Few books get added to my all-time favorites shelf and I didn't expect this one to make it, but here's why, in my case, it did.
To appreciate this bookFew books get added to my all-time favorites shelf and I didn't expect this one to make it, but here's why, in my case, it did.
To appreciate this book, you'll need to have discovered and fallen in love with the profound beauty and meaning of the music of Dmitri Shostakovich. For that to happen, you'll also need to have fallen in love with classical music in general, or have developed an ear for hearing deep emotional content within musical works, whatever genre. Once this discovery has occurred, Stephen Johnson's little gem of a book will reveal why people find the music of Shostakovich to be so therapeutic as well as emotionally profound.
Johnson explains it best, how Shostakovich's music brings people face to face with what lives inside them but is hard to say:
Long before I could find the words to describe my experiences, I could hear them reflected, mentally and physically, in sounds - coherent, ordered, sounds, whose process of musical working-through gave me hope that my own feelings might also be capable of resolution. Emotions and thoughts I had experienced as terrifyingly vast, chaotic, and threatening, acquired what Shakespeare calls 'a local habitation and a name' or - and this was just as valuable - a sounding form. In the midst of my long-drawn-out isolation, Shostakovich reassured me that I was not utterly alone. Someone else knew how I felt... In the process of giving form to feelings, music can do one more thing for us. It can invite us to identify with its formal processes - in the case of Shostakovich, with its poignant, harrowing, thrilling wordless narratives (138-139).
Johnson is a music broadcaster and composer who produces programs for the BBC (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b007... and https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01n...). In this beautifully bound and printed Notting Hill editions hardback, Johnson explores the music, life and times of Shostakovich during Stalin's reign of terror and how his music gave form to the fears and hopes of people living in unimaginable despair and oppression. He discusses how music soothes and heals mental-emotional illness and tells his own story of how Shostakovich's music helped him through his struggle with bipolar disorder. It's a kind of dual biography of Shostakovich and Johnson supported by interviews with musicians, philosophers, therapists, and neurologists.
But without a doubt, start with the music. My recommendations are the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 11th, 13th, 14th, and 15th symphonies; the 8th and 9th string quartets; the op.87 24 preludes and fugues; the first violin concerto; the piano trio; and two late works, The Execution of Stepan Rizan and Suite on Verses of Michaelangel Buonaroti. These works, together with Johnson's beautiful story, have provided me joy and meaning beyond words and thus deserve a place on the all-time favorites shelf. And don't miss maestro Bernstein's fabulous lectures on the 9th symphony (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVfz5...) and the 6th symphony (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7MPc...).
Simply one of the most important messages to human beings ever penned. The title says it all. Service. Helping others. Selflessness. What else needs tSimply one of the most important messages to human beings ever penned. The title says it all. Service. Helping others. Selflessness. What else needs to be said?...more
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