Surprised by beauty
Subtitle: a listener's guide to the recovery of modern music
By: by Robert R. Reilly with Jens F. Laurson ; foreword by Ted Libbey
Contributors: Laurson, Jens F., author; Libbey, Theodore, 1951- writer of introduction
Edition: Revised and expanded edition.
Published: 2016
Language: eng
Number of pages: 508
ISBN-13: 9781586179052
Subjects: Composers; Interviews; History and criticism; Music
Description: The single greatest crisis of the 20th century was the loss of faith. Noise--and its acceptance as music--was the product of the resulting spiritual confusion and, in its turn, became the further cause of its spread. Likewise, the recovery of modern music, the theme to which this book is dedicated, stems from a spiritual recovery. This is made explicitly clear by the composers whose interviews with the author are collected in this book. Robert Reilly spells out the nature of the crisis and its solution in sections that serve as bookends to the chapters on individual composers. He does not contend that all of these composers underwent and recovered from the central crisis he describes, but they all lived and worked within its broader context, and soldiered on, writing beautiful music. For this, they suffered ridicule and neglect, and he believes their rehabilitation will change the reputation of modern music. It is the spirit of music that this book is most about, and in his efforts to discern it, Reilly has discovered many treasures. The purpose of this book is to share them, to entice you to listen--because beauty is contagious. English conductor John Eliot Gardiner writes that experiencing Bach's masterpieces "is a way of fully realizing the scale and scope of what it is to be human". The reader may be surprised by how many works of the 20th and 21st centuries of which this is also true [Publisher description]
Table of contents: title: Foreword to the first edition / by Ted Libbey -- Preface to the second edition -- Is music sacred? -- I. The composers. John Adams : the search for a larger harmony; title: Stephen Albert : aiming at epiphany; title: George Antheil : bad boy made good; title: Richard Arnell : sheer musical vitality; title: Malcolm Arnold : English Enigma; title: Samuel Barber and his "school" : American beauty; title: Walter Braunfels : beauty and eternal order; title: Frank Bridge : a bridge too far?; title: Benjamin Britten : the British neo-renaissance; title: John Cage : apostle of noise; title: Alfredo Casella : Italian "logical discursiveness"; title: Maurice Duruflé : a requiem to die for; title: Edward Elgar : the dream of a better land; title: Einar Englund : out of the shadows; title: Gerald Finzi : intimations of immortality; title: Kenneth Fuchs : American rhapsody; title: Hans Gál : unbroken; title: Steven Gerber : "the integrity of the musical material"; title: Morton Gould : maestro of Americana; title: Roy Harris : Singing to America; title: Bernard Herrmann and Nino Rota : film music and beyond; title: Jennifer Higdon : a musical lark; title: Vagn Holmboe : the music of metaphysics; title: Leoš Janáček : Czech passion; title: John Kinsella : Irish liberation; title: Charles Koechlin : aural alchemist; title: Erich Wolfgang Korngold : rejected wunderkind; title: Lászlo Lajtha : music from a secret room; title: Libby Larsen : the natural sound of music; title: Morten Lauridsen : shining night; title: Jonathan Leshnoff : reinvigorating past forms; title: Lowell Liebermann et al. : keeping America real; title: Gian Francesco Malipiero : beyond Italian opera; title: Frank Martin : guide to the liturgical year; title: Bohuslav Martinů : music with a view; title: William Mathias : musical incantations; title: David Matthews : renewing the past; title: Eric(h) Zeisl and Franz Mittler : lost and found music; title: Carl Nielsen : music is life; title: Francis Poulenc : Stabat mater and the Carmelites; title: Günter Raphael : mute no more; title: George Rochberg : recovered memories; title: Albert Roussel : the freedom of personal vision; title: Edmund Rubbra : on the road to Emmaus; title: Harald Sæverud : a Norwegian original; title: Aulis Sallinen : Scandinvian consolation; title: Ahmed Saygun : the Turkish Bartók; title: Peter Schickele : Schickele unmixed; title: Franz Schmidt : setting the apocalypse; title: Othmar Schoeck : from Switzerland with romance; title: Dmitri Shostakovich : beyond bombast; title: Jean Sibelius : Finnish majesty; title: Robert Simpson : a modern classic; title: Sergei Taneyev : forgotten for looking westward; title: Alexander Tcherepnin : from Russia with love; title: Michael Tippett : a child of his time; title: George Tsontakis : Coraggio; title: Eduard Tubin : in from the cold; title: Geirr Tveitt : the music in the waterfall; title: Pēteris Vasks and Einojuhani Rautavaara : northern lights; title: Ralph Vaughan Williams : cheerful agnosticism; title: Heitor Villa-Lobos : marvelous mayhem; title: Karl Weigl : "the best of the Viennese tradition"; title: Mieczsław Weinberg : light in the dark; title: Recovering the sacred in music -- II. Talking with the composers. Robert Craft on Stravinsky and Schoenberg : the musical antipodes of the 20th century; title: David Diamond : America's greatest symphonist; title: Gian Carlo Menotti : heavenly muse; title: Einojuhani Rautavaara : the composer of the angels; title: George Rochberg : the recovery of modern music; title: Carl Rütti : dancing before the ark.