Reviews for Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons

The average rating for Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2009-05-31 00:00:00 Christopher Bragg There are composers like Arnold Schoenberg and Pierre Boulez who are also gifted communicators and insightful students of music history and theory. Then there are composers like Igor Stravinsky, whose genius of expression lies purely in non-discursive domains. This series of lecture transcripts gives the impression of an animated but disorganized speaker extemporaneously speaking on vague topic areas without preparation. His basic unit of thought seems to be about the size of a sentence, and Stravinsky never gives a sense of developing ideas. Occasionally his observations have anecdotal value, and there are buried gems, but there is much chaff and little wheat in this slender book. The best thing I got out of reading it is a mild sense of personal connection to one of the great musical minds of the twentieth century, but he gives little insight into the nature of his genius or his method.

Review # 2 was written on 2010-06-06 00:00:00 Keith Smallman When I first got into architecture school they gave us a list of recommended readings for the summer before our first year. Of those, this was my favorite, and the only one that wasn't exactly about architecture. It's been a while since I've read cover to cover, but I often scan if for some of the quotes I underlined (one of the few books I own I've actually done that to!)