Write All These Down: Essays on Music

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Write All These Down: Essays on Music Details

From the Inside Flap "Rarely does one encounter in a single volume such a masterful and graceful display of intellectual virtuosity. Kerman's skill in illuminating musical texts, interpreting meaning, and fashioning historical insights vindicates his reputation as one of the few genuinely significant figures of our time in the study of music. The authoritative range, clarity, and elegance of the essays in this book make it both indispensable and delightful."—Leon Botstein, Director, American Symphony Orchestra"Reading through the book is a bit like being invited to dinner with a good number of old friends, some acquaintances good to get to know a bit better, and a few strangers definitely worth meeting for the first time. Above all there is the host, willing to be expansive on what many of the people in the room have meant to him in the course of his varied life. It is invidious to deliver judgment: one simply feels honored to be there."—John Deathridge, co-author of The New Grove Wagner"Joseph Kerman has in recent years become a kind of bellwether for musicological writing, one who has offered the discipline various kinds of programmatic challenges and then shown us how to meet them. He presents—in essay after essay—exactly the kind of music criticism he has been urging us all to write. There are so many examples of graceful, insightful, humane, even funny ways to get 'out of analysis' and into understanding musical meaning."—Ruth Solie, editor of Musicology and Difference Read more From the Back Cover "Rarely does one encounter in a single volume such a masterful and graceful display of intellectual virtuosity. Kerman's skill in illuminating musical texts, interpreting meaning, and fashioning historical insights vindicates his reputation as one of the few genuinely significant figures of our time in the study of music. The authoritative range, clarity, and elegance of the essays in this book make it both indispensable and delightful." (Leon Botstein, Director, American Symphony Orchestra) Read more About the Author Joseph Kerman is Professor of Music at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a founding editor of the journal 19th-Century Music and author of several books, most recently Contemplating Music (1986). Read more

Reviews

This collection of essays written by the late professor and writer Joseph Kerman is organized into four thematic sections:- Criticism - four essays on musicology, analysis, critics and the classics- Byrd, Tallis, Alfonso Ferrabosco - essays on the composers Byrd and his contemporaries- Beethoven - four essays on Beethoven and his music- Opera and Concerto - essays on Mozart's Magic Flute, Don Giovanni and his Piano Concertos; Wagner and VerdiKerman was Professor Emeritus of Musicology at my alma mater, the University of California, Berkeley (I did not study music). He is perhaps best known for his 1985 book Contemplating Music: Challenges to Musicology which was described by Philip Brett in The Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians as "a defining moment in the field" (ref: wikipedia article on Joseph Kerman). This collection was published at about the same time as he retired as chairman of the music department at Berkeley in 1994.These essays were written over the course of Kerman's life and represent a selection from the 1960's through the time of the publication of this collection. This is not complete; he mentions in the introduction that he had published some twenty-odd articles and reviews in the Hudson Review between 1949 and 1965, two of which are included here.My early samplings of these essays has been limited, and I am finding them interesting if at times quite challenging for someone not educated in musical theory or history. I think that this collection will be of greatest interest to those with a stronger background in music than I personally have, but I will keep this on the bookshelf and refer to it when I'm listening to some of the music he writes about.

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