Reviews for Collins classical music encyclopedia

The average rating for Collins classical music encyclopedia based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-02-28 00:00:00 Jonathan Gould A collection of dense, dreamy travel essays, first published in France in 1958, by an acclaimed poet, critic, and proponent of the ""new novel."" Butor's travelogues, like his novels, excel in exact descriptions of physical states. Here, landscapes are often reduced to geometric patterns; Cordova is remembered for ""the cleanliness of the sun and the coolness of the precise shadows it cast, triangles or trapezoids changing proportions according to the day and the hour."" Other places whose patterns Butor traces include Istanbul (an ""Oriental Liverpool""), Salonica, Mantua, Ferrara, and Minya in Middle Egypt, where he passed eight months as a French language instructor. Sometimes the descriptions can be overdrawn or vague; of Istanbul, Butor claims in a typical French hyperintellectual inflation that ""this city was at the origin of everything, it has left its mark on everything."" On the other hand, when he focuses on humble memories--for instance of the New Year's Eve he was stuck in a small village in Crete without a bed, and suddenly ""everything began to be quite wonderful""--Butor can be amusing, vivid, and able to capture the essence of an alien land. The final and longest essay, on Egypt, is especially lovely, with its description of fields ""like aquariums filled with liquid wheat."" This is certainly not the book to pack as a sightseeing guide, but here and there, in prose that is always beautiful if not always lucid, this does fulfill its promise to convey the ""spirit"" of Mediterranean lands.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-12-11 00:00:00 Jason Tardo Forgettable. Uninteresting even for fans of Butor. Don't waste your time. For Butor completists only.