A Composer's World: Horizons and Limitations (Schott) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)The literary style is a bit dry but the rhetoric and ideas are a solid read. Hindemith opens with a philosophical discussion of the nature of hearing and performing music and lays down the poles of Western thought between Boethius and Augustine, that music is considered to have moral force to shape the mind or that the mind imposes order on sound to create the mental impression of music. He tries to avoid being dogmatic about either and proceeds to an explanation of musical memory and emotional association.
Where he gets a bit cranky is explaining the American musical education establishment and the bad habits of performers. He's also very unforgiving to popular music and music made in totalitarian states (e.g. Shostakovich and music written for fascist regimes). But his comments about the shortcomings of American musical education are salient today and his critique of mass-marketing of music is also still relevant.

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Product Description:
The book aims to be a guide through the little universe which is the workingplace of the man who writes music. As such it talks predominantly to the layman,although the expert composer may also find some stimulation in it... From the center of basic theory the discussion will spread out into all the realms ofexperience which border the technical aspects of composing, such as aesthetics, sociology, philosophy, and so on.

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