The Composers: A Hystery of Music

Desmond Maley is the music librarian at the J.W. Tate Library,
Huntington College, Laurentian University, and the editor of Newsletter
of the Canadian Association of Music Libraries, Archives, and
Documentation Centres.

Kevin Reeves rounds up the usual suspects in this set of satirical
vignettes. He spends a page or two on each of 50 composers, playfully
examining their follies and foibles. Much of the material will be
familiar to anyone who has read Harold Schoenberg’s Lives of the Great
Composers (3rd ed., 1997) or David Barber’s Bach, Beethoven and the
Boys (rev. ed., 1996), and indeed it was Barber who edited this book.
But Reeves is careful with his research, and the quotations from
original sources are well chosen. Undoubtedly, there will be readers who
will enjoy the piquant prose and cartoons that accompany this short
book.