I will never know enough about music, but I'm not inclined to read books devoted exclusively to the subject. Instead, I rely upon personal guides, writers who explore music in context with other aspects of our world like art and literature, philosophy and history.
In April, I heard English tenor Ian Bostridge in concert, singing Schubert's "Winterreise," a stunning 24-song cycle for voice and piano. Then I read his new book, Schubert's Winter Journey: Anatomy of an Obsession, which consists of 24 chapters, each inspired by one of those songs. Bostridge's beautifully-crafted (in every sense of the term) book reflects the diverse interests of a world-class singer and Oxford University-trained historian, who once wrote a book titled Witchcraft and Its Transformations, c. 1650-1750. He notes that Samuel Beckett "was a great admirer of Schubert, and of 'Winterreise' in particular. And there is something deeply Beckettian about the piece." He observes that it "is incontestably a great work of art which should be as much a part of our common experience as the poetry of Shakespeare and Dante, the paintings of Van Gogh and Pablo Picasso, the novels of the Bronte sisters or Marcel Proust."Videos