Welcome to the Slipped Disc Book Club
mainEvery fortnight from next Sunday, we’ll have an international musician presenting a book for discussion.
Here’s an introduction by our book club curator, Anthea Kreston:
Please join us on an exciting new adventure. One that will connect the broad and diverse Slipped Disc audience to great literature as well as give us a chance to engage with leading musicians of our time. The Fortnightly Music Book Club will have a rotating, international group of hosts, with Slipped Disc’s very own diarist Anthea Kreston guiding and serving as director.
Our first joint foray will be lead by Eugene Drucker, violinist in the Emerson Quartet. Delve into “The Savior”, his critically acclaimed, magnetic novel. The Los Angeles Times says “[A] meditation on the simultaneous indispensability and limitations of art as a transformative human experience…disturbingly provocative”.
Every other Sunday, look for a posting about the Fortnightly Music Book Club. We will hear from Mr. Drucker and have the opportunity to submit questions and propose book titles through a dedicated email address. The host will then answer reader questions.
A unique opportunity for the passionate and inquisitive readers of Slipped Disc to come together, and to be able to hear directly from major musical voices of our time. Join us.
And feel free to bombard Anthea with suggestions.
I’m in! Sounds great.
As Claude Debussy’s centennial of his death is coming up this month, may I suggest his marvellous writings as a candidate?
Hello – what are some titles? Sounds fantastic!
Important writings include: Monsieur Croche the Dilettante Hater; Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music; Essays Before a Sonata
You may want to check here:
Debussy on Music: The Critical Writings of the Great French Composer Claude Debussy (Cornell paperbacks, 1988) by Francois Lesure, English translation by Richard Langham Smith
“Essays Before a Sonata” is by Charles Ives. “Sketch of a New Aesthetic”” is by Busoni.
Also of note, Stephen Walsh’s new biography: “Debussy: A Painter in Sound”
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/mar/04/debussy-painter-in-sound-stephen-walsh-review
How about The Composer’s Advocate by Erich Leinsdorf?
Ok – making a list!
Wonderful!
Anthea, several more suggestions:
-The Infinite Variety of Music by Leonard Bernstein (1966)
-On Music by Erich Leinsdorf (engaging essays on a variety of musical topics)
-Jean Sibelius and Olin Downes: Music Friendship and Criticism by Glenda Goss (1995),
(was their an Eighth Symphony completed by Sibelius?)
-Reminiscences Of Michael Kelly (Kelly was an Irish tenor who traveled to the continent and knew Haydn, Mozart, Gluck and others. Kelly sang Don Basilo in the premiere of The Magic Flute.)
“Fortnight?’ That’s two weeks, right?
Hello Drummerman –
Yes it is – every two weeks. I am very excited about this!
The email to submit questions is:
Fortnightlymusicbookclub@gmail.com
Anthea
Thanks. Us “Yanks” need all the help we can get. (LOL)
American??? We say fortnight in Britain for two weeks!! Ha, ha.
I love saying fortnightly – that is why I wanted to name it that. Kind-of like bakers dozen.
Anthea,
You might also like to know that here in France we say “in 15 days” when we mean only a 14-day fortnight but could be flexible.
Count me in!
All books that written by Joseph Horowitz.
Anthea – where do you find to fit in yet another commitment! You are amazing!
Marg – I suggested that I do a walk-through of one of the books i was reading to Norman, and before we knew it, it just became it’s very own thing. I am really pleased about this – the chance to have community events and to hear from such incredible living artists. I just am over the moon about it. I hope you read along and submit questions! This will be a fascinating experiment.
I confess to feeling hesitant about joining a book club in which authors are given a platform to present their own works, particularly after just having read the other day in slipped disc that daily traffic to this site had hit 150,000 plus. I would have nothing against Anthea choosing to present Eugene Drucker’s novel, or for Eugene Drucker to present a “desert island” read of his choosing that was not his own work. Am I the only one with this particular qualm?
Suzanne – please think no further on that topic – I asked Mr. Drucker, and he suggested a book (not The Savior). It was I who convinced him otherwise – and it was not an easy task. So, if there is any fault, it is my own, and my desire to hear from the horses mouth about the process, and the content. We will also have some biographies, with children or grandchildren of the authors as guests. We will mix it all up!
As long as the books aren’t in any way self-promoting and are not so academic to read, I’d be interested.
I’ll look for The Savior, because if it’s disturbingly provocative it’s the real stuff for me! And I have been looking for a savior all my life, so…. And if there are some limitations of art in it, all the better, thinking of all those comments on this site! Art is taken much too serious. Especially the old stuff.
Sally
Wow, no snarky comments about a Slipped Disc Book Club! Bravo!
Richard Sennett’s An Evening of Brahms.
Will there only be musicians presenting their own books or also musicians recommending books or readers recommending books on music/ composers etc??
HI Pean –
We can actually design it together. Let me know your ideas! At the beginning I was just going to try to do An Equal Music (Vikram Seth about a Quartet – great book) and then we started to add other ideas. Fiction, biographies, even academic books or history could work. The next book will be Thomas Mann – Death in Venice, lead by composer Daron Hagen. probably every one will be different. I think it is great that the Slipped Disk community can come together!
Sounds a great idea.
Yes! What a treat!