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The interests of the British composer Jonathan Harvey arewide and varied, embracing Christianity, Buddhism, eastern and westernphilosophy, aesthetics, science, and mysticism. All affect his musicalthinking and are a part of this unusual and personal book, which isaccompanied by a compact disc featuring works discussed by the author.

Harvey explores aspects of music that he connects with spirituality:self-identity, ambiguity, unity, stasis, and silence. In the course ofhis explorations he offers corroborating statements about music andspirituality from sources ranging from Nietzsche to Oliver Sacks. Thebook and CD include samples of his own music as well as ofcompositions by Mozart, Scriabin, Stockhausen, and others that help toillustrate the profoundness of what Harvey deems "the good listeningexperience."

For Harvey, composing is his way of trying to live a life"skillfully" in the Buddhist sense. In Quest of Spirit is awindow into his creative world and provides a sense of what music canmean at the moment of its inception.

"An important contribution to a deeper understanding of the music ofJonathan Harvey, recognized as one of the leading composers activetoday. In Quest of Spirit offers important analytical guidanceand intriguing interpretive insight into Harvey's compositions."--Kent Nagano, Music Director and Conductor, Halle Orchestra, Opera deLyon, and Berkeley Symphony ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Quite good...if you like this sort of thing...
If you already know and appreciate Jonathan Harvey's music, you willalmost certainly get a great deal out of this book. He gives very specificand revealing explanations of how some of his works came to be and what hehas tried to achieve.

If you don't know his music, but are drawn here bythe general topic of music and spirituality, you need to know what sort ofbook this is, and what sort of music is on the CD. The book is more of asketch than a thoroughly worked out study of this topic. Excluding themusical examples and footnotes, it is only about 88 pages long, and itcovers a great many topics, so it can hardly be expected to do more thanbriefly scratch the surface of each of these topics. But in brieflyscratching the surface, he does offer provocative hints at ideas that thereader can then research or think through in greater detail. These littlehints at ideas are often very good--he has interesting insights into Wagnerand Mahler, for example, and other 'traditional' composers...it's not allStockhausen and IRCAM. But they are never more than just hints at ideas,except when he is talking about his own music, when he does get into moredetail. This reads something like a journal of an artist...today I jot downthis thought, tomorrow a different thought.

The music on the CD is Harveyand other examples of what some have called, accurately I think, 'difficultlistening.' This is avant-garde stuff, and make no mistake. I'm afraid thatI am something of a philistine in this area, and sometimes I like thedescriptions of the music more than the music itself. But that might changeif I heard the pieces in their full development rather than these excerpts.At any rate, including a CD with the book was a wonderful thing to do.Since the CD consists of brief musical excerpts, it resembles the book in'hinting at' musical ideas, and that's what it's intended to do.

Havingexpressed my reservations, let me just add that Harvey comes across in thisbook as an astute listener and thinker, and he doesn't hide behind jargonor ambiguous language. There is a lot of candor in his discussion of hisown work, and considerable insight in the nuggets of ideas that aresprinkled on every page. It's just that it's up to the reader to take thesenuggets and develop them on your own.

An articulate purveyor of the spirit world in music
Sometimes we need reminding that the nature of music has deep roots in a spirituality,even if for now that is an undefined one. Think of any composers and you will find some inner being at work, some compellingspectre, an illdefined, undefined entity which demands the pen to continuemaking music,commanding it. Harvey here is a seminal figure which unitesboth these worlds, and has a grasp of the realms which interbreed, thespirit the abstract with the tangible, music,sounds and silences. This workis also pedagogical,like a lecture, Harvey brings us by steps through hiswork, and others, Stockhausen makes an entrance.Slowly then we begin tounderstand his own music, as well as those undefined particles onexperiencing music,yet feel something has escaped us. Harvey defines manyfunctional areas,sadly to say know very little, like spectralism. A meansof defining the inner presence of harmonies, the particles which constitutea sound. This thinking emanates from IRCAM, the multi-million dollarinstitute in Paris, where Harvey has worked since the early Eighties.Spectralism has indeed become a fashionable movement in the cloisteredparts of the new music scene in Europe.But for us it is indeed wonderfulwhen a creator is able to reflect on their work, and with an affinity ofarticulation for it. Here Harvey runs through the concepts which animateshis work and fosters this unity with the spirit. The concept of stasisseems to be an ubiquitous one from the bleak world of repetitiveminimalism,now dead, to the music Harvey engages. Might I add World Musicseems a frequent and powerful player here with Western composers, the useof alternate tuning,Asian instruments, and newly made ones as well haveengaged a great dialogue between East and West. Stasis is simply like adrone in a simplified form, but there are other more sophisticate ways ofmaintaining a non-movement. I believe this non-movement is what engages themind to reflection, quiets it in some circles. There is also a Compact Discwhich accompanies the lecture, with musical excerpts. ... Read more

