What a Classical-Music Critic Reads
Anthony Tommasini, the former chief classical-music critic for The New York Times, recommends books and music.
by Gal Beckerman
Dec 01, 2023
4 minutes
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I love music, but I never learned to play an instrument (something I still occasionally blame my parents for—though, as a father myself, I should know better). The mechanics and language of music are a blind spot for me—a deficiency I was reminded about as I tried to edit a recent essay from Anthony Tommasini, the former chief classical-music critic for . Tommasini reviewed a about the composer Arnold Schoenberg, whose early-20th-century experiments in music were akin to Pablo Picasso’s in painting and James Joyce’s in fiction. But Schoenberg’s work—and the other envelope-pushing music it inspired—has not found the same sustained interest and
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