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Music: Healing the Rift
The word 'music' in the early 21st century means many things. It means Mozart in the elevator, 50s pop songs on TV adverts, Finnish folk songs on Nokia 'phones. It means inflammatory Serbian nationalist song, ancient Coptic Church chant, Berlin electronica, Wynton Marsalis.
Given this bewildering abundance, how we can speak of a single thing called 'music'? This book will argue that we can. More than that, it will argue that a vast area of cultural practice is at risk of vanishing behind the deafening roar of all those dead simulations of music that fill the airwaves.
In this passionately argued and convincing book Ivan Hewett re-claims the unique place of music should have in our culture in its own right.
Given this bewildering abundance, how we can speak of a single thing called 'music'? This book will argue that we can. More than that, it will argue that a vast area of cultural practice is at risk of vanishing behind the deafening roar of all those dead simulations of music that fill the airwaves.
In this passionately argued and convincing book Ivan Hewett re-claims the unique place of music should have in our culture in its own right.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 2004
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June 21, 2008
Ivan Hewett's 2003 book MUSIC: Healing the Rift is a collection of musings on the place of modern classical music in a marketplace which ignores it. Hewett has been involved in classical music in the UK for three decades, as a composer, festival organizer and recently a critic for the Daily Telegraph. While he has a vast knowledge of the repertoire and the personalities of new music, bringing some enjoyable trivia to the book, I found MUSIC: Healing the Rift to be disappointing.
The interesting proposition with which Hewett opens and closes the book is that new music is useful to the public because, far from being some elite art hermetically sealed off in academia, it proves a basis for discussion of popular music and has already went through many of the changes which popular genres have experienced. Even as popular artists criticize the art music tradition, their rhetoric is full of terminology derived from it. Far from perpetuating a divide between art music and popular music, we should see the two as a coherent whole.
Unfortunately, between the opening and closing chapters, Hewett basically writes whatever comes to mind. These observations are sometimes interesting, but all too often one feels that he isn't making any kind of clear point. I love all the modernist composers he brings up, but the book became tedious to read.
The interesting proposition with which Hewett opens and closes the book is that new music is useful to the public because, far from being some elite art hermetically sealed off in academia, it proves a basis for discussion of popular music and has already went through many of the changes which popular genres have experienced. Even as popular artists criticize the art music tradition, their rhetoric is full of terminology derived from it. Far from perpetuating a divide between art music and popular music, we should see the two as a coherent whole.
Unfortunately, between the opening and closing chapters, Hewett basically writes whatever comes to mind. These observations are sometimes interesting, but all too often one feels that he isn't making any kind of clear point. I love all the modernist composers he brings up, but the book became tedious to read.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review