The Way We Listen Now and Other Writings on Music

by Northcott, Bayan

• ISBN13: 9780955608735
• ISBN10: 0955608732
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-05-21
• Publisher: Plumbago Books

Summary

This is a book that can be read with great pleasure and considerable profit by the general reader today. But when, in a century's time, historians want to know what musical life was like in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, and what judgment, opinion and taste was current then, this book will certainly be capable of giving them a cultivated and accurate answer. Without exception, these essays are of permanent importance and value. Only the richness and diversity of their subject matter make it impossible to give an adequate idea of their variety and scope, not to mention their stature. Book jacket.

Author Biography

Hugh Wood Bayan Northcott was born in Harrow in 1940, and has lived and worked mainly in London. He has written extensively for Music and Musicians, The New Statesman, The Sunday Telegraph, The Independent and the BBC Music Magazine, as well as for many other publications. In 1980 he edited a collection of essays on The Music of Alexander Goehr (Schott), and his compositions include a Fantasia for guitar (1982), a Sextet (1985), a Horn Concerto (1998) and Four Votive Antiphons (1997-2003). Christopher Wintle (Editor) teaches at King's College London and is author of All the Gods: Benjamin Britten's Night-piece in Context (Plumbago, 2006). He has edited four volumes of Hans Keller's writings, including Essays on Music (CUP, 1994) and Film Music and Beyond (Plumbago, 2006), as well as Julian Littlewood's The Variations of Johannes Brahms (Plumbago, 2004) and Hugh Wood's Staking Out the Territory (Plumbago, 2007).

Table of Contents

Author's Preface	p. vii
Editor's Preface	p. xi
Notes on the Artists	p. xv
The Sense of Sound
The Music that Remains	p. 3
Compose Yourself	p. 6
The Way We Listen Now	p. 10
The Time of Music	p. 13
The Music of Time	p. 17
ÆCould I But Express...'	p. 22
The Expressionist Moment	p. 26
Sight and Sound	p. 29
ÆFain Would I Change That Note'	p. 32
New Notes for Old Instruments	p. 37
Survival of the Soundest	p. 41
But is it Mozart? (I)	p. 45
The Music of Words
Setting Words to Rights	p. 51
Cross-talk	p. 55
The Librettist's Lament	p. 60
Notes on Auden	p. 65
Composing Mortals
After Bach	p. 79
Haydn Alone	p. 84
But is it Mozart? (II)	p. 87
Wagner Takes the Stage	p. 90
Brahms and Antipathy	p. 95
Poulenc en collage	p. 99
The Case of Ruth Crawford Seeger	p. 104
In Search of Walton	p. 108
The Once and Future Tippett	p. 116
The Britten Aesthetic	p. 121
Stravinsky's Britten	p. 127
Carter's Relativity Rag	p. 134
The æFound Sounds' of Judith Weir	p. 141
The States of Music
Earlier Than Thou	p. 147
Style or Idea?	p. 150
Down with Classical Music	p. 153
Behind Closed Doors	p. 156
Hollywood and Bust	p. 159
Blueprints for an Expanding Universe	p. 163
Less Means Less	p. 166
Reverberations of 1968	p. 169
Fear and Loathing of Modern Music	p. 173
Voices of the World, Unite!	p. 176
Green and Prescient Land	p. 179
Deteriorating Reception on the Third	p. 182
It's a Cultural Revolution	p. 185
Last Waltz?	p. 188
Envoi: In Search of an Ending
In Search of an Ending	p. 193
It Tolls for Thee	p. 198
Echoes from Selborne	p. 201
The Rest is Silence	p. 204
Bibliographical Note	p. 211
Index	p. 215
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