Maestros Of The Pen - Softcover

"One virtue of Maestros of the Pen is how vividly it re-creates the charm and authority of many forgotten reviewers. Taking material from hundreds of sources, including defunct 19th- and early-20th-century newspapers, Grant has assembled a lively narrative history of this neglected field. His scholarship is formidable, but more remarkable is the zest and personality with which he presents it. Engaging and often amusing, the book is serious, but without a whiff of pedantry.... Perhaps all we need to reinvigorate criticism is a few books as good as this one." - Dana Gioia, New York Times Book Review"

Among the reviewers of the arts, classical music critics are perhaps the least esteemed by those they write about. Yet these often despised beings are also, for better or worse, key players in the world of classical music. This history, in which Mark N. Grant traces the development of music criticism in the United States from the early 19th century to the present, is both a comprehensive portrait gallery of our significant music critics and a study of the evolving role of classical music in American cultural life. Grant's informative overview compares the critics' prose styles, evaluates them as taste makers who helped codify the canon, and shows critics in action as movers and shakers who persuaded community leaders to build concert halls, got conductors hired and fired, explained classical music to the masses on the radio, championed difficult new music, and rescued unjustly neglected repertoire.