It is like a music appreciation course in print
The NPR Listener’s Encyclopedia of Classical Music
By Ted Libbey
Workman Publishers
Paperback $19.95
Hardcover $29.95
By BILL DUNCAN
When I moved to Roseburg 30 years ago I was convinced the only music on radio here was country-western. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a music snob — I like country-western, but like rock and roll, in moderation.
It took some dial twisting on the car radio before I found Jefferson Public Radio on the campus of Southern Oregon University in Ashland. I made sure it was locked into my radio dial selection.
NPR is my favorite listening while tooling around town. Now comes an encyclopedia of all that good listening. Don’t let the word encyclopedia frighten you from reading "The NPR Listener’s Encyclopedia of Classical Music" — it is like taking a music appreciation course in print.
I was acquainted with Ted Libbey as a music critic for The New York Times and I had read his book reviews on music in The Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post. He has an easy-to-read style of writing that takes the high out of highbrow in the subject of music.
He may be the leading expert on music in this country, so it was not surprising to me that he has written such a comprehensive tome as "The NPR Listener’s Encyclopedia of Classical Music" — a compendium of 992 pages with more than 1,500 entries all done in the encyclopedia-style alphabetical order. He is so precise that he begins with the Italian conductor (Claudio) Abbado and ends with (Ellen) Zwllich, the first American woman composer to receive a Pulitzer Prize in music.
Not surprisingly, it took Libbey 11 years to complete the book, which, in this reviewer’s opinion, is a unique definitive volume that is selective, opinionated and even in places humorous. Libbey’s style shines in the way he writes about a complex subject and makes it so readable. He interjects technical terms alphabetically among the music personalities and the explanations of classical music itself.
For example between a comprehensive biographical sketch of the Polish-born pianist and composer Frederic Chopin and the American conductor William Christie, he pauses to explain that a "chord" is three or more tones played simultaneously, then the biographies are followed by a detailed explanation of Bach’s 1734 Christmas Oratorio, in six separate cantatas.
His detailed biography of George Gershwin says that Gershwin was hired in 1918 by a music firm as a composer and was paid $35 a week. He quickly made his mark as a songwriter a year later when he wrote and composed "Swanee."
"No one book can include everything that’s important to everybody," Libbey said. "I got a humorous reminder of that as this book was in its final stages. A good friend, one to whom I have often turned for advice, called one day … and said he had put together a list of composers that ‘don’t belong in your book.’"
Of course it was mostly a list of those Libbey had already included. Libbey said his friend was trying to tell him not to be so ridgid and serious about what he was writing.
"Behind the tease was a point: This book should be read for what it has in it, rather than for what it doesn’t," he concluded and finished his manuscript in that perspective.
The book is filled with little-known facts about music, told in such an interesting manner as this bit of trivia:
The tuning fork doctors used during a neurological exam is tuned to C because neurologists discovered that our bones respond most readily to vibrations of C because, in a sense, our bodies are tuned to the key of C. Lilley said this is one of the reasons that C major has such a pleasing effect on our senses and seems to sound particularly full, rich and satisfying to our ears.
The price of the book is worth learning that Lilley worked with the classical music label Naxos to create a special Naxos Workman Web Site so the reader can listen to 425 examples of the works, terms and composers discussed in the book and up to 75 hours of free music.
How does this work?
Use Internet Explorer to open www.naxos.com/workman/. You need to register on the first time you go to the web site by including the login code 0761120726, your e-mail address and a password you create. Subsequent logins require only your e-mail address and the password you have chosen.
(Bill Duncan is the editor of The Senior Times. He also writes a weekly column on the Thursday Opinion Page of The News-Review)