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When Words Fail: A Life with Music, War and Peace
Can music make the world a better place? Can it really 'belong' to anyone? Can the magic, mystery and incertitude of music - of the human brain meeting or making sound - can it stop wars, rehabilitate the broken, unite, educate or inspire? From Jimi Hendrix playing 'Machine Gun' at The Isle of Wight Festival in 1970 to the Bataclan under siege in 2015, Ed Vulliamy has lived the music, met the legends, and asked, when words fail, might we turn to music? There's only one way to find out, and that is to listen...
- GenresMusic
540 pages, Kindle Edition
Published September 13, 2018
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
June 10, 2019
In 500 densely written pages Ed Vulliamy reflects on his life as a war correspondent "and how music – from Sarajevo to the Paris attacks – can reveal truths when words fail."
I speed read the passages concerning his enthusiasms for the sorts of non-classical music I don't have much experience of and I couldn't face some of his experiences as a war correspondent in various parts of the world, as a result of which he describes himself as suffering, literally, from "shellshock". As a resident of a nearby part of NY, Vulliamy witnessed the fall of the Twin Towers and the aftermath at close quarters and gives raw details I had been unaware of.
Highlights for me:
Shostakovich and his position as a composer during Stalin's reign receive many interesting pages. Vulliamy records his interactions with survivors (of the Leningrad Radio Orchestra) and the famous performance of Shostakovich's 7th Symphony in August 1942
Music in Terezín (Theresienstadt) and the profoundly musicality of the mass-murderer Hans Frank.
Wagner and the intense positive and negative reactions to his music.
Conversations with Daniel Baremboim and with Palestinian members of the West-Eastern Divan orchestra (a project of Baremboim and Edward Said).
I was drawn to attempt this book by learning that Vulliamy was going to write about Schubert! and a performance of Winterreise by Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis!. Even better, Paul Lewis shares with the author some of his thoughts on interpreting Schubert. And deplores Brexit.
I speed read the passages concerning his enthusiasms for the sorts of non-classical music I don't have much experience of and I couldn't face some of his experiences as a war correspondent in various parts of the world, as a result of which he describes himself as suffering, literally, from "shellshock". As a resident of a nearby part of NY, Vulliamy witnessed the fall of the Twin Towers and the aftermath at close quarters and gives raw details I had been unaware of.
Highlights for me:
Shostakovich and his position as a composer during Stalin's reign receive many interesting pages. Vulliamy records his interactions with survivors (of the Leningrad Radio Orchestra) and the famous performance of Shostakovich's 7th Symphony in August 1942
Music in Terezín (Theresienstadt) and the profoundly musicality of the mass-murderer Hans Frank.
Wagner and the intense positive and negative reactions to his music.
Conversations with Daniel Baremboim and with Palestinian members of the West-Eastern Divan orchestra (a project of Baremboim and Edward Said).
I was drawn to attempt this book by learning that Vulliamy was going to write about Schubert! and a performance of Winterreise by Mark Padmore and Paul Lewis!. Even better, Paul Lewis shares with the author some of his thoughts on interpreting Schubert. And deplores Brexit.
Displaying 1 of 1 review