Background
SCHONBERG, Harold was born on November 29, 1915 in New York, New York, United States. Son of David and Minnie Schonberg.
(From Mozart’s fabulous legato that “flowed like oil” to B...)
From Mozart’s fabulous legato that “flowed like oil” to Beethoven’s oceanlike surge, from Clara Schumann’s touch “sharp as a pencil sketch” to Rubinstein’s volcanic and sensual playing, The Great Pianists brings to life the brilliant, stylish, and sometimes eccentric personalities, methods, and technical peculiarities of history’s greatest pianists. Pulitzer Prize–winning critic and author Harold C. Schonberg presents vivid accounts of the artists’ performances, styles, and even their personal lives and quirky characteristics— such as Mozart’s intense competition with Clementi, Lizst’s magnetic effect on women (when he played, ladies flung their jewels on stage), and Gottschalk’s persistent nailbiting, which left the keys covered with blood. Including profiles of Horowitz and Van Cliburn, among others, and chapters detailing the playing and careers of such modern pianists as de Larrocha, Ashkenazy, Gilels, Gould, Brendel, Bolet, Gutierrez, and Watts, The Great Pianists is a comprehensive and fascinating look at legendary performers past and present.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671638378/?tag=2022091-20
( An updated and expanded edition of this perennial favor...)
An updated and expanded edition of this perennial favorite, tracing the line of composers from Monteverdi to the tonalists of the 1990s. In this new edition, Harold Schonberg offers music lovers a series of fascinating biographical chapters. Music, the author contends, is a continually evolving art, and all geniuses, unique as they are, were influenced by their predecessors. Schonberg discusses the lives and works of the foremost figures in classical music, among them Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, the Schumanns, Copland, and Stravinsky, weaving a fabric rich in detail and anecdote. He also includes the creators of light music, such as Gilbert and Sullivan and the Strausses. Schonberg has extended the volume's coverage to provide informative and clearly written descriptions of the later serialists such as Stockhausen and Carter, the iconoclastic John Cage, the individualistic Messiaen, minimalist composers, the new tonalists, and women composers of all eras, including Mendelssohn Hensel, Chaminade, Smyth, Beach, and Zwilich. Scattered throughout are many changes and additions reflecting musicological findings of the past fifteen years. Photographs
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("On April 20, 1986, the wheel came full circle for Vladim...)
"On April 20, 1986, the wheel came full circle for Vladimir Horowitz with an audible click, and he recognized it as such." So begins this definitive biography of the most electrifying piano virtuoso of our times, Vladimir Horowitz, describing his return to Russia after a sixty-one-year absence. From there, the book turns back to Horowitz's privileged and pampered childhood in Kiev, where he started to play the piano at the age of five. We then follow him through his tempestuous years at the Kiev Conservatory, which he entered before he was thirteen and where he was immediately at odds with all of his professors. He was already an individualist. We trace his development as an artist and his defection to Berlin in the turbulent aftermath of the Russian Revolution. We see him in Berlin and Paris, metamorphosed from a provincial to a colossus of the European stage. After his American debut in 1928 he becomes an awe-inspiring figure who is envied by musicians all over the world, exhibiting a kind of high-voltage playing that paralyzed audiences. Yet there was another side to him. There were times when he was invaded by demons, tortured by self-doubts. Author Harold C. Schonberg charts not only the course of Horowitz's many triumphs but also his mysterious withdrawals from the stage and other troubling aspects of the great pianist's life. This full portrait of Horowitz's life and music benefits particularly from hitherto unpublished anecdotes and information that derive from a series of taped interviews the author conducted with Horowitz toward the end of his life. Here is Horowitz the man, the musician, the icon, and even the raconteur. Through Schonberg's assessment of the special kind of genius that Horowitz brought to the piano and of his position among the other keyboard giants of his time, this biography is a panorama that takes in a good part of this century's piano world.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0671725688/?tag=2022091-20
(From the Back Cover: A lively and amusing account of the ...)
From the Back Cover: A lively and amusing account of the personalities, methods, technical peculiarities, and musical genealogies of those who contributed to the art of piano playing, from Mozart and Clementi to Artur Rubinstein and Vladimir Horowitz.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00E1P40FQ/?tag=2022091-20
(This is a book which has accompanied me through my Underg...)
This is a book which has accompanied me through my Undergraduate years as well as my Graduate years--all of the moving, but having it with me while getting degrees in music was wonderful. It's a very entertaining book. I'm also glad I kept the Dust Cover, even if it got torn--at least the it is doing its job!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00CHU3BNO/?tag=2022091-20
(What makes a great chess player? Mr. Schonberg is explici...)
What makes a great chess player? Mr. Schonberg is explicit: vast memory, imagination, intuition, technique, a healthy body, relative youth, a high degree of visual imagery, and the unyielding determination to win are the prerequisites. Almost always child prodigies, chess geniuses invariably have massive egos. Mr. Schonberg begins with François Philidor, the eighteenth century French-man who laid the foundations for the game as it is played today. Among those who followed are the irascible Howard. Staunton, designer of the chess pieces that are still universally used; Paul Morphy, one of the best natural players who ever lived and one of the most tragic; Emanuel Lasker, the dapper Renaissance man of chess; Alexander Alekhine, an alcoholic "social monster"; Jose Raul Capablanca, "The Chess Machine" who lost only thirty-five out of the seven hundred games in his career; and Bobby Fischer, the ego-crushing enfant terrible who has done more to popularize the game than any other player. Mr. Schonberg's presentation of the lives of the grandmasters is so entertaining, the stories so engrossing, that even readers who are not familiar with chess will be captivated by this gallery of brilliant and unforgettable characters.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/4871875679/?tag=2022091-20
(*Analyzes the themes and progression of Mozart's most fam...)
