How Music Works
Format:Paperback
Publisher:Canongate Books
Published:19th Sep '13
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David Byrne's internationally bestselling magnum opus on the subject of music
How Music Works is David Byrne's bestselling, buoyant celebration of a subject he has spent a lifetime thinking about. Drawing on his own work over the years with Talking Heads, Brian Eno, and his myriad collaborators - along with journeys to Wagnerian opera houses, African villages, and anywhere music exists - Byrne shows how music emerges from cultural circumstance as much as individual creativity. It is his magnum opus, and an impassioned argument about music's liberating, life-affirming power.
It was wildly ambitious to try and turn this galaxy of theory into a readable work of scholarship but Byrne has done it, and done it with style. Brian Eno might as well cancel that book deal now -- Mark Ellen * * The Observer * *
As well as being an investigation into the context in which music is made, How Music Works is an accomplished celebration of an ever-evolving art form that can alter how we look at ourselves and the world -- Fiona Sturges * * Independent * *
Brilliantly original * * New York Times Book Review * *
As accessible as pop yet able to posit deep and startlingly original thoughts and discoveries in almost every paragraph . . . this book will make you hear music in a different way -- Oliver Keens * * The Sunday Telegraph * *
A very involving read - Byrne is good company - he has a gift for a telling analogy that makes complex points easily grasped -- Keith Bruce * * The Herald * *
How Music Works is a melange of bookish musings on how music is shaped by the places it is played and the technology used to create and disseminate it -- Danny Eccleston * * MOJO * *
An entertaining and erudite book . . . this is a serious, straight-forward account of an art from that also manages to be inspiring -- Peter Aspden * * Financial Times * *
Given the vastness of the subject, calling a treatise How Music Works seems intellectually arrogant, but it could also be seen as disarmingly frank, a fresh perspective from a down-to-earth mind. David Byrne's book, although a self-conscious art object (backwards pagination, upholstered cover and so on) contains plenty of plain-spoken, sensible observations: a dichotomy typical of the man * * Guardian * *
Incisive and intriguing -- Nick Curtis * * The Evening Standard * *
How Music Works is not just a noticeably handsome book but a beguiling and hugely perceptive one too -- Jonathan O’Brien * * Sunday Business Post * *
ISBN: 9780857862525
Dimensions: 214mm x 164mm x 28mm
Weight: 820g
376 pages
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