by Clara Schumann, the fellow composer who had great affection for her friend (the feeling was reciprocal, although the relationship probably remained platonic). The letter is illuminating because it shows how much Schumann advised Brahms on his scores, with detailed (and gentle) suggestions: “In the C major piece I wish you would use the charming opening phrase again at the repeat, it would not be difficult, would it?” Schumann’s husband, Robert, is also in the anthology. In an 1830 letter to his mother, the future composer expresses his reluctance to pursue a legal career: “My life has been for twenty years one long struggle between poetry and prose, or, let us say, music and law.” Seems he made the right choice. Dozens of other musicians are included\u003B the range is broad, if focused on Western artists. We hear from Giuseppe Verdi, Woody Guthrie, John Coltrane, Leonard Bernstein, Amy Winehouse, and Nick Cave. In a foreword, David Pickard writes that “despite their genius, great artists are real people”—even, apparently, when addressing royalty. “My glorious and dearly beloved King,” Richard Wagner gushes in a letter to Ludwig II of Bavaria. In his short communication, the composer proceeds, like any modern\u002Dday fanboy, to use no fewer than 11 exclamation marks."
![Cover of LGBTQ America Today [3 volumes]](https://covers.openlibrary.org/b/isbn/0313339902-S.jpg)
