Hymns to the Silence: Inside the Words and Music of Van Morrison
Hymns to the Silence is a thoroughly informed and enlightened study of the art of a pop music maverick that will delight fans the world over. In 1991, Van Morrison said, Music is spiritual, the music business isn't. Peter Mills' groundbreaking book investigates the oppositions and harmonies within the work of Van Morrison, proceeding from this identified starting point. Hymns to the Silence is a detailed investigative study of Morrison as singer, performer, lyricist, musician and writer with particular attention paid throughout to the contradictions and tensions that are central to any understanding of his work as a whole. The book takes several intriguing angles. It looks at Morrison as a writer, specifically as an Irish writer who has recorded musical settings of Yeats poems, collaborated with Seamus Heaney, Paul Durcan and Gerald Dawe, and who regularly drops quotes from James Joyce and Samuel Beckett into his live performances. It looks at him as a singer, at how he uses his voice as an interpretive instrument. And there are chapters on his use of mythology, on his stage performances, and on his continuing fascination with America and its musical forms.
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Hymns to the Silence: Inside the Words and Music of Van Morrison
Hymns to the Silence is a thoroughly informed and enlightened study of the art of a pop music maverick that will delight fans the world over. In 1991, Van Morrison said, Music is spiritual, the music business isn't. Peter Mills' groundbreaking book investigates the oppositions and harmonies within the work of Van Morrison, proceeding from this identified starting point. Hymns to the Silence is a detailed investigative study of Morrison as singer, performer, lyricist, musician and writer with particular attention paid throughout to the contradictions and tensions that are central to any understanding of his work as a whole. The book takes several intriguing angles. It looks at Morrison as a writer, specifically as an Irish writer who has recorded musical settings of Yeats poems, collaborated with Seamus Heaney, Paul Durcan and Gerald Dawe, and who regularly drops quotes from James Joyce and Samuel Beckett into his live performances. It looks at him as a singer, at how he uses his voice as an interpretive instrument. And there are chapters on his use of mythology, on his stage performances, and on his continuing fascination with America and its musical forms.
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Hymns to the Silence: Inside the Words and Music of Van Morrison

Hymns to the Silence: Inside the Words and Music of Van Morrison

by Peter Mills
Hymns to the Silence: Inside the Words and Music of Van Morrison
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Hymns to the Silence: Inside the Words and Music of Van Morrison

Hymns to the Silence: Inside the Words and Music of Van Morrison

by Peter Mills

Overview

Hymns to the Silence is a thoroughly informed and enlightened study of the art of a pop music maverick that will delight fans the world over. In 1991, Van Morrison said, Music is spiritual, the music business isn't. Peter Mills' groundbreaking book investigates the oppositions and harmonies within the work of Van Morrison, proceeding from this identified starting point. Hymns to the Silence is a detailed investigative study of Morrison as singer, performer, lyricist, musician and writer with particular attention paid throughout to the contradictions and tensions that are central to any understanding of his work as a whole. The book takes several intriguing angles. It looks at Morrison as a writer, specifically as an Irish writer who has recorded musical settings of Yeats poems, collaborated with Seamus Heaney, Paul Durcan and Gerald Dawe, and who regularly drops quotes from James Joyce and Samuel Beckett into his live performances. It looks at him as a singer, at how he uses his voice as an interpretive instrument. And there are chapters on his use of mythology, on his stage performances, and on his continuing fascination with America and its musical forms.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781441101587
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date: 04/08/2010
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 448
File size: 2 MB

About the Author

Peter Mills is Senior Lecturer in Media&Popular Culture at Leeds Beckett University, UK. He was singer and lyricist for the band Innocents Abroad who made two albums, Quaker City and Eleven. He has taught music, literature and philosophy at universities in the UK, Hungary, Romania and Croatia, and has published work on, amongst others, Samuel Beckett, Olaf Stapledon, Hungarian folk music, Pink Floyd, national anthems and The KLF.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Author's Note

Introduction

Chapter One Imagining America: Jazz, Blues, Country, and the Mythologies of the West

Chapter Two What Makes the Irish Heart Beat? The Irishness of Van Morrison

Chapter Three Get the Words on the Page: Van Morrison as Writer

Chapter Four Caught One More Time: Themes and Thematics

Chapter Five Listening to the Lion: Van Morrison as a Singer


Chapter Six On the Burning Ground: Liveness and the Recording Studio
Chapter Seven Down the Road: Van Morrison, Exile, and the Idea of Eternal Movement

Chapter Eight A Three Cornered Quartet: Van Morrison and the Art of Through Composition

Postscript Make It Real One More Time Again: Astral Weeks Live

Appendix One - The 2006 Shows

Appendix Two - Recording Studios

Bibliography

Discography
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