"Non-artistic" musical reading: memoirs, essays and studies of music
In the last collection of books we talked about fiction, where music became the theme, method or basis for the plot.
Today we turn to other literary areas - collections of essays and reasonings, memoirs, research texts and historical reviews: stories about life and intellectual search, inextricably linked with music.
Photo by Quinn Dombrowski CC
Vladislav Shpilman is a Polish Jew and a talented pianist. In 1945, he wrote a book of memories - about music, about working on Polish radio, about his family, about how the Nazis come to Warsaw, and how life turns upside down and becomes so terrible that it becomes more and more difficult to describe it. But Shpilman succeeds - someone may seem surprising, but his memories are almost devoid of emotions. This is not a book about the Holocaust, not artistic comprehension, but memories, a biography that sounds like any biography sounds - a bit trivial.
Shpilman painfully experiences a break with his art, but it is the music that supports him, not letting go and not allowing him to die early. Vladislav Shpilman really survived and died at the age of 88 years, just shortly before the release in 2002 of the film Roman Polanski's “The Pianist”, based on his memoirs.
Writer, actor, screenwriter and man-orchestra Stephen Fry describes the history of music from a position ... an absolute amateur. At the beginning of the book, the author admits that he is in love with music, but he has absolutely no talent for playing music - this, however, does not prevent him from knowing it perfectly.
His book is not a boring textbook, but also not an artistic understanding of musical history. Fry talks about composers vividly, with humor and with accuracy - when taking them off the pedestal, he describes them as real people influenced by the historical context and many events in their personal and public lives.
There are no detailed biographies and meaningless eulogies, but there are stories representing great composers by ordinary people - about Tchaikovsky's fears or why Berlioz traveled to Paris in a woman's dress. Fry also writes about their works not from a position of knowledge, but from a position of awareness and reflection, offering to listen to them with an “open mind”.
Photo by Jonathan Grado CC
Music producer, journalist, writer Alexander Kushnir wrote a kind of "anthology" of Soviet rock. The book has both historical reviews and unsupported bikes - this is not an encyclopedia, and it does not claim to be objective.
Kushnir wrote about his favorite music, musicians and the musical era - the way he saw and remembered it. Therefore, the experts on the topic may not be enough, and the choice of some albums will seem strange.
At the same time, the book is interesting not only from the point of view of musical horizons, but also as a look at Soviet history through the prism of music — for example, it is interesting to notice how genres, texts and moods of songs have transformed with changes in the political and social situation in the country.
It is believed that in the 20th century the world of music captured jazz, bebop and grunge, but Alex Ross is ready to argue with that - he tells the story of music, which is considered to be classical, and composers who worked in this direction.
About "Next - noise" can not be said that she speaks in simple language about difficult things. The author constantly uses terminology that will be fully understood except for professional musicians, composers or music teachers. For those who just love music or are interested in it, the book will seem like a large and complex report on the huge research work done by the author.
This is a book for slow reading “in the long” - there is both a dramatic plot, defined by history itself (after all, the 20th century), and important cultural and social ideas (for example, why modernism gets rid of harmony - a musical foundation that seemed indestructible ).
The stories of the great composers of the last century and essays about their work are inscribed in the political context - for example, how did the conditions affect the music of totalitarianism or the music of the Iron Curtain? Ross writes about all this deeply and sometimes abstrusely, so the book requires intellectual work from the reader - but it most likely will pay off.
Our historical rubric is additional reading:
Today we turn to other literary areas - collections of essays and reasonings, memoirs, research texts and historical reviews: stories about life and intellectual search, inextricably linked with music.
Photo by Quinn Dombrowski CC
"Pianist. Warsaw Diaries 1939-1945 "Vladislav Shpilman - not" another book about the Holocaust "
Vladislav Shpilman is a Polish Jew and a talented pianist. In 1945, he wrote a book of memories - about music, about working on Polish radio, about his family, about how the Nazis come to Warsaw, and how life turns upside down and becomes so terrible that it becomes more and more difficult to describe it. But Shpilman succeeds - someone may seem surprising, but his memories are almost devoid of emotions. This is not a book about the Holocaust, not artistic comprehension, but memories, a biography that sounds like any biography sounds - a bit trivial.
