For an Audio Guide, go here.
Best Books of Fall — Time
"A joy for a pop fan or a classical aficionado. " — New York Times
"A celebration of what it means to be alive in a world of great music." — Kirkus Reviews
"He avoids jargon, he explains, he writes in real language. He reminds me of my other favorite music critic, Bernard Shaw." — Roger Ebert
My second book, Listen to This (Farrar, Straus and Giroux/Picador, Fourth Estate/HarperCollins), offers a panoramic view of the musical scene, from Bach to Björk and beyond. In the Preface, I say that the aim is to "approach music not as a self-sufficient sphere but as a way of knowing the world." I treat pop music as serious art and classical music as part of the wider culture; my hope is that the book will serve as an introduction to crucial figures and ideas in classical music, and also give an alternative perspective on modern pop. Listen to This includes material already published in The New Yorker as well as pieces written or heavily revised for the occasion. The first chapter, from which the title comes, appeared in the magazine in 2004. The second chapter, "Chacona, Lamento, Walking Blues," is entirely new—a rapid-moving history of music told through bass lines. The third chapter, "Infernal Machines," weaves together various thoughts on music and technology. And it goes from there, touching on Mozart, Schubert, Verdi, Brahms, Radiohead, Bob Dylan, Sonic Youth, Cecil Taylor, and a dozen others. At the back of the book is a 4000-word survey of recommended recordings. The audiobook version, which I recorded myself, contains more than thirty musical selections. Translations are available from Bompiani in Italy (Senti questo), Seix Barral in Spain (Escucha esto), Companhia das Letras in Brazil (Escuta só), and Actes Sud in France. The book has won an ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for music writing and the 2015 music-book prize from the Syndicat de le Critique, and was a runner-up for the PEN Art of the Essay award.
Click here for twenty pages of audio samples.
Click here to read about my bass-lines lecture.
Click here for a Glossary of Terms.
An explanatory video with Ethan Iverson, Rebecca Ringle, and Tyondai Braxton:
The table of contents is as follows:
Part I
1. Listen to This: Crossing the Border from Classical to Pop
2. Chacona, Lamento, Walking Blues: Bass Lines of Music History
3. Infernal Machines: How Recordings Changed Music
Part II
4. The Storm of Style: Mozart’s Golden Mean
5. Orbiting: Radiohead’s Grand Tour
6. The Anti-Maestro: Esa-Pekka Salonen at the Los Angeles Philharmonic
7. Great Soul: Searching for Schubert
8. Emotional Landscapes: Björk’s Saga
9. Symphony of Millions: Classical Music in China
10. Song of the Earth: The Arctic Sound of John Luther Adams
11. Verdi’s Grip: Opera as a Popular Art
12. Almost Famous: On the Road with the St. Lawrence Quartet
13. Edges of Pop: Kiki and Herb, Cecil Taylor and Sonic Youth, Sinatra, Kurt Cobain
14. Learning the Score: The Crisis in Music Education
15. Voice of the Century: Marian Anderson
16. The Music Mountain: Mitsuko Uchida at Marlboro
17. The End of Silence: John Cage
[chapter added for paperback and European editions]
Part III
18. I Saw the Light: Following Bob Dylan
19. Fervor: Lorraine Hunt Lieberson
20. Blessed Are the Sad: Late Brahms