Music at the Limits

ISBN-13: 9780747598749 / Angielski / Miękka / 2009 / 352 str.

Edward Said

Opis

"Music at the Limits" is the first book to bring together three decades of Edward W. Said's essays and articles on music. Addressing the work of a variety of composers, musicians, and performers, Said carefully draws out music's social, political, and cultural contexts and, as a classically trained pianist, provides rich and often surprising assessments of classical music and opera.

"Music at the Limits" offers both a fresh perspective on canonical pieces and a celebration of neglected works by contemporary composers. Said faults the Metropolitan Opera in New York for being too conservative and laments the way in which opera superstars like Pavarotti have "reduced opera performance to a minimum of intelligence and a maximum of overproduced noise." He also reflects on the censorship of Wagner in Israel; the worrisome trend of proliferating music festivals; an opera based on the life of Malcolm X; the relationship between music and feminism; the pianist Glenn Gould; and the works of Mozart, Bach, Richard Strauss, and others.

Said wrote his incisive critiques as both an insider and an authority. He saw music as a reflection of his ideas on literature and history and paid close attention to its composition and creative possibilities. Eloquent and surprising, "Music at the Limits" preserves an important dimension of Said's brilliant intellectual work and cements his reputation as one of the most influential and groundbreaking scholars of the twentieth century.

Recenzje

'Edward Said had a lifelong passion for music, and possessed the rare ability to write about it for the general reader with a lucid and penetrating intelligence' TLS

O autorze

Said, EdwardEdward Said (1935-2003) was one of the founding voices of postcolonial critical theory and the author of Orientalism, one of the most impassioned and influential works in its field. One of the most high profile advocates for Palestinian rights, he was also University Professor English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, USA. Edward Said was University Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. He was the author of more than twenty books, including Orientalism, Culture and Imperialism and On Late Style and his essays and reviews appeared in newspapers and periodicals throughout the world. Edward Said died in September 2003.