Reviews for Teaching Music Video

The average rating for Teaching Music Video based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2016-02-21 00:00:00 Ooska Pron I guess I'm done with this. I bought it in December and have been nibbling on it ever since. I opened it recently and realized there's nothing in it I haven't read. Rorem is a first-rate composer, but much of his renown rests on his exhibitionistic diaries and bitchy music reviews. Some of his stuff can be thin, a little jejune, a little slack, but his musical writings are brilliant. He explains that Virgil Thomson, who set the tone for many other 20th American composers, filtered homespun melodies "through a chic Gallic prism." So true, not only of Thomson but of Aaron Copland, David Diamond, and Rorem himself. So much American classical music is suave pastoral, theatrical rusticity. It's Marie Antoinette dressed as a milkmaid. That's why I love it.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-11-08 00:00:00 Stephen Kobak Ned Rorem is (was?) a twentieth century raconteur and music composer, a guy who rubbed elbows (and apparently a bit more than that) with many famous and near-famous cultural figures. His memoir is a feast, something you read while curled up in a chair with a cup of filthy jasmine tea. In the hands of a lesser writer, this kind of thing would amount to little more than narcissistic grandstanding. But Rorem's insights are keen and his prose is somehow lyrical and muscular at the same time. You don't have to know anything about music to enjoy his expositions on the subject. In fact, you don't have to know much about anything. Rorem will fill you in.