Verdi: Man and Musician His Biography with Especial Reference to His English Experiences — Reading Notes

A Biography with a Thesis

The catalog subjects list Verdi simply as an Italian composer, but Crowest's text is far from a neutral account. He repeatedly contrasts Italian and German musical habits, claiming that 'Italians possess neither the industry nor the application requisite to plan and build a vast orchestral conception.' This national-character argument shapes his descriptions of Verdi's instrumental works, which he dismisses as slight. Readers should note that these judgments reflect Crowest's own aesthetic, not necessarily the consensus of Verdi's time. The biography is as much a platform for the author's views on musical culture as it is a record of the composer's life.

English Performances as Evidence

Crowest supports his narrative with excerpts from English newspapers, such as the Illustrated London News report on the 1862 cantata: 'The whole piece was encored, and repeated with increased spirit and effect.' He also mentions that Verdi was 'called for several times' and led forward by singers Mdlle. Titiens and Signor Giuglini. These details ground the biography in contemporary reception, though Crowest does not always explain how these performances connect to Verdi's broader career. The reliance on press accounts suggests that the author valued documentary evidence, even as he filtered it through his own interpretive lens.

The Composer's Early Years in Crowest's Telling

The opening chapters describe Verdi's childhood in Roncole, his fascination with a street organ, and his purchase of a spinet. Crowest notes that Verdi was 'not a musical wonder or show-child' and that his early compositions—'save the symphonies, the tragedies, and quartet music'—are lost, which he considers 'not to be greatly deplored.' This pragmatic tone extends to Verdi's first opera Oberto and his marriage to Margarita Barezzi. The biography moves quickly through these events, using them to establish Verdi's ordinary beginnings before focusing on his later successes and the author's own commentary.

Crowest's Verdi: Man and Musician is best approached as a period piece: a late-Victorian biography that mixes factual reporting with strong editorializing. Readers interested in Verdi's English reception will find useful contemporary sources embedded in the text, but those seeking a balanced life story should supplement this with modern scholarship. The author's voice is ever-present, making the book as revealing about its own era as about its subject.

There’s something touching about how this old biography lingers on Verdi’s English seasons—the polite applause, the foggy trains. It makes me think of its companion volume, The Great German Composers — A Reader’s Guide, and how both books treat music as a matter of national temperament. I suppose we read them less for facts than for that vanished earnestness.