Music Lessons
$29.99
Seven Composers and What They Taught Me
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Description
From the bestselling author of How Shostakovich Changed My Mind comes a new book about the cathartic power of music.
From the bestselling author of How Shostakovich Changed My Mind comes a new book about the cathartic power of music.
For Stephen Johnson, there have been key points in his life when music that is considered ‘dark’ has confronted him with life-changing insights. Some of these insights have been hard to accept, but once accepted, all have opened up new possibilities of thinking, feeling and living. Through an exploration of seven pieces, including Anton Bruckner’s ‘Symphony No 8’, Lili Boulanger’s Du fond de l’abime (Psalm 130), Jean Sibelius’s ‘Symphony No 5’ and David Bowie’s ‘I Can’t give Everything Away’, Johnson explores the lives and the intentions of the composers who created them, and how they have affected him personally.
Reviews
'This
compassionate, wise and affecting little book will remind you to keep
listening and to dismiss no music outright, however well you think you
know it.' * Gramophone * 'Zig-zagging through time, Johnson stitches his own autobiography into Bach, Lili Boulanger, Beethoven and others . . .This is not a "listening to the piece of music made me better book" - and it is stronger for it. Instead, Johnson balances musicology with something bigger - how to live.' * BBC Music * 'This book, in seven essays on individual pieces or parts of them by the composers Bruckner, Rachmaninoff, Bach, Lili Boulanger, Wagner, Sibelius, and Beethoven, tells the story of Johnson's redemption through music and love. He makes no apology for the amount of personal detail he reveals. In fact, this is the point of the book and what gives it its extraordinary power.' -- Nick Holmes * Nick-Holmes-Music.com *