*Analyzes the themes and progression of Mozart's most famous works, comparing and contrasting them to each other and other composers' great works. *Includes pictures of important people and places in Mozart's life. *Includes a bibliography for further reading. *Includes a list of Mozart's works. “It is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has become easy to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition as I. There is scarcely a famous master in music whose works I have not frequently and diligently studied.” – Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791), baptized Johannes Chrysostom Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart, is widely considered to be the culminating figure of the Classical Period in music, which spanned much of the 18th to early 19th centuries. As such, he is remembered as one of Western Civilization’s most prodigious and spontaneous natural talents, on par with Leonarado da Vinci and Johann Sebastian Bach. Mozart once called music “my life”, and indeed few were as naturally gifted at it. Mozart’s memory and genius for music allowed him to compose lengthy works, even full-length operas, without transferring them to paper until he had fully visualized and retained them. He regarded copying as a tedious task, and this caused no small amount of consternation among performers, in particular the orchestra, some of whom received their parts minutes before curtain. This was said to be the case for the premiere of Don Giovanni, where Mozart was furiously scrawling and handing out parts to the overture with the audience in attendance. Surprisingly, these entire works, sometimes hundreds of pages, not penned until they were complete in his mind, usually arrived to the manuscript without a single blemish or change of heart. Mozart’s eccentricities are remembered centuries after his death, to the point that much of his life, illnesses and death have been mythologized, and today a lot of his legacy has been shaped by the manner in which his personality has been depicted in biographical works like Amadeus. In addition to a large and consistently high-level body of work, Mozart represents for some the real beginning of the German lineage to the 20th century, although Ludwig Beethoven, greatly under Mozart’s influence, created much of that transition’s reality. Three of Mozart’s operas are continually in the top 10 works performed around the world, his piano concerti and symphonies are all in the standard repertoire (save for some of the earliest), and his choral works are treasures of the West. The bulk of his reputation was not garnered by breaking with tradition and destroying it but rather by fulfilling it with a greater beauty and naturalness than was possible for any other artist of the time. Mozart was perhaps the world’s greatest master of the modern melody, coming onto the scene after centuries of rule-laden, pedantic and convoluted procedures dominated by the Catholic Church, and he certainly possessed one of the most astonishing levels of intelligence in European history. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: The Life and Music of the Great Composer comprehensively analyzes the themes and revolutionary advancements of Mozart’s music, looking at his most famous works and comparing and contrasting them. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about Mozart and his music like never before, in no time at all.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1493688731/?tag=2022091-20
SCHONBERG, Harold was born on November 29, 1915 in New York, New York, United States. Son of David and Minnie Schonberg.
Bachelor cum laude, Brooklyn College, 1937. Master of Arts, New York University, 1938. Doctor of Letters, Temple University, 1964.
Doctor of Humane Letters, Grinnell College, 1967.
Chamber and Solo Instrument Music 1955, The Collector's Chopin and Schumann 1959, The Great Pianists 1963, The Great Conductors 1967, Lives of the Great Composers 1970, Grandmasters of Chess 1973, Facing the Music 1981, The Glorious Ones: Classical Music's Legendary Performers 1985. Associate editor American Music Lover, 1939-1941. Contributor editor Museum Digest, 1946-1948. Music critic New York Sun, 1946-1950.
Contributing editor, record columnist Museum Courier, 1948-1952. Music and record critic New York Times, 1950-1960, senior music critic, 1960-1980, cultural correspondent, 1980-1985. Columnist on The Gramophone of London, 1948-1960.
Judge many international piano competitions.
(From Mozart’s fabulous legato that “flowed like oil” to B...)
(From the Back Cover: A lively and amusing account of the ...)
(This is a book which has accompanied me through my Underg...)
(*Analyzes the themes and progression of Mozart's most fam...)
( An updated and expanded edition of this perennial favor...)
("On April 20, 1986, the wheel came full circle for Vladim...)
(A readable musical assessment of Horowitz's talent and hi...)
(Schonberg, the New York Times music critic of many years,...)
(What makes a great chess player? Mr. Schonberg is explici...)
(Later Printing)
(First Edition)
Author: The Guide to Long-Playing Records, Chamber and Solo Instrumental Music, 1955, The Collector's Chopin and Schumann, 1959, The Great Pianists, 1963, The Great Conductors, 1967, Lives of the Great Composers, 1970, Grandmasters of Chess, 1973, Facing the Music, 1981, The Glorious Ones--Classical Music's Legendary Performers, 1985, Horowitz: His Life and Music, 1992. Illustrated own articles with caricatures. Contributing editor International Encyclopedia Music and Musicians, New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.Reviewer mystery fiction Sunday New York Times Book Review (under name of Newgate Callendar), 1971-1995.
Served as 1st lieutenant Airborne Signal Corps Army of the United States, 1942-1946. Member of Manhattan Chess, Century Association, Army and Navy.
Chess, golf, poker, backgammon.
Married Rosalyn Krokover (deceased 1973), November 28, 1942. Married Helene Cornell (deceased 2003), May 10, 1975.