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Maestros and Their Music: The Art and Alchemy of Conducting, by John Mauceri
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Review
“Engrossing. . . . As much a personal account of [Mauceri’s] life and career . . . as it is a candid objective guide to conducting.” —The Wall Street Journal“Mauceri, a Leonard Bernstein protégé, explains the ‘strange and lawless world’ of the ‘invisible’ art of conducting, which, like a medieval trade, is passed on from masters to apprentices.” —The New Yorker“Engaging, funny, and profound.” —The Boston Globe “Intriguing. . . . Few authors have expressed so vividly the huge role of the score itself in a maestro’s daily work, or the non-glamorous status of the guest conductor.” —Opera News “Fascinating. . . . A most engaging volume.” —Gramophone “Elucidates an art that has formed our aural world. . . . [Mauceri] writes about his craft with both intimacy and a broader eye for its history and scope.” —Forward “[Mauceri] writes illuminatingly about his work. . . . To read Maestros and Their Music is to come away with a much clearer understanding of what its author calls the ‘strange and lawless world’ of conducting.” —Commentary “You think conducting is a matter of a maestro merely knowing the score? Let John Mauceri open your eyes and ears to the mysterious, solitary, itinerant world of the conductor and have all your preconceptions blown away. This irresistible and unique book is guaranteed to send you to the concert hall and your CDs with newly educated ears—and heart.” —John Guare, playwright “[Mauceri’s] history and analysis of his profession are as enlightening as they are down-to-earth. . . . The panorama of his profession is organized in masterful fashion, and the prose sparkles.” —Matthew Gurewitsch, Beyond Criticism “A remarkably perceptive and charming guide into the mysterious art of the conductor. Part personal confession, part wise explication, Maestros and Their Music will be of tremendous value to anyone who wonders just what that person waving a stick in front of an orchestra is actually doing.” —Stuart Isacoff, author of A Natural History of the Piano “Written with the profound insight that comes out of a lifetime of conducting experience, John Mauceri’s brilliant book about maestros and their music will transform your understanding of every concert and opera you attend. Everyone who cares about classical music should read this book.” —Larry Wolff, author of The Singing Turk “Conductors are largely mysteries and intentionally so. In his articulate and insightful book John Mauceri openly invites us into their world, offering a perspective seldom shared and little understood. Every music lover would benefit by reading this book.” —Anne Parsons, president and CEO of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra “Moving and memorable. . . . [A] combination history and guide that demystifies the secrets of the baton for a new generation of aspiring conductors. . . . Mauceri demonstrates what it’s like to work closely with brilliant conductors, bringing their artistry to life.” —Publishers Weekly “Symphony lovers will be thrilled with the behind-the-scenes details, and aspiring conductors will enjoy the rich industry insight. Those simply curious about how classical music happens will feel drawn in by Mauceri’s palpable passion.” —Booklist
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About the Author
Over the past five decades, John Mauceri has conducted symphonies, operas, ballets, musicals, and film music around the world, appearing in the world’s most famous venues and serving as music director of four opera companies and three orchestras, as well as hosting television and radio programs. An accomplished recording artist, he has more than fifty CDs 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 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.
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Product details
Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: Vintage; Reprint edition (November 6, 2018)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1101973609
ISBN-13: 978-1101973608
Product Dimensions:
5.1 x 0.8 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 9.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review:
4.5 out of 5 stars
29 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
#788,984 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
Highly recommended. Profound and comprehensive insight into the art, science and practical aspects of conducting orchestral music (with and without choirs and/or soloists), ballet, opera and (to a lesser extent) musicals. All written in a most engaging style. Why just four stars and not five? I feel the author missed a wonderful opportunity to reveal more by introducing a little modesty. The record shows that he was a moderately successful conductor, but not an all-time great. I would love for him to have addressed this point: how did it feel to come to grips with the fact that, despite success, he was not going to be another Bernstein, Karajan or Rattle etc? This would have been a wonderful revelation in the book.Instead, he seems overkeen to big himself up with a great deal of name-dropping and photographs of himself with legendary performers. Perhaps this is a sign that another vital ingredient in conducting - not referred to at all in the text, but evident in the subtext - is amour propre. That ingredient is most conspicuous in his website. But to avoid ending this review on a down note, let me stress that this is a most informative and readable account of what a conductor contributes to a performance or recording.
