The Steinway Collection

In this historic volume, beautiful color paintings by prominent American artists and eloquent prose portraits by the renowned performing arts critic James Huneker celebrate the lives and work of some of the greatest composers who ever lived. Chopin, Wagner, Beethoven, Mozart, Verdi, Mendelssohn, Schubert, and Handel are among the composers featured in The Steinway Collection, which was originally printed in 1919 as an in-house publication of Steinway & Sons and has never before been released to the public. To pay tribute to the great composers, Steinway & Sons commissioned esteemed American artists to create paintings that, in Huneker's words, "would evoke musical visions; for music is visionary, notwithstanding its primal appeal to the ear." Huneker's intriguing biographical commentary on the composers puts the paintings in perspective with telling details of how life influenced art. A critical moment of Chopin's close relationship with the novelist George Sand is depicted in A.I. Keller's painting The Raindrop Prelude. We learn how Franz Liszt befriended, and aided the career of, the political exile and revolutionist Richard Wagner, giving him musical ideas and producing his Tannhäuser at the Weimar Opera House. We see an image of Berlioz's Fantastic Symphony, an autobiographical work about the composer's obsessive love for a beautiful woman. We view The Death of Mozart by Charles E. Chambers. We read about the haughty, domineering Handel, painted in his powdered wig and court costume, sword at his side, who wept bitter tears while composing "He was despised and rejected of men" from the Messiah, and who was himself rejected by his chosen love. We witness his inspiration for his E minor fugue, later christened the "Fire Fugue," which expresses the composer's passionate love and anger. These are but a few of the gems of biography, aesthetic commentary, and artistic vision in The Steinway Collection: Paintings of Great Composers, with essays by James Huneker. - Jacket flap.