Caruso's Mustache Off: and Other Writings about Music and Musicians

Before Carl Van Vechten's later careers--as the first dance critic in America, as a best-selling novelist during the Jazz Age of the Twenties, as the leading white champion of African American arts and letters, and as a celebrity photographer--he was Assistant Music Critic for the New York Times (1906-13). Subsequently, he wrote seven volumes of lively and often audacious essays on musical subjects. He was first to offer serious assessments of the music of Igor Stravinsky, Erik Satie, Georg...