Weekend reading: 5 books about music and musicians
“Talking about music is like dancing about architecture” - Frank Zappa
It seems that music and literature really have little in common - these are different mediums with which they need to interact in different ways. At the same time, there are formal factors that unite them: there are books for fun and easy reading and music for slow and thoughtful listening, and vice versa. Books can tell a lot about the time of their writing, historical context, the author and his biography - music is also capable of that.
And sometimes they can enhance each other’s qualities. In books, music can become an artistic device, a defining characteristic of a hero, a background that sets a mood, a plot frame, or even a principle for organizing a text. Today we decided to share a selection of books about music and musicians - very different and different from each other.
Maxime Auger CC Photo
Little Vernon Drey surrounds himself with the world of fantasy, in which the Beast plays a big role - a large old grand piano. The music seems to him noisy, unfinished, empty. Only with age does he understand that music can be “checked with algebra”, supplemented with sounds not heard before. Adult Dray becomes a talented composer, who has a great and bright future.
Mary Westmacott is not Agatha Christie. The books written by the detective master under a pseudonym have a completely different language and structure for the novel. This is a sentimental novel, where the form fades into the background, on the first - the tragedy of human life and the greed of talent, which subordinates everything else to itself, leaving no choice. Sounds permeates the story - the harmony of the piano, the sound of glass, the creak of metal. But what price did the heroes have to pay for it?
Ridiculous and sad, simple and complex, sentimental and absurdist romance - a parody of reality or a life-turning metaphor?
Hero Colin is a young rake who lives on the dubious money of his family. He has mechanisms that give him everything he needs: even the “sheikorol”, which makes cocktails, if you play the right melody on it. He marries the girl Chloe, who suddenly begins to die from some kind of illness, and with it the world of Colin darkens and shrinks.
Often, Foam of Days is compared to jazz - here is a ragged pace, absurd gaiety, vulgarity and depth, which add up to a beautiful and disturbing musical poetics.
Based on the book, the film was shot - the soundtrack reflects well the text of the novel by Vian.
Photo of Bhavna Sayana CC
The famous Andrew Lloyd Webber musical is based on a novel written by Gaston Leroux - the author of famous police detectives and the first story in his genre about "murder in a closed room" - "Secrets of the Yellow Room".
In general, the plot is known to everyone, but this is a Gothic novel with its own characteristics. A huge role here is played by the edition of the Paris National Opera, which creates claustrophobia and inflates mystical horror. Heroes are immersed in intrigue, they are emotional and subject to many horrors, and their feelings are brought to the extreme. Romance is a secondary sensation of horror, murder and mysterious blood stains.
At the same time, this is the case when music based on the book from modernity complements the classical text.
The collection includes 26 stories and one play by writers from around the world: Hermann Hesse, Karel Čapek, Theophilus Gautier, George Bradshaw, Somerset Maugham, John Updike, Patrick Suskind, and others. The title of the compilation is the date of the novel by James Baldwin. The most varied texts of very different authors from all over the world united a common theme, passing through the collection in a red line - the fate of music and the fate of a musician who decided to dedicate her life to it.
The novel about music and books is complex and multi-level. The main character is a linguist and philosopher Adria Ardevol, who is ready to sacrifice much for the violin with a mysterious story. He remembers his life, but his memory and big mind are eaten away by illness.
In the center of the novel is an antique shop and the old famous violin of Storioni. Insanity at the object of art forces the hero to make terrible decisions. So terrible is confronted with the beautiful - a wonderful instrument is capable of producing great music, but it is surrounded by false and lowly values: greed and evil.
Our cultural and historical rubric - additional reading:
It seems that music and literature really have little in common - these are different mediums with which they need to interact in different ways. At the same time, there are formal factors that unite them: there are books for fun and easy reading and music for slow and thoughtful listening, and vice versa. Books can tell a lot about the time of their writing, historical context, the author and his biography - music is also capable of that.
And sometimes they can enhance each other’s qualities. In books, music can become an artistic device, a defining characteristic of a hero, a background that sets a mood, a plot frame, or even a principle for organizing a text. Today we decided to share a selection of books about music and musicians - very different and different from each other.
Maxime Auger CC Photo“The Bread of the Giants” by Mary Westmacott (also known as Agatha Christie) - that great talent is not only a gift, but also a sacrifice
Little Vernon Drey surrounds himself with the world of fantasy, in which the Beast plays a big role - a large old grand piano. The music seems to him noisy, unfinished, empty. Only with age does he understand that music can be “checked with algebra”, supplemented with sounds not heard before. Adult Dray becomes a talented composer, who has a great and bright future.