Shpilman painfully experiences a break with his art, but it is the music that supports him, not letting go and not allowing him to die early. Vladislav Shpilman really survived and died at the age of 88 years, just shortly before the release in 2002 of the film Roman Polanski's “The Pianist”, based on his memoirs.
As it is written: He has long measured time by musical works, as others measure it by hours and days. If a professor wanted to remember something, he always started like this: “Then I played ...” - and when he managed to get his bearings in time, he could let his memory float further to remember something else that is already less significant or more distant.
“The incomplete and definitive history of classical music” by Stephen Fry - British intellectual of a professional intellectual on the world of music
Writer, actor, screenwriter and man-orchestra Stephen Fry describes the history of music from a position ... an absolute amateur. At the beginning of the book, the author admits that he is in love with music, but he has absolutely no talent for playing music - this, however, does not prevent him from knowing it perfectly.
His book is not a boring textbook, but also not an artistic understanding of musical history. Fry talks about composers vividly, with humor and with accuracy - when taking them off the pedestal, he describes them as real people influenced by the historical context and many events in their personal and public lives.
There are no detailed biographies and meaningless eulogies, but there are stories representing great composers by ordinary people - about Tchaikovsky's fears or why Berlioz traveled to Paris in a woman's dress. Fry also writes about their works not from a position of knowledge, but from a position of awareness and reflection, offering to listen to them with an “open mind”.
As it is written: “Well, sir, but now let me introduce you to Antonio Vivaldi, the man who wrote 400 concerts. Or, as Stravinsky said, one concert, which he then repeated 399 times. (Pour this Russian a glass - his opinion is shared by a considerable number of people; and then to say, many Vivaldi concerts sound a few, well ... the same. At least the last 200). "
Photo by Jonathan Grado CC
“100 Soviet rock albums. 1977-1991: 15 years of underground sound recording "Alexander Kushnir - the subjective history of rock
Music producer, journalist, writer Alexander Kushnir wrote a kind of "anthology" of Soviet rock. The book has both historical reviews and unsupported bikes - this is not an encyclopedia, and it does not claim to be objective.
Kushnir wrote about his favorite music, musicians and the musical era - the way he saw and remembered it. Therefore, the experts on the topic may not be enough, and the choice of some albums will seem strange.
At the same time, the book is interesting not only from the point of view of musical horizons, but also as a look at Soviet history through the prism of music — for example, it is interesting to notice how genres, texts and moods of songs have transformed with changes in the political and social situation in the country.
As written: Much better things with live performances. Rock concerts, as a rule, were fighting: amplifiers burned down, self-made guitars broke on the floor. The speakers flew out of the speakers, the audience - from the windows, the administration - from work.
“Next is the noise. Listening to Alex Ross's 20th Century - A Complicated, but Exciting History of Academic Music
It is believed that in the 20th century the world of music captured jazz, bebop and grunge, but Alex Ross is ready to argue with that - he tells the story of music, which is considered to be classical, and composers who worked in this direction.
About "Next - noise" can not be said that she speaks in simple language about difficult things. The author constantly uses terminology that will be fully understood except for professional musicians, composers or music teachers. For those who just love music or are interested in it, the book will seem like a large and complex report on the huge research work done by the author.
This is a book for slow reading “in the long” - there is both a dramatic plot, defined by history itself (after all, the 20th century), and important cultural and social ideas (for example, why modernism gets rid of harmony - a musical foundation that seemed indestructible ).
The stories of the great composers of the last century and essays about their work are inscribed in the political context - for example, how did the conditions affect the music of totalitarianism or the music of the Iron Curtain? Ross writes about all this deeply and sometimes abstrusely, so the book requires intellectual work from the reader - but it most likely will pay off.
As it is written: I became a kind of devilish Parsifal, who is looking not for the Holy Grail, but for a bomb that will blow up the musical world and let all sounds in — sounds that, even today, are still called noise.
Our historical rubric is additional reading:
- Radio plays: very well forgotten old
- Forgotten Formats: Flexible Records
- "Wall": remember the legendary album Pink Floyd
- Minute Sound Studies: on the cultural sense of sound
- Weekend reading: 5 books about music and musicians
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/410543/