Description
What does it mean to understand music? What, if anything, does music mean? Composers, performers, listeners, and academics may answer these questions differently, but what sense of music do they share? When music seems unfamiliar or unlike anything we have heard before, we may say that we don’t like it. How is taking pleasure from music related to understanding it? This book explores these and other issues as they arise in various musical contexts.
Contents
Preface
1. The Frontiers of Nonsense
2. How to Become Immortal
3. Explaining the Obvious
Notes
Index
About the Author
Charles Rosen is a pianist whose celebrated concert career spans many decades and continents, and whose notable recordings over a wide range of piano repertory have been awarded many accolades. He was the Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard University and a professor of music and social thought at the University of Chicago.
Reviews
I have read several of Rosen’s books. While I don’t always share his conclusions, I find the insights that he brings often combine the practical performer with the astute scholar. He is more often right than wrong.