Richard Wagner: A Life In MusicBy Martin Geck(University of Chicago Press, 423 pages, $35) THE JUNE 1980 issue of Esquire asked rhetorically on its cover: “Is anyone in America not writing a screenplay?” Similar queries could be posed about present-day Wagneriana: Is anyone in…

Diaries 1924-1933: The Prodigal SonSerge Prokofiev, translated and annotated by Anthony Phillips(Cornell University Press, 1,125 pages, $60) Lina and Serge: The Love and Wars of Lina ProkofievBy Simon Morrison(Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 336 pages, $26) UNTIL RECENTLY, outstanding composer-diarists have been countable on…

Benjamin Britten: A Life in the Twentieth CenturyBy Paul Kildea(Allen Lane, 665 pages, $45) THANKS TO THE CENTENARY of his birth this year, Benjamin Britten–related books are truly gushing from English publishers, what with Neil Powell’s Benjamin Britten: A Life…

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes famously wrote that the best test of truth “is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market…” But today many are turning away from this theory, calling for greater…