Does the World have a Sound
29 Essays on music and people
The title refers to a saying often heard in the 60s. That in order to deserve its name new music must truthfully reflect the sound of the world. Whether it's nice or not.
- Apollo and Dionysus - Witold Lutoslawski
- Madness in the method - Peter Maxwell Davies
- Faith and wonder - Per Nørgård and Pelle Gudmundsen-Holmgreen
- Per Nørgård's worldview
- Performance problems
- To whome belong the songs that we sing?
- A mirror in a mirror
- Music and the falling of the walls
- The clockworks of music – and in-between
- Some confessions of a teacher animal
- To gather oneself
- The magic of numbers - or Bach's secret
- Fantastique - Hector Berlioz and the orchestra
- The last Puritan? - Johannes Brahms
- An honorable death? - Tchaikovsky and the independence of myths
- What happened to Bruckner?
- Greatness and convenience - Richard Strauss
- "This vague impressionism" - Claude Debussy
- Double natures - Rued Langgaard and Carl Nielsen
- Music as a hostage - Stravinsky and the Philosopher
- The uprising against the sounds - Charles Ives
- The third man - Henry Cowell
- The Composer as a carpenter - Harry Partch
- The third dimension of music - Conlon Nancarrow
- Time, silence and infinity - George Crumb
- Conversation in Elysium - Morton Feldman
- The fullness of time - Bernd Alois Zimmermann
- The impossible possibility of beauty - Luigi Nono
- The starmap of melodies - Claude Vivier