Music: Healing the Rift (Continuum Compact Series)
“… this extended essay is as stimulating, insightful, eloquent, intelligent, well-written, probing, sanguine and maddening a description of the issues facing classical music as you are likely to find.” –Pamela Margles, WholeNote Magazine, July1-September 7, 2004“It’s always a pleasure to read a historical survey that covers huge amounts of ground nimbly and stylishly, with a refined yet decisive sense of judgment. In this small, brilliant book, composer, teacher and critic Ivan Hewett tells you pretty much everything you need to know in order to understand the evolution of the category known as ‘classical’/’art’ music… Hewett’s book will impress (if not infuriate) his peers, but it deserves a wider audience…. He makes his arguments by discussing individual composers, and his critiques are rigorous, lucid and balanced- enough so that readers who are classical music neophytes will be engaged by the mere spectacle of an authoritative mind in love with its subject matter.” –Paste, October/November 2004