Johannes Brahms (Getting to Know the World's Greatest Composers)

Rating:
Summary: The story of the musician who wrote that famous lullaby
Review: This look at Johannes Brahms for the Getting to Know the World's Greatest Composers series is one of Mike Venezia's better efforts at providing not only an entertaining juvenile biography but also an attempt at music appreciation. Unlike his volumes in the Getting to Know the World's Greatest Artists series, where examples of great paintings could be included in the volume, here the author-cartoonist can only mention Brahms's most famous compositions such as "Wiegenlied" (a.k.a. Brahms's Lullaby), Violin Concerto in D Minor, and the Academic Festival Overture. However, this volume, more than the others in the series I have read to date, manages to work in a goodly number of such examples, many of which you can find on a decent collection of the greatest "hits" of Johannes Brahms. I strongly recommend that no child read a biography of a great musician such as this (Brahms was one of the three B's, along with Bach and Beethoven) without having listened to the music before, after, and even during their reading of this book. Venezia includes his normal entertaining cartoons reflecting key moments in the life of Brahms, but in addition to the biographical details there is also more of an effort in this offering to talk about the type of music Brahms wrote and where it fit in with that of his contemporaries. Other volumes in the World's Greatest Composers series cover not only such giants of classical music as Handel and Mozart, but also more contemporary composers like Aaron Copland, Duke Ellington, and the Beatles.