An Evening of Brahms

by Richard Sennett

222p hardback, navy cloth with white jacket, like new condition, minimal wear to jacket edges, binding tight, all pages clear and bright, excellent copy of the first edition with virtually no sign of use

Genres: Music

Paperback

Published January 1, 1984

About the author

Richard Sennett has explored how individuals and groups make social and cultural sense of material facts -- about the cities in which they live and about the labour they do. He focuses on how people can become competent interpreters of their own experience, despite the obstacles society may put in their way. His research entails ethnography, history, and social theory. As a social analyst, Mr. Sennett continues the pragmatist tradition begun by William James and John Dewey.

His first book, The Uses of Disorder, [1970] looked at how personal identity takes form in the modern city. He then studied how working-class identities are shaped in modern society, in The Hidden Injuries of Class, written with Jonathan Cobb. [1972] A study of the public realm of cities, The Fall of Public Man, appeared in 1977; at the end of this decade of writing, Mr. Sennett sought to account the philosophic implications of this work in Authority [1980].

At this point he took a break from sociology, composing three novels: The Frog who Dared to Croak [1982], An Evening of Brahms [1984] and Palais Royal [1987]. He then returned to urban studies with two books, The Conscience of the Eye, [1990], a work focusing on urban design, and Flesh and Stone [1992], a general historical study of how bodily experience has been shaped by the evolution of cities.

In the mid 1990s, as the work-world of modern capitalism began to alter quickly and radically, Mr. Sennett began a project charting its personal consequences for workers, a project which has carried him up to the present day. The first of these studies, The Corrosion of Character, [1998] is an ethnographic account of how middle-level employees make sense of the “new economy.” The second in the series, Respect in a World of Inequality, [2002} charts the effects of new ways of working on the welfare state; a third, The Culture of the New Capitalism, [2006] provides an over-view of change. Most recently, Mr. Sennett has explored more positive aspects of labor in The Craftsman [2008], and in Together: The Rituals, Pleasures and Politics of Cooperation [2012].

Reviews

[Dominic H · Rating 3 out of 5]

This might win the prize for the least bad novel which features classical music but sadly doesn't have much else going for it. Unlike say Ian McEwan or even EM Forster who appear not to have the first idea of how to write about music but nevertheless insist on doing so, Sennett had embarked on a career as a professional cellist after studying at the Juillard and so writes about music if not beautifully then clearly and accurately. His opening account of the Brahms C minor Piano Quartet is a very good example. It's instantly evoked if you know the piece and gives you a remarkably good idea of its character even if you don't. The problem is that none of the other fundamentals are satisfactory: the book's story is by turns weak and melodramatic, none of his characters feel real and the dialogue is desparately artificial.

Sennett tried his hand at novel writing in the mid 1980s and then returned to flourishing career as a writer of non fiction thereafter. Indeed I am currently mesmerised by his latest book, 'The Performer'. I don't know what his other two works of fiction are like but based on this one, it was a very good move for an incredibly talented writer who was floundering in the wrong genre.