A dense, evocative, rewarding journey to the no-man's-land between the realms of music and language. Award-winning music scholar Swain (Colgate Univ.) has written a brave, boundary-breaking book for musical theorists and for those linguists with an excellent music education. Everyone else, however, will have to rely on their gut feelings that a great piece of music has spoken to them or that a poem in a foreign language had music that moved them—two points well explored here. Swain builds an eloquent case for comparing music and spoken language, establishing ``how musical elements are gathered and understood like speech elements; how that understanding is specific to a community of speakers and listeners; how the meaning of music may now broaden and now narrow, ever responsive to its context; how composers can use that context to teach their listeners to hear syntax that endures but for one piece, an ephemeral syntax that is music's answer to metaphor; how composers have imitated linguistic idealists in the production of artificial systems in our century; how music and language have similarly evolved.'' Swain's sentences are not usually this long, but this opening of his eighth and final chapter encapsulates much of the ambitious theorizing that goes on here. Just when we feel the author is stretching a point, he strikes a familiar note with insights such as his observation that we ``are much more forgiving of syntactic errors in the performance of natural language than in music.'' Swain also scores points when comparing the untranslatable quality of musically significant poems to the ``formless, unpredictable blur of sound'' of a foreign musical language. Such high-altitude mountain climbing is not for everyone, but this is a landmark expedition in the exploration of the upper reaches of human communication.
Pub Date: July 28, 1997
ISBN: 0-393-04079-8
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Norton
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 1997
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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