Book Review: Words on Music

Book Review: Words on Music Words on Music: From Addison to Barzun, edited by Jack Sullivan. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1990. xxvii, IVlUSlL XVJj1 438 pp $19 95 pbk JACK SULLIVAN, EDITOR OF THE PRESENT COLLECTION OF ESSAYS on music, Associate Professor of English at Rider College in New Jersey, and author of works on English ghost stories. With present volume, Sullivan moves onto what obviously for him less familiar ground. (Nowhere - just in case thought crossed your mind - does book mention Ghost Trio.) Although his preface manfully attempts a raison d'etre for it, Words on Music turns out to be just another not very distinguished anthology of writings and musings on progeny of St. Caecilia. purpose of book, writes Sullivan, is to introduce a representative sample of... often (p. xi). Like Charles Burney? Albert Schweitzer? Romain Rolland? George Bernard Shaw? Charles Rosen? Virgil Thomson? Donald Francis Tovey? Richard Wagner? These are neglected writers? Perhaps Sullivan means writers whose writings on are often neglected, but this won't fly. Yes, H.L. Mencken, Leigh Hunt, Thomas Love Peacock, G.K. Chesterton, and other such souls are here, but most of essayists are musicians, musician-critics, or critics period. Probably real rationale behind collection that these essays appeal to Sullivan. If this case, he should have said so; he might then have been praised at least for his literary - if not musical - taste. Yes, there are many nicely-written pieces here, not a few of which will already be familiar to musically inclined readers. The writings are neither rigorously nor convincingly grouped into four categories, moving from an overview to insider's perspective, namely: Writing about music (five essays, including a light-hearted piece by editor); Composers and masterworks (sixty-four essays - heart of book); art of music (seven essays); and Memoirs and portraits (ten essays). The book not to be read cover to cover, hut rather offers rich fare for browsing. It makes for pleasant bedtime reading. As for this journal's eponym, he pops up in probably a majority of anthology's eighty-odd essays. Seven are in large part devoted to him; they are (most of titles being editor's): Peacock, Fidelio (it being the absolute perfection of dramatic music); Thomson, Beethoven, and Mozart; three essays by Berlioz, Weber and fantastic, despair, and On hearing Beethoven's C-sharp Minor quartet; E.T.A. Hoffmann, Beethoven and sublime; Wagner, A revelation from another world; and Tovey and Shaw, with essays on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. To each essay, Sullivan adds a short introduction. These range from naive to ingenuous. Prefacing Charles Rosen on erotic Mozart, Sullivan writes that Rosen's book The Classical Style is one of most intelligent books of its kind ever written. The section on Mozart's eroticism, here excerpted, especially provocative a sharp challenge to those who think of Mozart as only a safe, pleasant tunesmith. (Reviewer's note: who, pray tell, might they be?) And Sullivan's musical acumen may be gauged by his astounding claim that, in case of Virgil Thomson, No one has summarized Haydn, Beethoven, and Mozart with more precision and wit, or tied their humanity more touchingly to their music. Well, here's Thomson on Haydn: rondo, Haydn's most frequently observed last-movement scheme, gives too much play to his musical imagination, obliges him too little to expression. The same true of his slow movements, which are melodious and full of incidental invention, but which do not say much. Oh, dear. Wait till you hear what precise and witty Thomson has to say about Beethoven: Beethoven really was old bachelor. But he never liked it. …