BOOKS FOR CHRISTMAS

CLASSICAL

Tortured geniuses, autocratic conductors, temperamental divas: these 19th-century emblems remain dear to our understanding of music. If the symptoms change, the malady lingers on: where the 19th century got composers wracked with syphilitic dementia and consumption, we get the violinist formerly known as Nigel Kennedy.

Kennedy's eccentricities pale into normality beside those of Glenn Gould, the Canadian pianist who died at the age of 50 in 1982. Peter Ostwald's biography Glenn Gould (Norton pounds 20) is subtitled "the ecstasy and tragedy of genius", although it's not as overheated as that suggests. Ostwald knew Gould well, but this is not simply an account of friendship. As founder of the Health Programme for Performing Artists, Ostwald is concerned with the relationship between extreme talent (genius if you will), and the physical and psychological abnormalities that may, and in Gould's case certainly did accompany it. This sometimes leads him to a comforting causality: because this, then that happened, Gould turned out the way he did. Still Ostwald skilfully blends biography, personal memory (Ostwald's and others') and, what may be the weakest element, musical criticism.

If it doesn't make Gould attractive, no matter. With A Genius in the Family (Chatto pounds 16.99), Hilary and Piers du Pre likewise add darker hues to the familiar rosy images of their sister, Jacqueline du Pre. Each takes a turn telling the story, although Hilary, eldest of the three, dominates. Both resent everyone's interest in Jackie, Hilary most pointedly, as a talented musician never quite good enough to escape Jackie's shadow. There's a scene (extraordinary because it is so underplayed) when Jackie joins Hilary and husband in bed and does "her best to arouse him". Hilary's hand pushes Jackie's aside, Jackie tries again; and nobody says a word. When adultery occurs, repeatedly, it's more as therapy for depressed genius than from unbridled lust. What the du Pres reveal is a very English middle-class family in crisis, often very movingly, as when, towards the end, Jackie suffers the last stages of multiple sclerosis while Mum develops cancer of the womb and Dad succumbs to Parkinson's Disease. The book is often hard to read because it's simultaneously long-winded and buttoned-up. At this point it's hard to read for entirely different reasons.

In her aria "Vissi d'arte", Puccini's Tosca reminds us how futile it is to live for art: but what choice has she? According to David Bret in Maria Callas: The Tigress and the Lamb (Robson pounds 18.95), "Vissi d'arte" is Callas's "personal credo still, two decades after her death". His star- struck biography defends Callas against all comers, particularly critics who don't display unquestioning love. This is biography as back-stabbing, in-fighting and up-staging: Elsa Maxwell is a horrendously unattractive but all-powerful lesbian socialite scandalmonger"; Ari Onassis calls Aly Khan "that tenor faggot" and "the horse fucker". There are at least 15 books in English on Callas. Bret has surely read them all. The authentic fanzine gush is amplified by shabby proof-reading: among the errors that creep (or gallop) in are Puccini's Manson Lescaut and the name Catalani mis-spelt two different ways in eight lines.

A more temperate approach to the opera singer's art is found in Placido Domingo by Cornelius Schnauber (Robson pounds 18.95): but then Domingo is altogether more temperate than Callas. Schnauber, German Diction Coach at Los Angeles Music Centre where Domingo is artistic consultant, has observed the singer at close quarters, and is at pains to describe his particular colourations and tropes, not least problems singing in German. This is less biography than an anatomy of a great performer's art and craft. It's not short on admiration, but it also makes room for unblinkered assessment.

We might hope for such assessment from Solti on Solti (Chatto pounds 20) and The Autobiography of Joan Sutherland (Weidenfeld pounds 20), but both autobiographies cry out for ghostwriters. Sutherland tells more about dentists and hairdressers than about singing and opera: a friend who's seen plenty of sopranos in mufti suggests that inside every diva a suburban housewife struggles to emerge. Sutherland seems to confirm it.

Solti's memoir is more pointed, and is best on the conductor's career before and during World War Two, when he fled his native Hungary and took up reluctant residence in Switzerland. His contempt for that country's willingness to send Jews on their way, and to certain death, remained undiminished, while his own treatment of his family, especially his father, haunted him until his death: more than once he says "I have never forgiven myself". Yet the musical opinions are unfailingly middle-of-the-road, even in encounters with Strauss, Bartk and Stravinsky. The most intriguing revelation is that he once tried to persuade Callas to sing Berg's Lulu. "What's Lulu?" she asked.

After these unbrief lives, it's a relief to turn to Charles Rosen's The Classical Style (Faber pounds 25), first published in 1971. In a new preface Rosen admits "I feel as if it had been written by someone with whom I am only distantly acquainted." The last 25 years have seen major revisions in our opinions of his subjects, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven: Haydn is now more readily granted equal status; Mozart is widely preferred to Beethoven. Yet what's often valuable is the chance to argue with Rosen's 1971 self: when he asserts that Mozart's opera La Clemenza di Tito is "a work of exquisite grace and rarely redeemed dullness", or that there is "nothing wrong with the conventions of opera seria, provided that they appear within the framework of comic opera". Nor does Rosen stick to the printed page: the book includes a CD of the author performing two Beethoven piano sonatas. This offers a perfect opportunity to read, listen, learn and enjoy: everything you could ask of a music book, and not a word about tortured genius.