I have had the opportunity to read your book. It is a terrific book, and has really enhanced my understanding of the problems facing us. It is filled with brilliant insight, and if I had my way it would be required reading for every composer, every music school student, and every music critic. ... I trust that the book is making a lot of people think about music in a different way, and I wish you the best with it and with all of your endeavors.
Your book should be reviewed, as every living composer should read it. ... I could go on for pages and pages about the excellent points that you made, but what stands out most in my mind is how both extreme left and right wing mindsets have had a destructive effect on the quality of modern concert music.
I just finished reading your book and found it bang on in most areas. As a composer, like yourself, our problems are extremely similar if not the same. I was also very excited by your "general" chapter on postmodernism. If I weren't retired, I'd be using that one in my Humanities course. ... I've wanted to write smaller articles about the issues you raise for some time, but there's really nowhere they would be read by those that NEED to read about them.
We got your book in our music library. I have been reading it and will have my students read it, too. It is a good point of departure for discussions.
I just finished your excellent book yesterday. I'm putting it on the reading list for our comp students at [Stephen F. Austin State University].
The author deserves a lot of credit for taking up the argument of what's good and bad in music - a minefield nobody willingly enters. But John Winsor attempts to find objective reasons for what's good and what's not. He summons facts from musical and non-musical disciplines to make his case, and his stance will be difficult to attack. He does not hold up one kind of music as being "better" than another - he's not interested in that - but attempts to fashion tools for judgment. You will probably not agree with everything he concludes (I didn't), but I recommend the book for opening the discussion and provoking thought. This book, and its views, cannot be dismissed.
I purchased your book on Amazon and am almost finished reading it. I think it is really an excellent work and elaborates on ideas that I've had for a long time.
I just finished reading it. It's fascinating! Congratulations! It is now on my recommended book list at www.jamesguthrie.com/books.html.
You will either love this book or hate it--there is no middle ground. The book describes a method, based on psychological principles, for judging the quality of music objectively. It lays out the reasons why some music compositions are better than others. It also spells out a plan for rejuvenating the world of classical "literary" music. The book articulates the things that I've learned about music, but I've been unable to express.
This is a challenging and thought-provoking book.
Found your book stimulating and a good "read."
I have been reading your book and thoroughly enjoying it. It is exactly what I have been thinking for the past years.
Breaking the Sound Barrier is a thorn in the side of prevailing majority assumptions of current times. Readers will probably either love it or hate it; you will certainly find it a catapult for debate. John throws a nice big rock into the stewpot of today's aesthetic and socio-political choices about music and culture.
I've decided the book is controversial (and significant) enough that I'm now selling it in my Lux Nova Press retail webstore (www.luxnova.com/lnpwebstore/).
But if you're expecting a re-hash of Henry Pleasants' "The Agony of Modern Music" you're headed down the wrong alley. Aside from the psychological arguments for objective assessment of music, I found the scathing cultural indictments were where he got the fun rolling -- enough to make steam come out of the ears and flames fly out of the mouths of the "politically correct" legions in today's arts, arts funding, and "arts as servant of social-agenda" establishment.
Really, while music is the focus as example, the bones of contention ultimately relate to the conditions of current US (or cosmopolitan, if you prefer) society as a whole.
The concluding "Changing Priorities" chapter puts in a nutshell where John thinks we ought to go from here. But don't start at the back of the book! Start from the stack of concepts he places before you up front, then work your way through his arguments up through that concluding chapter.
Then get into a heated discussion with your friends!
The inevitable intersection of taste and aesthetic judgment has, in recent years, led many to conclude that all music has equal value and that distinctions are the result of and rightly should be made mostly on the basis of personal preferences; that there are no absolute or quantifiable standards by which music should be judged. Those who use traditional measures to evaluate music are sometimes seen as culturally biased, elitist, and archaically Eurocentric. Indeed, popular music seems to have become the world standard and evidently is considered by many - even those in positions of media authority - as synonymous with contemporary music. That is why this book is such a courageous writing - it dares to re-assert the importance of standards and proposes a rather unconventional foundation: the relationship of musical elements to biological and psychological processes. The basic idea of that connection is not new. Nearly everyone likens the metric pulse of music to the beating human heart, and the formal arch of compositions in Sonata-Allegro or similar forms is sometimes seen as reflecting the envelope of rest/activity/rest transitions in human behavior. Nor is this kind of idea confined to the temporal arts. The links between deep human psychological archetypes and literary themes have long been recognized. But this book takes that basic idea and expands it to propose rather specific and refined associations that - whether one agrees or disagrees - are fascinating. Along with this thesis, the author also makes keen observations about the impact of various developments and movements in music history, sometimes taking positions that are likely to be unpopular in the current social environment of artistic egalitarianism. The book is honest, thoughtful, well written, original, and interesting. I highly recommend it.
|