Review: 'For the Love of Music - A Conductor’s Guide to the Art of Listening' by John Mauceri

Mark Austin

​Conductor Sir Roger Norrington has described how for him music is not a matter of life and death; instead it’s the most wonderful game. His miraculous escape from a rare cancer may have something to do with this. He is a master of his sport whose performances exude a wonderful sense of fun and experimentation. Another elder statesman of conducting, John Mauceri, takes a very different view in his compelling new book. For the Love of Music is the product of a lifetime immersed in performing, teaching and writing. Mauceri expresses a deeply held view that music offers the possibility of spiritual and philosophical reflection on the human condition.


This does not mean his writing is intimidating. It would be hard to imagine a more accessible and enjoyable book about music. Mauceri offers brilliant insights and listening advice on every page, writing in an enjoyably unpretentious style. A former pupil of Bernstein (whose presence haunts this book), he subscribes to the latter’s idea that classical music is defined by the “inevitability” of every note, and it is a tribute to his skill as a writer that we feel similarly about the way the text unfolds.


The knowledge required of a listener is refreshingly modest. “Do you need to be able to take apart and rebuild your toaster in order to enjoy the toast it makes?” No, of course not. (We can still imagine Mauceri taking out a screwdriver to satisfy his own incurable fascination with what makes things tick.) Music can be experienced and felt on many different levels. It is good to be reminded how astonishing it is that Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé can depict a sunrise in music. “This is not something you should take for granted. It is miraculous.” There is much here both for the experienced listener and the novice alike. Even detractors of Strauss’s Der Rosenkavalier will admire Mauceri’s take on its “porno-acoustic” opening.


On the importance of structure, Mauceri straddles the distance between composer and listener with ease. Drawing on a wealth of metaphors, he discusses the differences between architecture and emotional narrative in music while pointing out that structures are necessary to create music in the first place. The discussion of opera overtures as an illustration of how music relates to memory is dazzling.


Mauceri’s open-mindedness as a conductor distinguishes this book from other similar volumes. Eschewing Barenboim-like mysticism, Mauceri offers honest insights into what it is like to conduct the famously ambiguous finale of Shostakovich’s Symphony no. 5, poised between apparent triumph and ironic despair. Likewise, his retracing of the thoughts and practicalities behind concert programming will interest anyone who has ever wondered about this process.


The author leaves himself vulnerable to criticism with his relatively dogmatic statements about the classical canon, although he insists he follows public opinion. His belief that classical music consists of great works composed between 1700 and 1940 is clearly open to challenge. Given Mauceri’s belief in classical music as a profound social and cultural mirror, the determination to avoid a more fluid sense of canon seems misplaced. What has happened to the conductor as champion of the unfamiliar? He has little to say about the institutions and structures which have cemented the canon as it now stands. The relatively late adoption of Mahler into the musical pantheon is seen as an anomaly rather than an interesting model for future development. All of this sits awkwardly in the context of his description of music as a living, breathing art form.


Perhaps it is not at the end of a lifetime that one should be expected to point the way for the future. This book is a magnificent tribute to the spirit of a certain age still incarnate in a small number of elder maestri such as Muti, Haitink, Mehta and Mauceri. Their unshakeable belief in the importance and vitality of classical music is perhaps so strong that it cannot really grasp the very real possibility of diminishment. The next generations must take up the baton.

---