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		Team Players Music matters in the twenty-first century. By Judith Tick Musicians with a Mission: Keeping the Classical Tradition Alive by Andrew L. Pincus (Northeastern University Press; Boston; 2002; 288 pages; $28.95) You cannot make art out of fear and suspicion; you can make it only out of affirmative beliefs. . . . I must believe in the ultimate good of the world and of life as I live it in order to create a work of art.” One of our great composers, Aaron Copland, wrote these words more than fifty years ago, in a decade haunted by Cold War nightmares of nuclear winters. He knew such optimism requires sustenance from others: Artists need to be needed. But how hard it was—and is—for classical musicians to, as Copland said, “achieve integration, to find justification for the life of art [so that] the artist should feel himself affirmed and buoyed up by his community. . . . In other words, art and the life of art must mean something, in the deepest sense, to the everyday citizen.” Musicians with a Mission: Keeping the Classical Tradition Alive comes from the same civic center that inspired these words. The book engagingly profiles six renowned musicians (well, five musicians and one ensemble) who live Copland’s communal ideals in different but complementary ways, as composers, conductors, performers, and teachers. Andrew Pincus’s heroes battle cultural illiteracy and the dismissive labeling of concert music as “elitist” by confronting what he portrays as two obstacles to a healthy cultural life: commercialism and a stagnant repertory in our concert halls. The career of cellist Yo-Yo Ma, famous for his collaborations as a crossover populist, is described in the chapter “Marco Polo Totes a Cello.” Ma has consistently traversed boundaries; in perhaps his most ambitious effort to date, the Silk Road Project, for instance, he commissioned Asian and Western composers to create music for multicultural ensembles. The author next examines how singer and educator Phyllis Curtin’s exceptional musical integrity has influenced a new generation of American singers, such as Sanford Sylvan and Dawn Upshaw. The anti-diva reflects on her career and her commitment to new music and deeply grounded interpretation of art-song texts. “Who Cares What Style It’s In?” plumbs composer Gunther Schuller’s eclectic vision. A major composer whose work has been spurned by mainstream record companies, Schuller is best known as an advocate for other people’s music. His endorsements encompass a mind-boggling stylistic range, from classic ragtime (he was responsible for the revival of Scott Joplin’s opera Treemonisha) to the compositions of serial modernist Milton Babbitt. Pincus moves the Juilliard String Quartet’s iconoclastic nature to center stage, chronicling the group’s establishment of an American tradition for string quartet performance. Conductor Robert Spano, music director at both the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, is followed as he works to remake American symphonic programming. Finally, “Growing Flowers in the Desert” spotlights young violinist Midori, who tackled the problem of underfunding for music education in the New York City school system by creating a foundation that brings professional performers into classrooms. Pincus recounts these life-and-work stories, with details drawn from a mix of his own interviews and earlier reportage, in a narrative that will appeal to both casual music lovers and knowledgeable classical-music enthusiasts. References to a vast range of works are interwoven throughout. Elliott Carter’s music is invoked in Pincus’s history of the Juilliard Quartet, for example; the details of Curtin’s life inspire mention of the Copland song cycle Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson. The author adds enough history and commentary to give individual achievements their larger, more vibrant context. This wide framework often involves Boston: Pincus, an award-winning critic for the Berkshire Eagle and coauthor (with Phyllis Curtin) of Tanglewood: The Clash Between Tradition and Change (also published by Northeastern University Press), freely admits a regional bias. Curtin, Schuller, and Ma live in Boston. Spano, former Boston Symphony Orchestra assistant conductor, directs Tanglewood’s student conducting program. We hear much of Copland, Leonard Bernstein, Michael Tilson Thomas, and their assorted protégés, who have added luster to the universities and institutions that define Boston’s musical life. Pincus chose to profile subjects who go the “extra mile—in most cases, several extra miles—to assist fellow musicians and advance the art of music.” Yet such a premise has its dangers. How soon before we start snoozing from so much collective virtue? Wisely, to make his great musicians more human, the author offers caffeine-like jolts of insider gossip, critical dissent, and smart shoptalk. For example, that it took a year for Yo-Yo Ma to learn the Nashville fiddling style for his CD Appalachia Waltz. Or that Juilliard Quartet rehearsals occasionally turned into shouting matches, in which music stands were thrown instead of punches. Although profilees range from celebrities, like Ma and Midori, to specialists Curtin and Schuller, Pincus unifies the book by emphasizing his subjects’ maverick qualities. Though the strategy seems valid, as a music historian, I’d argue that the narrative tradition for American music is filled with mavericks. Witness the achievements of composers Charles Ives and John Cage—even Bob Dylan and Pearl Jam. Perhaps the term “maverick” reaffirms an American ideology of individuality and pioneering. After all, in our society, claiming outsider status is a mark of authenticity, and applauding maverick behavior a sign of belief in our national character. It’s telling that even in the specialized world of classical music, this cultural stereotype prevails as a way of conferring social relevance on artists. Ultimately, readers may wonder: Are these maverick musicians heading for the last roundup of classical music? Pincus does not shirk the question. He often comments on the music’s contemporary vulnerabilities, noting how “at the dawn of the twenty-first century, classical music, like the universe, was flying apart in all directions.” Such tempering pronouncements aside, optimism generally prevails in the book. Pincus has made it his mission to put some of the pieces back together again by celebrating the achievements of exceptional citizen-artists. In turn, a citizen-journalist has contributed greatly to public discourse on the role culture plays in a democracy. Judith Tick is a Matthews Distinguished University Professor in the Music department. Puccini: A Biography by Mary Jane Phillips-Matz; Northeastern University Press; 2002 Considering the success of Rent and Miss Saigon, Broadway shows based on two of his works, Giacomo Puccini has relevance extending well beyond the circle of classical music lovers. In Puccini: A Biography, Mary Jane Phillips-Matz has crafted a masterful portrait of Puccini, one of opera’s greatest composers. A gifted artist who suffered personal setbacks and scandals, Puccini was pushed by an ambitious mother and family tradition to leave his imprint on the world of music. Phillips-Matz, who penned the award-winning Verdi: A Biography and frequently contributes to Opera News, is uniquely suited to her subject. Employing details and anecdotes from a wealth of primary sources and years of interviews with the composer’s family and friends, she convincingly recreates the opera master’s life and times. The result is Puccini’s most comprehensive biography to date. The Book of Love by Karen Bentley; Big Heart Books; 2002 If music’s charms don’t soothe your savage breast, perhaps Karen Bentley, BHD’88, can help. Subtitled Awaken Your Passion to Be Your Higher Self, her Book of Love examines the human heart with the goal of attaining self-awareness. Bentley includes exercises and meditations to teach readers to evolve into more loving individuals. Anecdotes deliver accessible examples of people behaving badly. The work ultimately presents a spiritual yet nondenominational outlook on the pursuit of happiness.