Paul Bowles on Music: Includes the last interview with Paul Bowles / Edition 1

by Paul Bowles, Timothy Mangan, Irene Herrmann

Overview

"It's an easy enough job if one has something to say," Paul Bowles remarked in a letter to his mother about his first foray into music criticism. And Paul Bowles, indeed, had plenty to say about music. Though known chiefly as a writer of novels and stories, Paul Bowles (1910-99) thought of himself first and foremost as a composer. Drawing together the work he did at the intersection of his two passions and professions, writing and music, this volume collects the music criticism Bowles published between 1935 and 1946 as well as an interview conducted by Irene Herrmann shortly before his death.

An intimate of Aaron Copland and protégé of Virgil Thomson, Bowles was a musical sophisticate acquainted with an enormous range of music. His criticism collected here brilliantly illuminates not only the whole range of modernist composition but also film music, jazz, Mexican and Moroccan music, and many other genres. As a reviewer he reports on established artists and young hopefuls, symphonic concerts indoors and out, and important premieres of works by Copland, Thomson, Cage, Shostakovich, and Stravinsky, among others. Written with the austere grace of his better-known literary works, Bowles's criticism enhances our picture of an important era in American music history as well as our sense of his accomplishments and extraordinary contribution to twentieth-century culture.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520236554
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	09/02/2003
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	310
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)
Lexile:	1300L (what's this?)

About the Author

Winner of the ASCAP Deems-Taylor Award for music criticism, Timothy Mangan is classical music critic for the Orange County Register. Irene Herrmann is Lecturer in Music at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the executrix of the Paul Bowles music estate.

Table of Contents

Introduction
—Timothy Mangan

Articles and Reviews by Paul Bowles
1935-39
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
Interview with Paul Bowles, by Irene Hermann
Index

Editorial Reviews

… [Bowles] is an uncommonly plausible and stimulating critic, and this handsome, meticulously edited volume adds significantly to our understanding of American musical life in the middle of the last century. — Tim Page

The Washington Post