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George Perle takes us into the composer's workshop as he reevaluates what we call "twentieth-century music"--a term used to refer to new or modern or contemporary music that represents a radical break from the tonal tradition, or "common practice," of the preceding three centuries. He proposes that this music, in the course of breaking with the tonal tradition, presents coherent and definable elements of a new tradition. In spite of the disparity in their styles, idioms, and compositional methods, he argues, what unites Scriabin, Stravinsky, Bartók, and the Viennese circle (Schoenberg, Berg, and Webern) is more important than what separates them.
If we are to understand the connections among these mainstream composers, we also have to understand their connections with the past. Through an extraordinarily comprehensive analysis of a single piece by Varèse, Density 21.5 for unaccompanied flute, Perle shows how these composers refer not only to their contemporaries but also to Wagner, Debussy, and Beethoven.
Perle isolates the years 1909-10 as the moment of revolutionary transformation in the foundational premises of our musical language. He asks: What are the implications of this revolution, not only for the composer, but also for the listener? What are the consequences for the theory and teaching of music today? In his highly original answers, Perle relates the role of intuition in the listening experience to its role in the compositional process.
Perle asserts that the post-Schoenbergian serialists have preoccupied themselves with secondary and superficial aspects of Schoenberg's twelve-tone method that have led it to a dead end but he also exposes the speciousness of current alternatives such as chance music, minimalism, and the so-called return to tonality. He offers a new and more comprehensive definition of "twelve-tone music" and firmly rejects the notion that accessibility to the new music is reserved for a special class of elite listeners. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Another great book from the foremost thinker of post-tonal music.
As Perle himself explains, these lectures (separated into chapters here) were originally addressed to varying audiences. Some are easily understandable by the layman; others require technical knowledge of music theory. Some are deeply stimulating, and others are just fun, but allare well-worth reading. I find "The Martian Musicologists" especially amusing. Here Perle excoriates the dubious "set theory" of Allen Forte. The title of this lecture derives from an equally severe (and deservedly so) critique of Allen Forte's "method" by the brilliant musicologist Richard Taruskin.

Musical modernism made easy
In his Bloch Lectures Perle argues that there is indeed a "new common practice" and that is is the "shared premise of the harmonic equivalence of inversionally symmetrical pitch-class relations," among composers such as Varese, Berg, Bartok, Schoenberg, Scriabin, Stravinsky, Webern, and himself.

He illustrates this tradition and its continuity with the common practice period through examples, such as Varese's Density 21.5 and Beethoven, which are analysed insightfully. Along the way he deals with some aesthetic and other issues. Great ideas for analysis or composition. ... Read more

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Opera performances are often radically inventive. Composers' revisions, singers' improvisations, and stage directors' re-imaginings continually challenge our visions of canonical works. But do they go far enough? This elegantly written, beautifully concise book, spanning almost the entire history of opera, reexamines attitudes toward some of our best-loved musical works. It looks at opera's history of multiple visions and revisions and asks a simple question: what exactly is opera? Remaking the Song, rich in imaginative answers, considers works by Handel, Mozart, Donizetti, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, and Berio in order to challenge what many regard as sacroscant: the opera's musical text. Scholarly tradition favors the idea of great operatic texts permanently inscribed in the canon. Roger Parker, considering examples ranging from Cecilia Bartoli's much-criticized insistence on using Mozart's alternative arias in the Marriage of Figaro to Luciano Berio's new ending to Puccini's unfinished Turandot, argues that opera is an inherently mutable form, and that all of us--performers, listeners, scholars--should celebrate operatic revisions as a way of opening works to contemporary needs and new pleasures. ... Read more

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Concentrating on the music, politics, and philosophy of Richard Wagner, Lydia Goehr addresses some fundamental questions of German Romanticism: Is all music musical?Is music made less musical by the presence of words? What is musical autonomy?How do composers avoid censorship?How are composers affected by exile?Can music articulate a 'politics for the future'? What is the relation between music and philosophy? ... Read more

