Goulding - Classical Music: The 50 Greatest Composers and Their 1,000 Greatest Works

1. Bach

2. Mozart

3. Beethoven

4. Wagner

5. Haydn

6. Brahms

7. Schubert

8. Schumann

9. Handel

10. Tchaikovsky

11. Mendelssohn

12. Dvok

13. Liszt

14. Chopin

15. Stravinsky

16. Verdi

17. Mahler

18. Prokofiev

19. Shostakovich

20. R. Strauss

To find out why these men are the best of the best, read on.

For
Miriam, my life,
And Bob, my brother

Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI

At Hamilton College in the late 1930s and early 1940s the student Honor System was practiced. On each paper the student wrote: This is my own work unless otherwise indicated.

This book on music is my own work, in one sense, since I put it together over seven years. But I must also indicate that 95 percent of it comes from used bookstores, new bookstores, and assorted public libraries, including the Library of Congress, and 4.9 percent from interviews with people in the music world.

As stressed throughout the book, I began this project as a total nonexpert and, in the true sense, I remain a nonexpert. Reporters used to write things called Sunday stories, and perhaps they still do. A Sunday story was a wrap-up, considerably longer than a daily piece and based on picking the brains of the insiders. This book is a long Sunday piece; for the most part the insiders are some two hundred to three hundred authors whose brains and works I have pickedacademicians, conductors, composers, critics, and performers. I read no foreign language well enough for this purpose, so all the books I used were written in or translated into English. Most, but not all, were published in this century.

My major acknowledgment, then, goes to all of those who really do know something about music, and on whom I have relied in this research effort. The inevitable mistakes and distortions are, of course, mine and mine alone.

Others include Hannah and Dan Henkin, old and lovely friends who tragically died much too young within a week of one another. Dan and I were reporters together covering the Pentagon and later worked together in the government. Several years ago, he and Hannah took a trip to England with my wife and me. As the trip planner, I used four yellow legal-sized pads. Later, in the early days of this project, when I began to consider it a dumb idea, Dan strongly encouraged me. But he also wisely warned my wife: Miriam, dear, this is going to be a hundred-pad thing. His estimate was woefully low.

The indispensable partner was my administrative assistant for fifteen years, Mary Lewis, who put in a few hours of illegal company time on the computer (I had not then gone beyond the manual typewriter) and thousands of hours of her own time, nights, weekends, and holidays. She declined to type if she could not track the meaning. I have no better friend, and without Mary this would not have been.

I am always indebted to my five real children. With them grown and gone, their stepsiblings during these book years were a tiny Pomeranian named Blueberry Muffin (who died at seventeen), a sixty-five-pound Bearded Collie named Angus, and a ninety-five-pound Bernese Mountain Dog named Grindel. All three provided full-time loveand, respectively, warmth and affection, amusement and entertainment, and security against invasion.

Without Miriam, I could not write the alphabet.

From my earliest memory and through this day, in all things of life, the love and support from my older brother Bob has been total.

Although I met some helpful people in the music world, my only two friends from it are Peter Greenough, whose wife, Beverly Sills, is into opera, and Stephen Klein, Executive Director of the National Symphony. I attempted to discuss this project with them, but both looked at me in a peculiar fashion and went away.

My youngest son, in his thirties, summed up the view of many: Father, he said, I would not buy a book from a publisher who would publish a book by you on classical music.

Nonetheless, here it is, because of Jolle Delbourgo, Editor-in-Chief of Ballantine Hardcovers. I am grateful not only for her initial decisions, but also for her insight and professionalism throughout. And I want to give special thanks to Lesley Malin Helm of Ballantine for her day-to-day, line-by-line editing and counsel. Lesley has understood what I have attempted to do, and to the extent that it works she is responsible. To the extent that it does not, neither she, Danny, Miriam, Angus, nor Grindel are to blame.