To begin with, a personal reminiscence. As a critic, I ran before I could walk. (Don’t we all?) But soon, an urge arose in me to go back to first principles. A question that particularly intrigued me was the role of the conductor, kingpin of musicians, who personally produces no sound.John Mauceri’s book Maestros and Their Music: The Art and Alchemy of Conducting takes me back a quarter century to 1993-94, when I organized a season of live interviews with leading conductors at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Together with Hilde Limondjian, the Met’s indomitable impresario of Concerts and Lectures, I came up with seven names. One played hardball over the penny-ante issue of rights to a transcript. One temporized past the point of absurdity, probing through an intermediary who else had committed. The other five signed on instantly, no strings. Boasting a guest list of Daniel Barenboim, Pierre Boulez, Valery Gergiev, James Levine, Kurt Masur, Riccardo Muti, and Sir Georg Solti, “Conductors in Conversation†sold out by subscription and later aired for home listeners on WNYC.We covered a lot of terrain. For me, perhaps the single most revealing moment came in dialogue with Kurt Masur, who said that some extremely despondent piece of music ended on a note of hope. I remarked that I had heard him claim the same thing for a number of other bleak compositions and asked if he might be afraid to send the audience home in a state of hopelessness. A long pause followed. “Yes,†he said at last. “I think I am.â€As for the bedrock questions—What is the role of the conductor? What does the conductor do?—the answers I came up with for myself were these. The role is twofold: in rehearsal, to act as surrogate for the composer, and in concert, as surrogate for the audience. Either way, a great conductor will be one who wants more. More of what? More sensitivity, more expression, more accuracy, more fire, more individuality, more discipline, more audacity, …—take your pick.For those who happened to miss that season at the Met, Maestros and their Music: The Art and Alchemy of Conducting offers a top-notch alternative. Apparently, the world has been waiting: to date, translations into Italian, Russian, and Japanese are in the works, plus not one but two versions in Chinese.Hugely versatile, technically bullet-proof, artistically driven, Mauceri belongs to the class of practitioners of his art whose merits have kept him in constant worldwide demand for a half century without quite winning him a pedestal among the legends such as my seven All Stars or the three he names as mentors: Leopold Stokowski, Carlo Maria Giulini, and Leonard Bernstein.Perhaps for that reason, his history and analysis of his profession are as enlightening as they are down-to-earth. He has seen it all, knows where the bodies are buried, and makes no bones about naming names.The panorama of his profession is organized in masterful fashion, and the prose sparkles. Opening with a short history of conducting, he explains not only what came to pass but also why it did, as well as the ways an increasing reliance on conductors shaped new ideas of what kind of music could even be written and performed. Chapters on technique, on learning a score, and on the training of a conductor follow.Examining scores under the microscope, as the responsible maestro must, Mauceri sheds light on key moments of Aida, La Bohème, and Porgy and Bess. Other lessons are delivered via anecdote. Taking Mahler’s counterintuitive but meaningful and meticulous tempo markings at the start of the Fourth Symphony to heart, Mauceri once received a slap on the wrist from a British critic, who noticed what was happening but had no clue why.“Was I right?,†Mauceri asks not quite rhetorically. “Yes. Did I convince? No.†Checking a landmark New York Philharmonic recording led by Bernstein, Mahler champion supreme, Mauceri wondered why Bernstein had overlooked the instructions in question. “I chickened out,†Bernstein confessed. (Speaking of Bernstein, you’ll want to hear about his lunch in Salzburg, at home with Herbert von Karajan.)Owning up to incidental frustrations, Mauceri steers clear of self-pity. He is open in sharing his disappointment at return engagements that failed to materialize. To this day, when critics make complaints based on prejudice or preference rather than research into the score, he finds it “quite simply, annoying.