Michael Steinberg, 80; critic, writer expanded horizons for music listeners

In his recent memoir, the composer John Adams wrote that “Michael’s ability to render, in beautiful and uncluttered English prose, complex and subtle musical issues set the gold standard for how one communicates about music in words. There is no one, with the possible exception of Donald Francis Tovey, who can write about music with the simplicity, eloquence, and capacity for revelation that Michael possesses.’’

Mr. Steinberg served as the Globe’s classical music critic from 1964 to 1976, and then spent the remaining decades of his career primarily working as a program annotator for ensembles such as the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the San Francisco Symphony, and the New York Philharmonic. Richard Dyer, who in 1976 succeeded Mr. Steinberg as the Globe’s classical music critic, described his predecessor as “the musical conscience of Boston’’ and as “beyond question the most distinguished music critic of his generation.’’

Mr. Steinberg was born into a Jewish family in the German city of Breslau. At age 10, he escaped the Nazi regime on a Kindertransport, a rescue operation for children, and lived in England with an adoptive family. It was there that he first fell under the spell of classical music after seeing Disney’s “Fantasia.’’ He could not afford to see the film twice, so he returned daily to stand in an alley next to the cinema, close enough to overhear Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra performing on the soundtrack.

He later joined his mother and brother in the United States and studied music at Princeton University. In the 1950s, he directed the music history department at the Manhattan School of Music before accepting the position at the Globe.

With barbed pen in hand, he made a memorable debut as a critic. One of his first reviews attacked Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3 as a work “of such unashamed vulgarity. . . that the hearing of it becomes as much as anything a strain on one’s credulity.’’ Early on, he also eviscerated a BSO performance of Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique’’ led by the orchestra’s former music director Charles Munch, calling it “abominable.’’

Within a week’s time, letters began pouring into the Globe, mostly in praise of his work. “Surely,’’ wrote one reader, “not since Virgil Thomson retired as music critic of the New York Herald Tribune, have we witnessed in daily journalism so impressive a combination: musical intelligence, knowledge, sensibility, independence, and taste.’’

Others naturally took to Mr. Steinberg’s skewering of local legends with a bit more defensiveness. “It seems,’’ wrote another reader, “we humble folks have been given a musical Messiah, dedicated to delivering us from our sad delusions. With the righteousness of his 30-odd years, he has come among us to smite our traditional gods, and bathe Boston in a new light of musical truth.’’

If Mr. Steinberg’s criticism had a fierce bite, it also hewed to certain core values. He insisted that musical programs be curated with intelligence and insight and not slapped together willy-nilly, that Baroque performances reflect up-to-date research about how the music sounded in its time, and that contemporary music had an important, salutary place in concert life. His tastes in new music were wide, and he wrote with relish about composers from across the stylistic spectrum, praising the virtuosic braininess of Elliott Carter as well as the hypnotic simplicity of Steve Reich.

Ultimately Mr. Steinberg grew weary of the adversarial relationship to artists that his position created, and he chose to cross the footlights, accepting a job as program annotator of the BSO from 1976 to 1979. He then took up a similar post with the San Francisco Symphony and later several other orchestras.

“He’s the one we have all looked up to,’’ said Marc Mandel, the BSO’s director of program publications. “He set the standard for what a program note should be, and there’s an enormous network of people who feel indebted to him . . . because they’ve been so touched by what he’s written.’’

Mr. Steinberg’s notes were collected into three volumes for Oxford University Press, and even today, scarcely a week of BSO performances goes by without a Steinberg note appearing in the program, often identifiable by its graceful interweaving of biographic nuggets, musical analysis, and wide-ranging literary references.

Program notes can be an insular genre, but in Mr. Steinberg’s hands, a piece of music typically opened out onto the world of its time. He also was unafraid of showing passion when writing about music he truly loved. Describing the angel’s lullaby at the end of Elgar’s grand oratorio, “The Dream of Gerontius,’’ he put aside the analytic voice and penned a simple declarative sentence: “This is what sublime means.’’

In addition to his son Sebastian of Los Angeles, Mr. Steinberg leaves his wife, violinist Jorja Fleezanis of Minneapolis, former concertmaster of the Minnesota Orchestra; another son, Adam of Belmont; and three grandchildren. Funeral services are private.

If Mr. Steinberg as a critic could hold artists to relentlessly high standards, he also could be tough on listeners, insisting that good listening required active engagement. In “For the Love of Music,’’ a book he co-authored with Larry Rothe, he wrote that “great music is something for you to do, not just something for you to pay for and have done to you or for you.’’

He knew that good program notes could help, but only up to a point: “As with any other form of falling in love, no one can do it for you and no one can draw you a map.’’

His own ability to find comfort in music apparently did not waver, and in the final days of his life he listened intensely to Renaissance works (the Requiem and Missa Mi-Mi of the Flemish master Johannes Ockeghem, and songs by the Dutch composer Jacob Obrecht) and to Arvo Part’s “Passio,’’ a contemporary work with an ancient spirit.

“[Music’s] capacity to give is as near to infinite as anything in this world,’’ he wrote in his book, “and . . .what it offers us is always and inescapably in exact proportion to what we ourselves give.’’