Hymns to the Silence: Inside the Words and Music of Van Morrison

by Peter Mills

Hymns to the Silence is a thoroughly informed and enlightened study of the art of a pop music maverick that will delight fans the world over. In 1991, Van Morrison said, Music is spiritual, the music business isn't. Peter Mills' groundbreaking book investigates the oppositions and harmonies within the work of Van Morrison, proceeding from this identified starting point. Hymns to the Silence is a detailed investigative study of Morrison as singer, performer, lyricist, musician and writer with particular attention paid throughout to the contradictions and tensions that are central to any understanding of his work as a whole. The book takes several intriguing angles. It looks at Morrison as a writer, specifically as an Irish writer who has recorded musical settings of Yeats poems, collaborated with Seamus Heaney, Paul Durcan and Gerald Dawe, and who regularly drops quotes from James Joyce and Samuel Beckett into his live performances. It looks at him as a singer, at how he uses his voice as an interpretive instrument. And there are chapters on his use of mythology, on his stage performances, and on his continuing fascination with America and its musical forms.

Genres: Music

448 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 1, 2008

Reviews

[Paul Starkey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is most unusual - a really thorough and quite intellectual book about a popular music star. It goes into remarkable depth as to the music of Van Morrison and equally so into his influences. Many of the recordings studied in the book were unknown to me before I read it and I've tracked most of these down now, or am trying to. It's quite a complex book but once you get into the rhythm of it and get used to the scholarly style then it reveals all sorts of amazing things about the music and where Van Morrison got it from, going right back to the blues and jazz. A real education, and not your typical pop star biog/review at all.

[Kim · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is for only for musicologist. I was interested in the artist and writer in more bigraphical way, and this was not biography. Far too technical for me. One page was devoted to Van's tour de force rendition of Caravan at the Band's farewell concert captured by Martin Scorsese in The Last Waltz and that was a great read. However, there was far too much to wade through for that nugget.