Mary Westmacott is not Agatha Christie. The books written by the detective master under a pseudonym have a completely different language and structure for the novel. This is a sentimental novel, where the form fades into the background, on the first - the tragedy of human life and the greed of talent, which subordinates everything else to itself, leaving no choice. Sounds permeates the story - the harmony of the piano, the sound of glass, the creak of metal. But what price did the heroes have to pay for it?
As it is written: ... it seemed to him that it was more than sound. See and hear became one - the bends and spirals of sound, up, above and up again.
"Foam Days", Boris Vian - a jazz novel
Ridiculous and sad, simple and complex, sentimental and absurdist romance - a parody of reality or a life-turning metaphor?
Hero Colin is a young rake who lives on the dubious money of his family. He has mechanisms that give him everything he needs: even the “sheikorol”, which makes cocktails, if you play the right melody on it. He marries the girl Chloe, who suddenly begins to die from some kind of illness, and with it the world of Colin darkens and shrinks.
Often, Foam of Days is compared to jazz - here is a ragged pace, absurd gaiety, vulgarity and depth, which add up to a beautiful and disturbing musical poetics.
Based on the book, the film was shot - the soundtrack reflects well the text of the novel by Vian.
As it is written: There are only two things in the world for which life is worth living: love for beautiful girls, whatever it is, but New Orleans jazz or Duke Ellington. Everything else would be better to disappear from the face of the earth, because all the rest is one deformity.
Photo of Bhavna Sayana CC
"The Phantom of the Opera" Gaston Leroux - read and look for discrepancies with the popular musical
The famous Andrew Lloyd Webber musical is based on a novel written by Gaston Leroux - the author of famous police detectives and the first story in his genre about "murder in a closed room" - "Secrets of the Yellow Room".
In general, the plot is known to everyone, but this is a Gothic novel with its own characteristics. A huge role here is played by the edition of the Paris National Opera, which creates claustrophobia and inflates mystical horror. Heroes are immersed in intrigue, they are emotional and subject to many horrors, and their feelings are brought to the extreme. Romance is a secondary sensation of horror, murder and mysterious blood stains.
At the same time, this is the case when music based on the book from modernity complements the classical text.
As it is written: Music has the magic power to eliminate everything in the outside world, except for the sounds that penetrate right into the heart.
"Blues Sonny" - a collection of stories and stories about music and musicians
The collection includes 26 stories and one play by writers from around the world: Hermann Hesse, Karel Čapek, Theophilus Gautier, George Bradshaw, Somerset Maugham, John Updike, Patrick Suskind, and others. The title of the compilation is the date of the novel by James Baldwin. The most varied texts of very different authors from all over the world united a common theme, passing through the collection in a red line - the fate of music and the fate of a musician who decided to dedicate her life to it.
As it is written: But even in the evening, during the story of Mozart's wife, Eugene was seized by a vague anxiety for the one whose charming image captivated her imagination; this deep-seated foreboding haunted her all the time of Mozart's play, despite the irresistible charm of music and the mysterious horror that she evoked; Finally, Eugene was struck and shocked by the fact that he, speaking of himself, involuntarily expressed the same fears.
It became clear to her, it was extremely clear that this man would quickly and inevitably burn in his own flame, that he could only be a fleeting inhabitant of our planet, because for Earth the flow of such generously squandered gifts would truly be too powerful.
- Edward Merike, “Mozart on the way to Prague”
"I Confess" Jaume Cabre - a bizarre human memory and nervous violin loss
The novel about music and books is complex and multi-level. The main character is a linguist and philosopher Adria Ardevol, who is ready to sacrifice much for the violin with a mysterious story. He remembers his life, but his memory and big mind are eaten away by illness.
In the center of the novel is an antique shop and the old famous violin of Storioni. Insanity at the object of art forces the hero to make terrible decisions. So terrible is confronted with the beautiful - a wonderful instrument is capable of producing great music, but it is surrounded by false and lowly values: greed and evil.
As it is written: If you touch the beauty of art, life changes. It is worth hearing Monteverdi Choir - life is changing. Worth seeing Vermeer close - life is changing. It is worth reading Proust - and you are not the same as you were before. I just do not know why.
Our cultural and historical rubric - additional reading:
- “Minute Sound Studies”: on the cultural sense of sound
- "Wall": remember the legendary album Pink Floyd
- "Unsinkable SoundCloud": from the idea to the 10th anniversary of the project
- "Sound in the Museum" - industrial design and creative experiments
- "Eight Beats": about sounds in old games
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/410375/