For The Love of Music Invitations to Listening

The power of music, the way it works on the mind and heart, remains an enticing mystery. Now two noted writers on classical music, Michael Steinberg and Larry Rothe, explore the allure of this melodious art--not in the clinical terms of social scientists--but through stories drawn from theirown experience. In For the Love of Music, Steinberg and Rothe draw on a lifetime of listening to, living with, and writing about music, sharing the delights and revelatory encounters they have had with Mozart, Brahms, Stravinsky, and a host of other great (and almost-great) composers. At once highly personaland immediately accessible, their writings shed light on those who make music and those who listen to it--drawing readers into the beautiful and dangerous terrain that has meant so much to the authors. In recounting how they themselves came to love music, Steinberg and Rothe offer keys forlistening. Here you will find the story of a boy discovering a lifelong passion as he huddled in an alley behind a movie theater in World War II England, listening to the Fantasia soundtrack. You will meet the man who created the sound of Hollywood's Golden Age. You will learn how composers haveaddressed issues as contemporary as AIDS and the terrorist attacks of September 11. You will sit in on strange and enlightening listening sessions with one of America's quirkiest music critics. And you will enter a world of mind- and soul-nourishing pleasures. Articulate and impassioned, sophisticated but never esoteric, Steinberg and Rothe offer invigorating reflections on music that will delight both the beginning and the seasoned listener.

Michael Steinberg was music critic of The Boston Globe, has contributed to numerous periodicals, and served as program annotator for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Minnesota Orchestra, and New York Philharmonic. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Larry Rothe has been publications editor of the San Francisco Symphony since 1984. His articles have appeared in Symphony magazine, Playbill, and Stagebill, and he is co-editor of American Mavericks: Visionaries, Pioneers, Iconoclasts. He lives in Berkeley, California.