Music and Imagination (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) (Hardcover)

by Aaron Copland (Author)
Key Phrases: sonorous image, gifted listener, United States, Roy Harris, New York (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
More than most composers turned author, Copland is able to give the reader fascinating insight into the creative process in music. With complete candor and with a minimum of the esoteric mumbo-jumbo with which many composers are wont to surround their craft, the reader is taken inside the composer's workshop and while there regaled with some trenchant and penetrating comments on the current state of musical affairs.

Review
Aaron Copland is a notable contemporary example of the 'critical composer,' the man who can write about music with the same persuasiveness that he writes music itself...Mr. Copland writes about his art with great warmth, intimacy, and liveliness...It is the delight of this little book that it tells so much about his growth and the directions of his spirit.
--Wilder Hobson (Saturday Review )

More than most composers turned author, Copland is able to give the reader fascinating insight into the creative process in music. With complete candor and with a minimum of the esoteric mumbo-jumbo with which many composers are wont to surround their craft, the reader is taken inside the composer's workshop and while there regaled with some trenchant and penetrating comments on the current state of musical affairs. (Crescendo )

A critic who is to be of any use to his readers must be one who can give them the benefit of powers of perception and judgment greater than their own, which will make them aware of what they would not perceive and appreciate by themselves...And Mr. Copland does in fact speak about a wide variety of matters with a composer's illuminating perception, a gift for felicitous statement, and a humor that is only one of the manifestations of an engaging mind and personality. (New York Times Book Review )

After reading [this book], it will be hard not to approach music again, or for the first time, with the desire to give it a more spacious place in one's life. (Commonweal )

Just as the spare, lucid textures of his ballet score Appalachian Spring represented a deeply considered response to the artistic and social complexities of its day, so the plain-man's prose of Music and Imagination encapsulates the creative findings of half a lifetime...How timeless many of Copland's insights remain.
--Musical Quarterly (BBC Music )

The essential quality of these lectures is open-mindedness pleading for an equal will to open-mindedness on the part of the reader. (Musical Quarterly ) --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 128 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (January 1, 1952)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674589009
• ISBN-13: 978-0674589001
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,933,134 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars To learn to listen , November 26, 2006

By	Shalom Freedman "Shalom Freedman" (Jerusalem,Israel) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Music and Imagination (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) (Paperback)

This book contains the text of the six Charles Eliot Norton lectures that Copland gave at Harvard. Copland thinks about Music and its meaning. He speaks about the creation and appreciation of Music as activities of the Imagination. He rails against the fuddy- duddy music scene in which all over the world a very limited repertoire of classic works holds the stage. He talks about the special affinities composers have for different types of instruments. He argues for a greater openness to new Music. He distinguishes between the capacity of the ordinary listenerer and the professional musician in terms of their ability to anticipate what is next in the score.
He teaches throughout the meaning of being a listener and lover of Music.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Keeping in mind that this is based on lectures given by Copland, April 27, 2008

By	Priscilla A. Arnold "Music Is Life..." (Minneapolis, MN) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Music and Imagination (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) (Paperback)

It's not written to be a concise analysis of any certain subject, but a series of lectures that could be enjoyed at the same time that they were informative.

This book provides great insight into the mind of our great American composer. He speaks on a wide range of subjects, but seems to cycle around the American classical music and it's development. He brings to mind the processes that go along with composing and creating music, and his respect and appreciation for other composers makes this a positive, uplifting but informative and thought-provoking book.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars short but profound, August 20, 2007

By	Passionate About Music - See all my reviews

This review is from: Music and Imagination (The Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) (Paperback)

Of all the books out there about music, page for page this is one of the best. It's a composer's perspective on why music gets composed, and HOW it gets composed. Copland takes you into the thought processes of musical creation. If you've ever been tempted to subscribe to the idea that music is a universal language, Copland undercuts that idea by exploring the theme of music as NONVERBAL SYMBOLS in a SYSTEM of inherited sounds. The second half of the book is dated, because he's addressing issues that were contemporary in the 1950s. But the first half is well worth reading.