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The evolution of Ernest Bloch's music is traced throughout his travels in Europe and America. A complete picture of Bloch emerges from this integrated study of his life and his music. The opening biographical chapter provides a brief, personal history from which Bloch's career and many interests follow, including his pursuits in photography. The biographical information provides the framework for addressing the "Jewish Question," a common focus of Bloch's work. Bloch emerges, from this multifaceted study, as a composer whose music must be examined within both its Jewish heritage and in a larger, universal context. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Fascinating
David Kushner has once again taken this biographical journey to new levels. The Ernest Bloch Companion eludes to and explores the "Jewish Question" in a facsinating and informative journal documenting Ernest Bloch and his influence in the Jewish musical community. We highly recommend this dedicated work to all readers for high informative and intellectual value. ... Read more

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In this refreshingly direct and engaging historical treatment of American music and musicology, Richard Crawford argues for the recognition of the distinct and vital character of American music. What is that character? How has musical life been supported in the United States and how have Americans understood their music? Exploring the conditions within which music has been made since the time of the American Revolution, Crawford suggests some answers to these questions.
Surveying the history of several musical professions in the United States--composing, performing, teaching, and distributing music--Crawford highlights the importance of where the money for music comes from and where it goes. This economic context is one of his book's key features and gives a real-life view that is both fascinating and provocative. Crawford discusses interconnections between classical and popular music, using New England psalmody, nineteenth-century songs, Duke Ellington, and George Gershwin to illustrate his points.
Because broad cultural forces are included in this unique study, anyone interested in American history and American Studies will find it as appealing as will students and scholars of American music. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A valuable resource
As always, the Garland Guides to Research are inestimably valuable, gathering all the available bibliographical materials into one reference work. Dr. Kushner's annotations add commentary that makes the sifting through of these voluminous materials a far more enjoyable task. ... Read more

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This long-awaited, authoritative account of Bartk's compositional processes stresses the composer's position as one of the masters of Western music history and avoids a purely theoretical approach or one that emphasizes him as an enthusiast for Hungarian folk music.For Bla Bartk, composition often began with improvisation at the piano. Lszl Somfai maintains that Bartk composed without preconceived musical theories and refused to teach composition precisely for this reason. He was not an analytical composer but a musical creator for whom intuition played a central role.These conclusions are the result of Somfai's three decades of work with Bartk's oeuvre; of careful analysis of some 3,600 pages of sketches, drafts, and autograph manuscripts; and of the study of documents reflecting the development of Bartk's compositions. Included as well are corrections preserved only on recordings of Bartk's performances of his own works. Somfai also provides the first comprehensive catalog of every known work of Bartk, published and unpublished, and of all extant draft, sketch, and preparatory material. His book will be basic to all future scholarly work on Bartk and will assist performers in clarifying the problems of Bartk notation. Moreover, it will be a model for future work on other major composers. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A good source for people who want to know more about I.B.
This book is well-written and explains the different businesses and rolesof investment banks. Mr. Bloch brings down to earth complex topics such asIPO's, Venture Capital, Underwritings and other investment bankingsubjects. Though it hasn't been updated, the book contains a lot ofinformation about the core issues of investment banking. Also, there is anexcelent description of the evolution of the investment banking businessand how technology, changes in regulations and the increasing power ofinstitutions has changed the investment banking landscape. The book is veryhelpfull because Mr. Bloch uses a clear language to explain investmentbanking subjects and he avoids excesive use of jargon. The reader must takeinto account that though it's a great book, the investment banking lanscapehas changed a lot since the 90's. ... Read more

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With her usual combination of erudition, innovation, and spirited prose, Susan McClary reexamines the concept of musical convention in this fast-moving and refreshingly accessible book. Exploring the ways that shared musical practices transmit social knowledge, Conventional Wisdom offers an account of our own cultural moment in terms of two dominant traditions: tonality and blues.McClary looks at musical history from new and unexpected angles and moves easily across a broad range of repertoires--the blues, eighteenth-century tonal music, late Beethoven, and rap. As one of the most influential trailblazers in contemporary musical understanding, McClary once again moves beyond the borders of the "purely musical" into the larger world of history and society, and beyond the idea of a socially stratified core canon toward a musical pluralism.

