Herbert Weinstock

Weinstock was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He briefly attended the University of Chicago but left to start his own a bookstore. After running the bookstore for three years, he moved to New York City. He published his first books on music in 1939 and 1941, Men of Music: Their Lives, Times, and Achievements and The Opera, a History of its Creation and Performance, both co-authored with Wallace Brockway (1905–1972). Weinstock and Brockway had been close friends since their time as students at the University of Chicago.[3][4][5]

Weinstock became the music editor for Alfred A. Knopf in 1943 and remained associated with that publishing house for the remainder of his career, apart from a period between 1959 and 1963 when he worked for Doubleday and Macmillan.[4] In 1943 he also published the first of his composer biographies, Tchaikovsky. It was followed by Handel (1946), Chopin: The Man and His Music (1949), Donizetti and the World of Opera in Italy, Paris and Vienna in the first half of the Nineteenth Century (1963) and Rossini (1968). His last biography, Vincenzo Bellini: His Life and His Operas was published shortly after his death in 1971 and was the first, full‐length critical biography of Bellini in English.[4]

From the early 1930s Weinstock had been a friend, champion, and chronicler of the Mexican composer Carlos Chávez. He wrote a lengthy analysis of his music for The Musical Quarterly in 1936 and translated his Hacia una nueva música: ensayo sobre música y electricidad into English for publication by Norton in 1937. He also wrote the notes to a series of concerts given by Chávez at New York's Museum of Modern Art in 1940 and the biography for the catalogue of Chávez works published by the Pan American Union in 1944.[6]

Weinstock died in New York City at the age of 65 following an operation. At the time of his death he was working on a biography of Gluck. In his review of Weinstock's Bellini biography, Alan Rich wrote that his qualities as a biographer "combined the story‐teller's gift with an enthusiasm for great works of art that made Weinstock the envy of all who knew him." He also wrote that as the music editor at Knopf, Weinstock "was responsible for guiding into print some of the best, most readable and most important writing about music" that the 20th century had produced.[4][2]

The Herbert Weinstock Collection at the New York Public Library contains professional and personal papers, letters, and memorabilia belonging to Weinstock, members of his family, and Weinstock's long-time companion, Ben Meiselman.[1][lower-alpha 1] Meiselman, who died in 1989, also donated a large collection of Weinstock's scores and music books to the music department of Bar-Ilan University.[8]

In addition to his books and translations, Weinstock was a music critic for The Saturday Review, The New York Times, and from 1966 for the British journal Opera. He also contributed over 300 articles on music to the Encyclopedia Americana as well as numerous notes for recordings and concert programs.[1]

• Weinstock, Herbert (1966). "Speaking of Musical Biography". Notes, Second Series, Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 861-871 (subscription required)