Customer Reviews

Composers On Music: Eight Centuries of Writings

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I love this book! It covers just about every composer you've ever heard of. Filled to the brim with helpful essays. I also love the letters the composers wrote to other people. This book is a great way to get into the composer's mind! Highly recommended. Belongs in the library of every musician as well as the music student/lover! Buy it!

This book is not an end for the serious music student, but for those who simply want an overview of thoughts on why composers compose, this is the book to get. Even for the serious student, this is a great sourcebook and offers a good start for deeper study on the composers contained within. Also, the book is a fun read.

I am a visual artist and wanted information that would explain the reason for classical music. I wanted to see how it would overlap with my studies of visual art aesthetics and history. It doesn't cover that topic deeply, of course, but it does touch on it. The book helped me place what composers were alive during the lives of various visual artists and sometimes the composers made comments about visual artists they knew or admired.

This book changed my outlook on classical music as the composers were quite human and unpretentious in their comments. The way they explained their outlooks made listening to their music seem less like a chore or expectation and more like something you do because you like to. Also, you don't have to like all of it to be sophisticated. No composer liked all other composers' music. Music is a much better experience when you don't have to pretend and just like what you like. But, don't be afraid to plunge a little deeper as well. ;-)

COMPOSER ON MUSIC: Eight Centuries of Writings, edited by Josiah Fisk, is a collection of quotations from composers all the way from Hildegard von Bingen to the generation of Takemitsu, Gubaidulina, and Glass. While you'll find all the important figures here, the book is remarkable for its use of insights from relatively forgotten figures of ages past, such as Louis Spohr, Edouard Lalo, and Max Reger. The book frequently contains some of the big statements of composers, things that won them notoriety (although, regrettably, neither of Boulez's big too polemical statements are here), but there are also extracts from private letters.

It must be mentioned that this is a refence item, not something the individual music fans needs to purchase for his home. The quotations used are generally very small, a couple of paragraphs at most, and are taken out of their context. Sure, it can be entertaining to see random opinions by composers--Stockhausen, for example comes across very hilariously--but it's all limited to aesthetic and you won't learn much about their biography or musicological details of their work. However, the source of each quotation is given. The book is therefore most useful for fans who want to be directed to larger writings through the small samples given here. For example, Gyorgy Ligeti's pithy comment "Music should not be normal, well-bred, with its tie all neat" is amusing, but it isn't terrible informative on its own. However, it does refer the reader on to the interview LIGETI IN CONVERSATION.

Not an item that you'll need to own, but something to hunt down at the library if you are doing research.

This is an extremely useful and interesting book, much fun for anyone who is a student or fan of classical music. Fisk's intros and backgrounders are small gems. As for the reviewer below, who carps about it and actually slurs the author to recommend getting the original --- nonsense. I vote with the eminent musicologist Michael Steinberg, who points out on the back cover of this book that an update of Morgenstern's original was greatly needed, and has been done most impressively.

This book brings to life the composers most people only know by name. It is sometimes joyous, sometimes heartbreaking, but gives keen insight into the lives of people who struggled to become great, viewed through the lens of essays and personal letters. Now I have a better understanding of WHY they wrote music. It gives each composition so much more meaning. I find myself going back to read again and again, visiting great composers who have become like old friends.

It's very sad that vital books have to be "updated" and "revised" to accomodate the writing careers of persons unable to create vital books themselves. See if you can get hold of the original Sam Morgenstern instead.

Recommended: PENTATONIC SCALES FOR THE JAZZ-ROCK KEYBOARDIST by Jeff Burns.