Review (PDF) Poetics Of Music In The Form Of Six Lessons (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures)
One of the greatest of contemporary composers has here set down in delightfully personal fashion his general ideas about music and some accounts of his own experience as a composer. Every concert-goer and lover of music will take keen pleasure in his notes about the essential features of music, the process of musical composition, inspiration, musical types, and musical execution. Throughout the volume are to he found trenchant comments on such subjects as Wagnerism, the operas of Verdi, musical taste, musical snobbery, the influence of political ideas on Russian music under the Soviets, musical improvisation as opposed to musical construction, the nature of melody, and the function of the critic of music. Musical people of every sort will welcome this first presentation in English of an unusually interesting book.
Series: The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures (Book 2003)
Paperback: 160 pages
Publisher: Harvard University Press; Revised ed. edition (January 1, 1993)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0674678567
ISBN-13: 978-0674678569
Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.4 x 7.2 inches
Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces
Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #88,032 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #1 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Sheet Music & Scores > Composers > Stravinsky #10 in Books > Humor & Entertainment > Sheet Music & Scores > Historical Period > Modern & 20th Century #180 in Books > Arts & Photography > Music > History & Criticism
These six lectures were given at Harvard during the 1939-40 academic year in French. They are presented here in English translation and have been the subject of a great deal of discussion over the past sixty-plus years. In re-reading them, I have to say that my opinion of them has risen a great deal from my student days. Maybe it is because I am now about the age he was when he gave them, maybe it is because I am now more well read and have thought more about music since my youth, or maybe it is because I now see the solid philosophy and healthy insights he had and the rather unhealthy directions that academia was taking that he was resisting. Probably it is all of these.Reading these lectures are not easy sledding for those not already familiar with Stravinsky, his life, work, and the context for these lectures. Also, the reader will need to go to the various conversation books Stravinsky did with Robert Craft to get later clarification and further insight into what he was saying. However, they are not profoundly technical in music theory. What they require from the reader is a broad understanding of music, art, and European political and religious history to have a framework for understanding what Stravinsky is saying.The first lecture lays out what he intends to do with the lectures. The second talks about what he believes music is, what it isn't, and provides great insight into what Stravinsky believes is important in the art of music and what corrupts it. In the third lecture he talks about composition and provides wonderful insights into what it is for him. He really does undermine the common notion of the role of inspiration in composition.The fourth lecture says it talks about musical typology (whatever that is).
Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) Music and Imagination (Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) Poetics Of Music In The Form Of Six Lessons George Eliot Six Pack - Middlemarch, Daniel Deronda, Silas Marner, The Lifted Veil, The Mill on the Floss and Adam Bede (Illustrated with links to free ... all six books) (Six Pack Classics Book 8) Charles Sumner; his complete works, volume 12 (of 20): By Charles Sumner Chen Taiji Self Defense - Fighting Applications of the Chen Family Tai Chi 19 Form (Chen Taijiquan 19 Form Book 2) Two-Dimensional Sonata Form: Form and Cycle in Single-Movement Instrumental Works by Liszt, Strauss, Schoenberg, and Zemlinsky Anatomy & Physiology: The Unity of Form and Function: Anatomy & Physiology: The Unity of Form and Function Conventional Wisdom: The Content of Musical Form (Ernest Bloch Lectures) The Collected Works of T.S. Eliot (featuring the Waste Land, 2 collections of poetry and more, all with an active table of contents) Ray Eliot: The Spirit and Legend of Mr. Illini Lectures on Antitrust Economics (Cairoli Lectures) The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978-1979 (Lectures at the Collège de France) The Government of Self and Others: Lectures at the College de France, 1982-1983 (Lectures at the Collège de France) Lectures on the Will to Know (Michel Foucault, Lectures at the Collège de France) Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College De France, 1977 - 78 (Michel Foucault, Lectures at the Collège de France) Feynman Lectures Simplified 4A: Math for Physicists (Everyone's Guide to the Feynman Lectures on Physics Book 12) Six Etudes in Canon Form, Op. 56 (Alfred Masterwork Edition) The Variations of Johannes Brahms (Poetics of Music) The Pierrot Ensembles (Poetics of Music)
