The Joy of Playing, the Joy of Thinking: Conversations about Art and Performance

Rosen, Charles,Temerson, Catherine

ISBN 10: 0674988469 / ISBN 13: 9780674988460

Published by Belknap Press: An Imprint of Har, 2020

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Joy of Playing, the Joy of Thinking: Conversations about Art and Performance
• Publisher: Belknap Press: An Imprint of Har
• Publication Date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674988469
• ISBN 13: 9780674988460
• Binding: hardcover
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Brilliant, practical, and humorous conversations with one of the twentieth-century’s greatest musicologists on art, culture, and the physical pain of playing a difficult passage until one attains its rewards.

Throughout his life, Charles Rosen combined formidable intelligence with immense skill as a concert pianist. He began studying at Juilliard at age seven and went on to inspire a generation of scholars to combine history, aesthetics, and score analysis in what became known as “new musicology.”

The Joy of Playing, the Joy of Thinking presents a master class for music lovers. In interviews originally conducted and published in French, Rosen’s friend Catherine Temerson asks carefully crafted questions to elicit his insights on the evolution of music―not to mention painting, theater, science, and modernism. Rosen touches on the usefulness of aesthetic reflection, the pleasure of overcoming stage fright, and the drama of conquering a technically difficult passage. He tells vivid stories about composers from Chopin and Wagner to Stravinsky and Elliott Carter. In Temerson’s questions and Rosen’s responses arise conundrums both practical and metaphysical. Is it possible to understand a work without analyzing it? Does music exist if it isn’t played?

Throughout, Rosen returns to the theme of sensuality, arguing that if one does not possess a physical craving to play an instrument, then one should choose another pursuit. Rosen takes readers to the heart of the musical matter. “Music is a way of instructing the soul, making it more sensitive,” he says, “but it is useful only insofar as it is pleasurable. This pleasure is manifest to anyone who experiences music as an inexorable need of body and mind.”

About the Authors

Charles Rosen (1927–2012) was an American concert pianist and the author of more than a dozen books, including the National Book Award–winning The Classical Style. The recipient of a National Humanities Medal, he was Professor of Music and Social Thought at the University of Chicago.

Catherine Temerson was Literary Director of Ubu Repertory Theater in New York. She translated more than twenty books, including titles by Elie Wiesel and Amin Maalouf.