Background
Henry Pleasants was born on May 12, 1910, in Wayne, Pennsylvania, United States. He was a son of Henry Pleasants and Elizabeth Washington (Smith) Pleasants.
320 S Broad St, Philadelphia, PA 19102, United States
In his early years, Henry attended the Philadelphia Musical Academy (present-day the University of the Arts).
1726 Locust St, Philadelphia, PA 19103, United States
Pleasants studied voice, piano and composition at the Curtis Institute of Music.
(Here, with a splendid richness of color and detail, the d...)
Here, with a splendid richness of color and detail, the distinguished writer and critic Henry Pleasants recreates the personalities and performances, the lives and art of "the great singers", who have left their mark on our musical culture.
https://www.amazon.com/great-singers-dawn-opera-time/dp/B0006BO8CY/?tag=2022091-20
1966
critic intelligence officer musicologist spy translator author
Henry Pleasants was born on May 12, 1910, in Wayne, Pennsylvania, United States. He was a son of Henry Pleasants and Elizabeth Washington (Smith) Pleasants.
In his early years, Henry attended the Philadelphia Musical Academy (present-day the University of the Arts) and studied voice, piano and composition at the Curtis Institute of Music.
In 1977, the Curtis Institute of Music awarded Henry with an honorary doctorate.
In 1930, Henry began his career as a music critic, working for the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin. Between 1934 and 1942, he held the post of a music editor for the same newspaper. It's also worth noting, that, in 1938, Pleasants traveled to Germany to improve his command of the language, spending several fruitful weeks in Dresden. He went on to stay in Budapest for three months with Tibor Serly, a violist from the Philadelphia Orchestra.
In 1942, Pleasants joined the United States Army. In 1948-1949, he re-enlisted the military as an army liaison officer with the Austrian government. In 1950, Henry left the army to enter the Foreign Service and served as an intelligence officer in Munich. In 1950-1956, he held the post of the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) station chief in Bern and then, from 1956 until his retirement from the CIA in 1964, he served as the CIA station chief in Bonn. After his retirement from the intelligence service, together with his wife, Virginia Pleasants, Henry settled down in London.
It's also worth noting, that, after World War II, Pleasants was involved in the Denazification proceedings against several musicians, who were prominently involved with the Third Reich, including the conductor Wilhelm Furtwangler and Walter Gieseking. During the Cold War, Pleasants acted as a spy, living with Reinhard Gehlen, a former Nazi general and a top intelligence official for West Germany, to evaluate his "suitability".
As for Henry's writing career, from 1945 to 1955, he contributed articles about European music to The New York Times. In addition, he contributed to the Opera Quarterly and served as a London editor for the magazine Stereo Review. Beginning in 1967, Henry was the London music critic for the International Herald Tribune (present-day The New York Times International Edition), the post he held till 1998.
During his service in Germany, Henry translated several texts about music, including his 1965 "Musical World of Robert Schumann". Besides, he authored several books on the subject of music. His first work, "The Agony of Modern Music", published in 1955, was followed by "Death of a Music?" from 1961, "Serious Music - And All That Jazz!" from 1969 and others.
Among his books about vocal music were ''The Great Singers: From the Dawn of Opera to Our Own Time,'' a 1966 survey, that has become a standard reference work; ''The Great American Popular Singers'' (1974) and ''Opera in Crisis'' (1989). His last book was ''The Great Tenor Tragedy: The Last Days of Adolphe Nourrit'' (1995), a 19th-century tenor, for whom Rossini wrote several roles.
Moreover, for many years, Henry lectured and conducted seminars on singing at the American Institute of Musical Studies in Graz, Austria.
(Here, with a splendid richness of color and detail, the d...)
1966(This work criticizes bizarre new interpretations of class...)
1989Henry was a member of the Authors Guild.
Henry married Virginia Pleasants, a harpsichordist and fortepianist, on August 31, 1940.