Henry Thomas Schnittkind (1888–1970)

I very much enjoyed this collection of brisk composer anthologies. It is basically chronological from JS Bach to Stravinsky with a focus on personality and personal life. The lives often overlap and there is plenty on interaction and inspiration between the geniuses. There is interesting if trivial commonalities such as invaluable handwritten sheet music treated as scrap paper (JS Bach, Handel) and ignoble penury (JS Bach, Mozart, Schubert).

As a fan of much music that would be deemed show more difficult by many, I appreciate the quote here ascribed to Stravinsky. I am unable to source it outside of this book:

Don't coddle your audiences; make them toil . Labor is the surest way to happiness. There is nothing so pleasurable as painful music. Life is always so tragic; let's for a change make it grotesque.

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Written with the light touch but informed assurance that characterized all the volumes of the Living Biographies series. In the case of this volume though, the irreverence this father-son duo brought to their work had deadly consequences. A newspaper in Uttar Pradesh decried the alleged blasphemy of its portrayal of a certain prophet, in its indignant outrage reprinting its "most atrocious" passages, touching off riots that took eighteen lives.
I read this as a young teenager and found the show more authors' appreciation for the spiritual longing of the figures they depict with their abhorrence of dogmatism an appealing mix. show less

Told with the lively style that this father-and-son team brought to the dozen volumes of the series of Living Biographies. Given the subject matter, their scorn for militarism and oppression characterizes the entries.

Henry Thomas, born Henry Thomas Schnittkind, was in his young years a college teacher, but by the 1930s had shortened his name and become a successful author of popularizing works of history, including many volumes of a series of Living Biographies (coauthored by Dana Lee Thomas, who was, I believe, Henry's son). I read this one summer years ago. It was very readable, and delightfully subversive in its political views (could that have had something to do with leaving his teaching job? I'm show more curious to know more). show less