Word: toscanini
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Extrapolating into the 1980s his conclusions about the career of Toscanini, who died in 1957, Horowitz presents a searing and largely convincing critique of music and other performing arts in America...
This book is radical. It endorses a Marxist-based understanding of musical culture in America, vehemently denies that widely publicized high culture represents the best around, and not least, definitively debunks the myths that surrounded Toscanini...
Despite the book's faults--its over-ambitiousness, its sometimes befuddling organization, and an occasional lack of theoretical rigor that will displease the sociologically-minded--Understanding Toscanini will captivate classical music lovers as well as those who want to understand the state of the performing arts in America...
...BOOK begins with an account not of Toscanini's youth, but of America's. As Horowitz tells it, Americans in the 19th century were at once proud of their liberation from the pretentiousness of the arts in Europe and deeply humbled by the achievements of the Europeans...
Soon afterward, Toscanini settled in New York and robbed Mahler of his pre-eminence. More than that, Horowitz argues, Toscanini contributed to the historical circumstances that deprived America the chance of developing a vibrant, unfossilized musical culture...