Those who know McClary only as a feminist writer will discover her many other sides, but not at the expense of gender issues, which are smoothly integrated into the general argument. In considering the need for a different way of telling the story of Western music, Conventional Wisdom bravely tackles big issues concerning classical, popular, and postmodern repertoires and their relations to the broader musical worlds that create and enjoy them. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

High recommendation
During an analysis of a Stradella aria, McClary discusses how the music which starts in a sunny mood (in a major key) moves to a relative minor, and it's as if a cloud has passed overhead. She shows how this modest but effective narrative, dramatic device eventually became a convention (modulation to the relative major or minor) that was so widely used, the dramatic roots became obscured and this modulation began to be taught as a purely "formal" device.

Time and again, McClary shows that "form" is not something that is necessarily dry and intellectual, but rather something that serves a very particular purpose, rooted in the needs and desires of society, though often invisible to that society. By bringing to light the conventions that are integral to the work, her analyses offer as many insights into the audiences of their day as they do into the compositional mechanics of the works themselves.

Speaking as a classical composer and a performer, I found it inspiring the extent that this book brings music to life. That her analytical methods work as well with Bessie Smith and Prince as they do with Vivaldi and late Beethoven string quartets is a strong plus. Let's live in the whole world of music!

I think we have here what will be a highly influential book, or at the least, part of a highly influential and fruitful new trend in musicology. I'm recommending it to all my composer and performer associates, particularly those of a more analytical bent.

It's not always the easiest read. I'd rate it at a "college" (but not necessarily "graduate college") level as opposed to being directed to a more popular audience. Lot's of interesting footnotes and citations. But much will be accessible to music lovers with only a little formal musical training. I think having some ability to read music would help (especially if one does not have access to recordings of the works she analyzes).

I would recommend
This book is better than Feminine Endings. Its conclusions and assumptions are less questionable, but it also explains her approach in Feminine Endings. Only a very basic knowledge of music theory is necessary, I imagine you could have a friend in their first year of music theory explain it to you while you listened to the music she discusses. Yet she explains more than most first year theory classes would.

not the slightest bit intimidating; what did you expect?
You know, I don't think this author's or any author's physical appearance is either here or there. And please, let's not take ridicule for "ardent hatred". If you fed an English dictionary into a computer program that generated random permutations, one of the more improbable combinations of words it might spit out could be: "as if pointing out the sexual agenda in the 9th Symphony needed an apology". "The sexual agenda in the 9th Symphony"?

Music's favorite renegade does it again
If you ever met Susan McCalry, you'd find it hard to believe that this petite, soft-spoken, witty woman could inspire such ardent hatred from scores of musicologists.Moreover, the sociological and feminist concepts that she brings to bear on Western art music are already old hat in literary and art criticism.But musicology is, to a large extent, still in denial about Modernism, so Post-Modernism is way beyond the pale.So McClary's first book, "Feminine Endings," rocked the world of musicology to its hardbound, white-male foundation, and provoked round after round of McClary-bashing.Her new book, based on a series of lectures given at UC Berkeley, therefore occasionally sounds a bit defensive.(At one point she notes that she *can* say something nice about Beethoven, as if pointing out the sexual agenda in the 9th Symphony needed an apology.)For any reasonably intelligent reader who has wondered how Western music works, this new book is superb at explaining those mechanisms.McClary uses her usual catholic tastes to discuss everything from Vivaldi to the Blues, and you will come away understand how both of them function, and why we feel moved when listening to either one. Armed with her usual wit and unusual perceptivity, McClary lays bare the workings of Western music with clarity and grace.In the process, she nearly redeems musicology as a discipline worth taking seriously.You go, girl. ... Read more

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David Schiller's study of the Jewish music of Bloch, Schoenberg, and Bernstein reveals how, in the mid-twentieth century, the problem of assimilation was acutely felt as the unfinished business of European Jewry, at a time when American Jewry was creating its own distinctive culture (albeit with European roots).This incisive study sheds new light on an important aspect of the cultural and aesthetic achievements of these seminal Jewish composers. ... Read more

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These essays illuminate the changing nature of text-music relationships from the time of Petrarch to Guarini and, in music, from the madrigals of Giovanni da Cascia to those of Gesualdo da Venosa. Haar traces a line of development from the stylized rhetoric of Trecento song through the popularizing trends of Quattrocento music and on to the union of verbal and musical cadence that marked the high Renaissance in sixteenth-century Italian music. ... Read more