â€Elsewhere, Mauceri examines how and why no two conductors’ performances are alike, how and why recordings and live performance differ in their very nature (notably in their intervals of silence). He has trenchant observations on a conductor’s relationship with the music, the musicians, the audience, the critics, and owners and management. His experience as a road warrior—weighed down with orchestral scores, coming back to his hotel for a post-concert sandwich assembled from the buffet at breakfast—crushes any notion of the glamour of the job. The alchemy hinted at in the book’s subtitle comes into its own in the final pages (“The Mystery: Everything and Its Oppositeâ€). On mystique, that indispensable yet most gaseous quantity in the equation, Mauceri is more matter-of-fact than most.But the most telling part of the book may be the chapter “Who’s in Charge?†Here, Mauceri anatomizes the politics of the concert hall and the opera house with clinical, devastating precision. Suffice it to say that power may not lie where a civilian might expect. There’s Francesca Zambello in Washington, either clueless or indifferent about Gershwin’s markings in Porgy and Bess, insisting on adjustments. And then there’s Beverly Sills, a diva in twilight, rehearsing La Loca, written for her by Gian Carlo Menotti. The title character Juana, mother of the future Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, would be both her last role and the first written to order for her. After the world premiere in San Diego, the fledgling Mauceri was brought in (“I do not remember whyâ€) to conduct the revised version at New York City Opera.“Gian Carlo, I told you no changes,†Sills reprimanded Menotti at the first New York rehearsal when he pointed out that a bit of blocking made no sense. Moments later, Menotti had decamped with what appears to have been remarkable composure. “Who does he think he is?,†Sills fumed. “Does he think these performances are sold out because of him?â€Newly established in New York with a wife and one-year-old to support, with no immediate prospect of other work, Mauceri kept his head down. The better part of a lifetime later, he wonders if he should not instead have left in solidarity with the composer. But perhaps it was not just the paycheck that kept Mauceri on the piano bench. As he writes in another context, “music owns us, in the same sense that the land owns the farmer.â€
I’m a conductor and I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Most books about performers are filled with anecdotes and can be amusing and informative if one cares about the details of their personal lives and all the events in their careers . Mauceri's book, contains its share of entertaining stories, but it succeeds on a more profound level. It is one of the few books that deals with the mystery of the art. There are plenty of books on the “technique of conducting†and gossip about famous conductors. This book succeeds in describing the true essence of the art. It will be a very worthwhile red for any conductor or symphony player.
I am a conductor of a pops orchestra and this book gives a fun inside perspective on the life and even the social tribulations of conducting. It also gave me a new appreciation for the great Leonard Bernstein. The breakdown of specific pieces of music and the styles of conducting those pieces was insightful. I enjoyed every minute.
I purchased additional copies of this book to give as impromptu gifts to friends, family and colleagues because I wanted to keep my own to reread and as a resource after reading for the first time. A must read for any musician or patron of the performing arts. Wonderful and intriguing behind the scene stories. Very interesting history, interpretations and insights on what occurs on stage and off. Beautifully written and a joy to read. A treasure for anyone who want to studying or is curious about conducting or directing at any level.
A tale of a musical journey, with many revelations along the way, to illuminate what an orchestra (or pit) conductor does. The demands, the pitfalls, and the history - it's a long history, but it's told here with breezy good humor and meticulous scholarship. It's an understatement to say that John Mauceri fills a niche with this memoir. For me, I felt a desire to get to see more conductors at work, to get to more live concerts, to look at more scores, and to hear more music of all sorts. His enthusiasm is contagious!
An insightful and fun read. Lots of great stories about conductors and musicians and lots of examples of music compositions and how different conductors do them differently. He's worked with some of the greats (Lenny) and seen lots of great and not so greats in action. Very clear prose and Mr. M is a friendly and warm guide. As I'm reading, I feel I'd like to have dinner and a long chat with Mr. M. High praise.
Does a great job of capturing the personalities and approaches of the various competitors and increases one understanding of how conducting is more than emoting while waving one's hands about
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