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Making Of Music, The (Music Book Index)

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This little 61 page book is comprised of a revision of five lectures given by Vaughan Williams at Cornell and Yale universities in 1954. The subjects covered are Why do we make music and What is music, How do we make music, What are the social foundations of music, The folk-song movement, and finally a deft little summary of sorts entitled Making your own music.

Vaughan Williams reveals his deepest beliefs about music in these few pages, beliefs one finds richly abiding in his musical works. He is uncompromisingly English throughout - clear and spare and jubilant at the truth music affords - all done with subtlety, clarity and inventive thought. Mendelssohn used to say that the meaning of music was too precise for words, and perhaps this English composer has successfully defied that conclusion with these forthright essays.

Citing Tovey that Bach never wrote for unaccompanied chorus (something that hadnt strictly speaking occured to me), Vaughan Williams quotes from 'St John's Passion' then chases Bach's true intentions over a page and a half finally concluding that perhaps what Bach really intended is actually realized in performances of his keyboard music played on a modern piano, not "the nasty jangling of the harpsichord to which he was condemned for filling in his continuo".

Biting and bright, these essays reveal Vaughan Williams the composer as much as anything I can think of short of the music itself. A useful and invigorating few pages.