Our critics cast their eyes over this month’s selection of books on classical music
Do/sing – Reclaim your voice. Find your singing tribe
James Sills
Do Book Co. 978-1-907-97470-0;
118pp (pb) £8.99
James Sills is a self-trained singer and ‘vocal leader’ – his preferred title over ‘choirmaster’ . He aims to break down the formalities of choir singing and bring to it the joy we feel as we’re singing ‘Wonderwall’ around the campfire or chanting football anthems at the World Cup Final.
Do/sing is based on a talk Sills gave at the annual Do Lectures. He quashes misconceptions around group singing and suggests that it might be one of the few ways left for us to disconnect from technology and engage in genuine face-to-face, multigenerational interaction.
The book ends with a handful of practical tips for novice singers, such as how to find the right choir for you. There’s also a glossary of basic singing terms, along with a few exercises to help readers reconnect with their voice and breath. He combines his musings with woodcut-style illustrations and motivational quotes.
Although it may not be hugely revelatory, the book acts as a poignant reminder of the holistic benefits of singing in choirs in an age of solitude. A worthy addition to any Christmas stocking.
Freya Parr ★★★
The Europeans –
Three Lives and the Making of a Cosmopolitan Culture Orlando Figes
Allen Lane 978-0-241-00489-0;
552pp (hb) £30
Years in the writing, Orlando Figes’s majestic, passionately engaged The Europeans could hardly be more timely. Huge in scope yet packed with detail, it’s a riveting account of the emergence of 19th-century paneuropean culture, told through the lives of the three, deeply entwined figures at its heart: the Spanish singer and composer Pauline
Viardot; her writer and art critic husband, Frenchman Louis Viardot; and her longstanding lover, Russian author Ivan Turgenev.
In various ways, all three were instrumental in forging a new, cosmopolitan sensibility predicated on the unifying power of music, literature and art, seen against a backdrop of Europe-wide struggles for national identity and sociopolitical liberty – and facilitated by technological advances in rail travel, printing and lithography.
From Rossini to Tchaikovsky, composers rub shoulders not just with their creative fellows, but with the publishers, critics, impresarios and patrons that helped make – or break – their careers. Most thoughtprovoking is how alive this history still feels today; not least through the emergent work canons and ways of thinking about art that remain central to contemporary European culture. Steph Power ★★★★★
James Rhodes’ Playlist –
The Rebels and Revolutionaries of Sound James Rhodes
Wren & Rook 978-1-526-36072-4;
72pp (hb) £24.99
‘There is absolutely no point in reading a book about classical music – music is there to be listened to.’ Perhaps an odd way to begin a book on classical music, but James Rhodes has a point. The target audience for this psychedelic and joyously colourful Lp-sized book is kids, so the pianist aims to convince his young readers that classical music is worth giving a go; and that listening is key. Based on seven of his favourite composers – Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Chopin, Schubert, Rachmaninov and Ravel – readers are given accessible (and lively) potted histories of each, followed by insights into two of their works. To support his cases, Rhodes has created a Spotify playlist to be listened to while you read – an effective tool when coupled with his passionate testimonies.
Rhodes’s modus operandi here is not just to convince kids that classical music matters, but that it can be really good for you. Readers are encouraged to think about how the music makes them feel, and the composers are cast as real people with very human issues. A noble endeavour with some very useful detail. Michael Beek ★★★★
The Letters of Cole Porter
Cliff Eisen and Dominic Mchugh Yale University Press 978-0-300-21927-2; 662pp (hb) £25
Two leading scholars have produced this substantial collection of letters (and more) by arguably the greatest lyricist-composer of the American musical tradition.
Cole Porter was in many respects an unusual figure among a talented generation working in the musical comedy field: his background was mid-western wealthy, and he himself studied at both Yale and Harvard universities.
Writing songs from his Yale period onwards, he would go on to enjoy the highlife, living in Paris and Venice during the 1920s, and considered studying with Stravinsky at one point (he decided not to).
His working life as a composer for Broadway and Hollywood encompassed more than four decades, but a serious riding accident in 1937 necessitated innumerable painful operations and eventually the fitting of an artificial leg in 1958, after which he wrote no more. Happily married for 35 years, he was nevertheless gay, and some of the most personal documents here are letters to lovers such as Diaghilev’s amanuensis, Boris Kochno.
Diary sequences relating to travel or writing film scores and even lists of his requirements for hotel stays flesh out our knowledge of a complex artist. George Hall ★★★★