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Distant Melodies: Music in Search of Home
An engaging blend of memoir and music history, Distant Melodies explores the changing ideas of home, displacement, and return through the lives and chamber music of four composers.
How does music played and heard over many years inform one’s sense of home? Writing during the COVID-19 pandemic, when travel is forbidden and distance felt anew, Edward Dusinberre, first violinist of the world-renowned Takács Quartet, searches for answers in the music of composers whose relationships to home shaped the pursuit of their craft—Antonín Dvořák, Edward Elgar, Béla Bartók, and Benjamin Britten.
Dusinberre has lived abroad for three decades. At the age of 21, he left his native England to pursue music studies at the Juilliard School in New York. Three years later he moved to Boulder, Colorado. Drawn to the stories of Dvořák’s, Bartók’s, and Britten’s American sojourns as they tried to reconcile their new surroundings with nostalgia for their homelands, Dusinberre reflects on his own evolving relationship to England and the idea of home. As he visits and imagines some of the places crucial to these composers’ creative inspiration, Dusinberre also reflects on Elgar’s unusual Piano Quintet and the landscapes that inspired it.
Combining travel writing with revealing insights into the working lives of string quartet musicians, Distant Melodies is a moving and humorous meditation on the relationship between music and home.
How does music played and heard over many years inform one’s sense of home? Writing during the COVID-19 pandemic, when travel is forbidden and distance felt anew, Edward Dusinberre, first violinist of the world-renowned Takács Quartet, searches for answers in the music of composers whose relationships to home shaped the pursuit of their craft—Antonín Dvořák, Edward Elgar, Béla Bartók, and Benjamin Britten.
Dusinberre has lived abroad for three decades. At the age of 21, he left his native England to pursue music studies at the Juilliard School in New York. Three years later he moved to Boulder, Colorado. Drawn to the stories of Dvořák’s, Bartók’s, and Britten’s American sojourns as they tried to reconcile their new surroundings with nostalgia for their homelands, Dusinberre reflects on his own evolving relationship to England and the idea of home. As he visits and imagines some of the places crucial to these composers’ creative inspiration, Dusinberre also reflects on Elgar’s unusual Piano Quintet and the landscapes that inspired it.
Combining travel writing with revealing insights into the working lives of string quartet musicians, Distant Melodies is a moving and humorous meditation on the relationship between music and home.
208 pages, Hardcover
Published November 8, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 18, 2026
This book was strange and disappointing.
It was a straight man trying to talk about emotion, and only managing it via talking about music.
There were endless clunky switches between talking re the Takacs Quartet, and the the very interesting theme of "distance" from homeland, with no concept of distance from SELF; in the case of (where it was most jarring):Britten: GAY self; the fact it was never even CONCEIVED of that Britten experienced unrest and inability to settle, or fully inhabit a geographical space, MAY(at least) be have been related to him having been a gay man in a double positionally of being a darling of the establishment and a gayman in an inimical socio-political landscape(he died in 1976).
I thought the chapters on Dvorak(geographical homesicknessness and hiraeth for Czechia being Dvorak's true issues) were both the most emotionally accurate and well-rendered, with some integration of Dvorak's( and the Takacs') music processes and his emotional dislocation; Bartok, as a human, seemed unlocatable, in Dusinberre's faltering account. Elgar, I missed out, because I didn't want to be privy to someone trying to explicate/unentangle a man who wrote utter bombastic colonialist drivel AND some of the most heartfelt music ever...it would have been just too upsetting and excruciating.
I think of Koestenbaum:"The Queens Throat"(1993); this lifts the marriage of music-writing and critical theory and memoir (that Dusinberre seemed to be stabbing at) to a MUCH higher level a degree of emotional wisdom-gay men living fractured lives through the media of opera divas- that a straight man(Dusinberre included) could only dream at.
I want to think music is BEYOND sexual orientation and gender identity; this awkward book tells me this is unlikely; and post-colonial/queer/feminist musicology is a VERY valid field, because it opens up the idea that geography is NOT just place: its a (queer) community, a state of mind, an INNER connection with your tribe; which, yes, can be expressed via music.
It was a straight man trying to talk about emotion, and only managing it via talking about music.
There were endless clunky switches between talking re the Takacs Quartet, and the the very interesting theme of "distance" from homeland, with no concept of distance from SELF; in the case of (where it was most jarring):Britten: GAY self; the fact it was never even CONCEIVED of that Britten experienced unrest and inability to settle, or fully inhabit a geographical space, MAY(at least) be have been related to him having been a gay man in a double positionally of being a darling of the establishment and a gayman in an inimical socio-political landscape(he died in 1976).
I thought the chapters on Dvorak(geographical homesicknessness and hiraeth for Czechia being Dvorak's true issues) were both the most emotionally accurate and well-rendered, with some integration of Dvorak's( and the Takacs') music processes and his emotional dislocation; Bartok, as a human, seemed unlocatable, in Dusinberre's faltering account. Elgar, I missed out, because I didn't want to be privy to someone trying to explicate/unentangle a man who wrote utter bombastic colonialist drivel AND some of the most heartfelt music ever...it would have been just too upsetting and excruciating.
I think of Koestenbaum:"The Queens Throat"(1993); this lifts the marriage of music-writing and critical theory and memoir (that Dusinberre seemed to be stabbing at) to a MUCH higher level a degree of emotional wisdom-gay men living fractured lives through the media of opera divas- that a straight man(Dusinberre included) could only dream at.
I want to think music is BEYOND sexual orientation and gender identity; this awkward book tells me this is unlikely; and post-colonial/queer/feminist musicology is a VERY valid field, because it opens up the idea that geography is NOT just place: its a (queer) community, a state of mind, an INNER connection with your tribe; which, yes, can be expressed via music.
January 5, 2023
A fascinating look at classical music from the inside with in depth looks at the music (and lives) of four composers: Antonin Dvorak, Edward Elgar, Bela Bartok, and Benjamin Britten, from within the prism of of the author’s position of first violinist for Takacs Quartet. And also reflecting how changes in membership of that quartet along with dealing with a much more isolated lifestyle occasioned by Covid has influenced both how he plays as well as how it has changed his approach and appreciation of these composers. Am very glad I picked up a copy of the book after attending a recent concert by the Takacs Quartet here in Portland.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews