara Schumann, but nothing ensued. The author escorts us through Schumann’s most noteworthy works, and we see his frustration about not being able to compose a successful opera. She lets us know which works are still performed, and in agonizing detail, she rehearses Schumann’s descent into darkness in a chapter aptly titled, “The Mind Stripped Bare.”
A sturdy foundation of research and musical knowledge (and love) underlies this inspiring and wrenching account of a man who pursued, captured, and lost.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-451-49446-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: July 15, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Talamon's duotone photographs capture Jamaican reggae star Bob Marley (194581) with a rough humanity that comes as a relief after Steffens's hagiographic text. Steffens (a journalist who contributes to Reggae and African Beat, among other magazines) describes Marley's Jamaica and the peacemaker role he tried to play there between political factions and their loosely affiliated street-gang surrogates, his pan-Africanism, and his music career. But he adopts the tone of one writing the lives of the saints: ``As long as there are the downpressed among us, the exploited and disenfranchised, as long as lovers need words of comfort and reassurance, as long as there is a God who is worthy of praise, then shall we rejoice in the words and works of Bob Marley. Long may he live!'' The Rastafarian Marley was indeed seen as more than a musician or entertainer by his most loyal followers. A strangely messianic figure, Marley had the role of prophet thrust upon him, and he accepted it. The photographs, however, show Marley exhausted, Marley with a joint in his hand, Marley ecstatic on stage, Marley with a joint in his mouth, Marley explaining pan- Africanism to Africans in Gabon, Marley thoughtful, Marley clowning, Marley very, very stoned. They achieve greater distance from Marley than does the text. As a result, they not only are more interesting but also convey more powerfully a sense of Marley's genuine charisma.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-393-03686-3
Page Count: 128
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
In keeping with celebrity autobiographies, Redgrave offers a tell-all memoir—except that the passions she reveals are for politics, not sex. Theater and film star, daughter and mother of famous actors, Redgrave writes about her life, her craft, and her very controversial politics. But where other actors grow tiresome in describing their love lives, Redgrave does the same in talking about her 20-year affair with the Marxist Trotskyist Workers Revolutionary Party. And instead of spicing her book with nasty comments about fellow artists, she directs her bile toward capitalists, imperialists, neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, and, of course, Zionists. Of all the controversial causes with which Redgrave has been associated, she is best known—and, in some circles, most hated—for her antipathy toward Zionism and support for the Palestinians. Redgrave offers no apologies here for any of her political beliefs, nor does she express any regrets for the many roles, especially in Hollywood and on Broadway, that she has lost because of her activism, particularly on behalf of the Palestinians. Redgrave, who has refused for years to talk to journalists about her politics, uses this book to present her case, and it is as much a treatise as a memoir. The politics often stop the flow of the book, especially when she segues from a fascinating discussion of how she played a certain role to a tedious discourse on such a topic as dialectic materialism—the movie Isadora gives way to the war in Vietnam, Macbeth to her Hollywood lectures on Marxism. Overall, however, Redgrave's sincerity overwhelms both skepticism and boredom. The result is a book that should fascinate anyone who cares about how an artist's inner life illuminates and motivates his or her work. Redgrave's central premise is that she would not have been half the actor she is if she had led a different life. She makes this case so convincingly that the reader is left wanting to go back and see every part she has played—more often than not brilliantly—with the new eye this book provides.
Pub Date: Dec. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-679-40216-0
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1994
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