May 2007

Edmund Morris

Sunday, May 06, 2007

Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer Edmund Morris (The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt) once considered pursuing a career as a concert pianist and, as he tells host Gilbert Kaplan, even played a Beethoven sonata at Carnegie Hall (as part of a charity concert of amateur musicians). But Morris’ passion for music is a love-hate affair. Beethoven is by far the best composer (Morris wrote an eminently readable biography). And he can’t live without Schumann and Sibelius. But he finds Mahler "masturbatory" and "vulgar"; Bach more interested in structure than melody; Vivaldi "tumpty-tumpty and rather trite." He "cannot listen to Rossini" and "Gounod makes me sick." It’s a lively show filled with riveting stories of Morris’ musical encounters!