Choral Masterworks: A Listener's Guide - Softcover

What sets Steinberg's writing apart is its appealing mixture of impregnable authority (he knows this music) and purely personal asides (by the end of the book, we know this man). Choral Masterworks can be read by anybody, from a professional musician to any young listener newly braced by the stoic pessimism of the Brahms 'German Requiem. (Washington Post Book World)

Ostensibly the first listener's guide to choral music―and an informed and enjoyable one at that. (Library Journal (starred review))

Well-written, concise introductions that record collectors, concertgoers, and chorus members alike should enjoy. (Booklist)

Michael Steinberg follows his warmly received listener's guides on the symphony and the concerto with Choral Masterworks: A Listener's Guide, a book of descriptive-analytical essays on the great masterpieces in the supremely inspiring repertoire for chorus and orchestra. This collection includes illuminating commentary on such works as Handel's Messiah, Bach's Passion settings and B-minor Mass, the Mozart Requiem, and the great choral works of Haydn and Beethoven. Steinberg also discusses the monuments of the Romantic era such as the stupendous Requiem settings of Berlioz and Verdi as well as the supremely tender one by Fauré. Venturing into the twentieth century and the dawning of the twenty-first, he provides insights into the great achievements of Elgar, Rachmaninoff, Vaughan Williams, and Stravinsky, and, nearer our own time, such masters as John Adams. Steinberg's writes without jargon, in language that grabs the technically untrained music-lover, but which is still of riveting interest to conductors, singers, and others who make music their life. His guidebook brings impeccable scholarship, insight into the spiritual content of the works, a deep love of music, and surprising corners of humor and whimsy.