For the Love of Music, John Mauceri
For the Love of Music, John Mauceri
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For the Love of Music
A Conductor's Guide to the Art of Listening

Author: John Mauceri

Narrator: John Mauceri

Unabridged: 6 hr 8 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 09/17/2019

Synopsis

With a lifetime of experience, profound knowledge and understanding, and heartwarming appreciation, an internationally celebrated conductor and teacher answers the questions: Why should I listen to classical music? How can I get the most from the listening experience?

A protégé of Leonard Bernstein--his colleague for eighteen years--and an eminent conductor who has toured and recorded all over the world, John Mauceri helps us to reap the joys and pleasures classical music has to offer. Briefly, we learn the way a musical tradition born in ancient Greece, embraced by the Roman Empire, and subsequently nurtured by influences from across the globe, gave shape to the classical music that came to be embraced by cultures from Japan to Bolivia. Then Mauceri examines the music itself, helping us understand what it is we hear when we listen to classical music: how, by a kind of sonic metaphor, it expresses the deepest recesses of human feeling and emotion; how each piece bears the traces of its history; how the concert experience--a unique one each and every time--allows us to discover music anew. Unpretentious, graceful, instructive, this is a book for the aficionado, the novice, and anyone looking to have the love of music fired within them.

About The Author

Over the past five decades, JOHN MAUCERI has conducted symphonies, operas, ballets, musicals, and film music around the world, and served as music director of four opera companies and three orchestras, as well as hosted television and radio programs. He has more than seventy albums to his name, and is the recipient of a Grammy, a Tony, a Billboard, two Diapasons d'or, three Emmys, and four Deutschen Schallplattenkritik awards. He is the author of Maestros and Their Music: The Art and Alchemy of Conducting, and has written for The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Times of London, and The Huffington Post, among other publications. He lives in New York City.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Robert

Very lively and readable. I caused a minor stink on Facebook when I quoted Mercauri's contention that Classical music was bound between 1700 and 1940. He was referring to what is called the standard repertory or "canon", but acknowledges that there were composers writing it after 1940. I thought as......more

Goodreads review by Caleb

A book that celebrates a lifetime of appreciation and love for the classical repertoire. Very accessible and probably most appropriate for the novice, but classical music lovers of all stripes will find new insights and something to interest them. Mauceri writes simply and elegantly about various asp......more

Goodreads review by Tom

A great experience sullied only by how little I knew. Mauceri does a magnificent job of immersing the Reader in his World of fifty years of conducting The Classical Canon all over the World. His book is not a dry analysis of the History and Components of the Music he loved so well, but rather a jour......more

Quotes

"Eloquent and inspiring. . . Mauceri skillfully incorporates his musical experiences, from his youth to the present. . .  The perfect companion for those who are already well versed in classical music and for those ready to take the plunge.”—Carolyn M. Mulac, Library Journal 

"Mauceri’s love letter will provoke newbies to give classical a whirl and inspire fans to listen with fresh ears.” — Publishers Weekly

“Classical-music aficionados will enjoy Mauceri’s discussions of composers and their works. Newbies will find them instructive, but the author would caution all readers to not just take his word for it, but to experience the music and hear for themselves.”—Joan Curbow, Booklist

“The author’s joy for music is infectious . . .  Even those who know classical music well will learn something from this lively and enthusiastic primer.”  —Kirkus

“For the Love of Music returns to the idea of music as a compendium of memory, tied to nostalgia, to personal experience and, overall, to the pleasure one might find in the endless variation of how it might be listened to yet again.”—Shelf Awareness (starred review)
 
“Magnificent. . . [this] book gives the audience power, confidence, and joy. If you commit to entering this world, you will be rewarded.”—New York Journal of Books

"John Mauceri has done it again with this wonderful book. I learned a lot, at my advanced age, and am thankful for the pleasure it brought me. I recommend it to all.” — Marilyn Horne, opera singer 

“Any amateur for whom music is one the chief pleasures in life, but who longs always for a deeper understanding of the language of the classical concert than can be had from liner notes and his or her own intuitions, will be grateful for John Mauceri’s new book—it makes understanding how music works almost as pleasurable as listening to it.” – Adam Gopnik, author of A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism 

“Having grown up with a father whose passion for music was tsunami-like in its intensity, I quickly recognized and welcomed a similar joy in John Mauceri's meditations on the repertoire he loves so much. Every page warms us with the fires of his lifelong devotion. His book gives us precisely what Mauceri tells us the music itself will provide: ‘a most rewarding journey.’” —Jamie Bernstein, author of Famous Father Girl: A Memoir of Growing Up Bernstein

“This delightful book is not so much the opening of a door as an affectionate hand on the arm, guiding the reader with enthusiasm and intelligence into a world of beauty which reaches to the very heart of what makes human life of value." —Stephen Hough, pianist and composer

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