Critical questions on music and letters, culture and biography, 1940-1980 / Jacques Barzun ; edited, selected, and with an introduction by Bea Friedland.
| Author/creator |
Barzun, Jacques, 1907-2012 |
| Other author/creator | Friedland, Bea. |
| Format | Book and Print |
| Publication Info | Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1982. |
| Description | xvii, 269 pages ; 21 cm |
| Subject(s) |
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| Contents | The musical life Music in words -- The indispensable amateur -- The passing of a free spirit: Erich Kleiber -- The playwright as critic -of music -- Men, women, and pianos -- Toward new musics -- Harry Parch and the moderns -- A request for the loan of your ears -- To praise Varèse -- The life of Stendhal-Rossini -- The meaning of meaning in music -- Berlioz: -- Berlioz after a hundred years -- Benvenuto Cellini in Wembley -- The postman rang thrice -- Berlioz and the bard -- Sketch of the artist as musician -- The Berlioz style -- The misbehavior of Lélio -- Romeo and Juliet in music -- Romanticism: definition of an age -- Liberalism and the religion of art -- Truth in biography: Leonardo and Freud -- Delacroix: sketch of the artist in words -- Biography and criticism: a misalliance? -- Let the artists decide: an interview -- The case for cultural history -- Philosophy and the arts. |
| Abstract | This collection of writings allows the reader a rare opportunity to see Barzun's lively, engaging, rich, and original mind at work on several strategic areas of cultural inquiry: music and the musical life, esthetics, biography, criticism, and social commentary. Barzun makes use of a variety of contexts as a forum for evidence and opinion, including essays, program notes, letters, and reviews. And he approaches a wide variety of particular and general questions. What is it like to sit in on a recording session with a great orchestra? What is the role of the piano in Western culture? What is art in relation to objective reality and to the perceiving mind? Can one translate music into words? What is cultural history? For anyone unfamiliar with Barzun's work, Critical Questions will serve as a valuable introduction to one of the most important cultural historians of our time. Others will be glad to have these pieces--most of them no longer easily available--brought together in a single volume. Uniformly insightful, provocative, and a pleasure to read, they show the consistency of Barzun's thought even as they exhibit diversity. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical footnotes and index. |
| LCCN | 81022023 |
| ISBN | 0226038637 : |
Available Items
| Library | Location | Call Number | Status | Item Actions | |
| Music | Closed Stacks - Ask at Circulation Desk | ML60.B27 C7 | ✔ Available | Place Hold |