Harvey Sachs (born June 8, 1946 in Cleveland, Ohio) is an American-Canadian writer who has written books on musical subjects. He has been a member of the Curtis Institute of Music faculty since 2009.

Writing

His books include biographies of and a book of essays on the Italian conductor Arturo Toscanini, plus an edited collection of Toscanini's letters. Ten Masterpieces of Music deals with works in ten different genres by ten different composers: Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Schumann, Berlioz, Verdi, Brahms, Sibelius, Prokofiev, and Stravinsky; it provides descriptive analyses of the ten compositions plus commentary on and historical background to the life of each composer (Ten Masterpieces of Music, New York: Liveright, 2021). Sachs has also written books on musical virtuosi, a history of music in Italy during the fascist period, a biography of Arthur Rubinstein, and a book on Beethoven's Ninth Symphony that is part cultural history, part musical description, and part personal memoir: He has written Schoenberg: Why He Matters, an interpretive biography, which was published by Liveright, New York, in 2023. It was reviewed by composer John Adams. Sachs also co-authored the memoirs of Plácido Domingo and Sir Georg Solti: Sachs has written pieces for periodicals that include The New Yorker, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Times [London] Literary Supplement, Il Sole 24 Ore, and La Stampa; and record companies that include Deutsche Grammophon and RCA/Sony Classics.

Work

From 2011 to 2013 Sachs was the Leonard Bernstein Scholar-in-Residence of the New York Philharmonic.