Harold C. Schonberg
Harold Charles Schonberg (29 November 1915 – 26 July 2003) was an American music critic and author. He is best known for his contributions in The New York Times, where he was chief music critic from 1960 to 1980. In 1971, he became the first music critic to win the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. An influential critic,[1] he is particularly well known for his encouragement of Romantic piano music and criticism of conductor Leonard Bernstein.[2] He also wrote a number of books on music, and one on chess.
Life and career[edit]
Early life[edit]
Harold Charles Schonberg was born in Washington Heights, Manhattan in New York City, New York on 29 November 1915.[3] His parents were David and Minnie (Kirsch) Schonberg,[4] and he had a brother (Stanley) and a sister (Edith).[5] His aunt, Alice Frisca was an early influence and his first music teacher; she was a former concert pianist, and had studied with Leopold Godowsky.[3] He started piano lessons with Frisca at four years old, and "discovered early on that he had a superb musical memory that allowed him to remember pieces in great detail after a single hearing".[3] Schonberg himself cited the first performance he saw at the Metropolitan Opera around age 12 as particularly formative to his musical upbringing.[6] A performance of Richard Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg with the conductor Artur Bodanzky, he would later write on the experience 39 years later, reflecting on the opera's opening chord that it "rose to the dress circle, and he felt as though he could reach out, touch it, caress it. He had been to concerts before, but somehow, in this vast dark auditorium, there was a different feeling to the texture and even the organization of this chord. It sounded warm and cozy. It covered him like a blanket."[7][n 1] In his recounting of the event, Schonberg claimed the experience as having inaugurated his desire to be a music critic.[8]
Schonberg received a Bachelor of Arts at Brooklyn College (1937),[1] during which he published his first music criticism in the Musical Advance journal.[8] He then studied as a graduate student at New York University, receiving a Master of Arts in 1938 while studying under the composer Marion Bauer.[1][8] His dissertation concerned Elizabethan songbooks, which he studied in both musical and literary contexts.[8] In his early life, Schonberg was also interested in the visual arts, studying drawing at the Art Students League of New York and sometimes illustrating his music criticism with caricatures of the musicians they featured.[8] In 1939, Schonberg received his first post as a music critic: he was associate editor and critic at the American Music Lover.[8][n 2]
During World War II, Schonberg was a first lieutenant in the United States Army Airborne Signal Corps. He had hoped to enlist as a pilot, but was declared pastel-blind (he could distinguish colors but not shadings and subtleties) and was sent to London, where he was a code breaker and later a parachutist. He broke his leg on a training jump before D-Day and could not participate in the Normandy landings; every member of his platoon who jumped into France was ultimately killed. He remained in the Army until 1946.
At The New York Times[edit]
Schonberg joined The New York Times in 1950. He rose to the post of senior music critic for the Times a decade later. In this capacity he published daily reviews and longer features on operas and classical music on Sundays. He also worked effectively behind the scenes to increase music coverage in the Times and develop its first-rate music staff. Upon his retirement as senior music critic in 1980, he became cultural correspondent for the Times.
Schonberg also wrote articles for Harper's and High Fidelity magazine, among others.
Schonberg was an extremely influential music writer. Aside from his contributions to music journalism, he published 13 books, most of them on music, including The Great Pianists: From Mozart to the Present (1963, revised 1987)—pianists were a specialty of Schonberg—and The Lives of the Great Composers (1970; revised 1981, 1997) which traced the lives of major composers from Monteverdi through to modern times. Schonberg wrote a biography of Vladimir Horowitz, one of the most famous pianists of the 20th century, entitled Horowitz: His Life and Music (1992).
Other interests[edit]
A devoted and skilled chess player, Schonberg covered the 1972 championship match between Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer held in Reykjavík, Iceland. One of Schonberg's books not on music was Grandmasters of Chess. He also reviewed mysteries and thrillers for The New York Times under the pseudonym Newgate Callender from 1972 to 1995.[13]
Schonberg was an avid golfer, though a poor one by his own estimation. He co-authored the book How To Play Double Bogey Golf (1975) along with Hollis Alpert, founder of the National Society of Film Critics, and fellow author Ira Mothner. Schonberg, Mothner and Alpert frequently played golf together, according to the book.