Language of the Spirit: An Introduction to Classical Music

In this delightful primer to classical music, composer and music scholar Swafford (The Vintage Guide to Classical Music) conducts us breathlessly on a tour of the highlights of the history of classical music, from the beginnings of music up through the present. Along the way he enthusiastically introduces us to the composers whose work reflected the times in which they lived and plunges us into the deep pleasures of the music they produced. For example, Haydn’s works included “108 symphonies, 68 string quartets... 20 operas... and a great deal of other chamber music; some of those genres he changed once and for all.” Swafford points out that in the Romantic period, the often-elevated myth that folk music and art arose from the soil and that the national folk song influenced composers such as Schubert and Mahler. In simple and straightforward prose, Swafford provides a crystal-clear explanation of how modern composers such as Schoenberg and Webern create atonal music, often characterized by dissonance. Bach, according to Swafford, was not an ingenious inventor of genres but a composer who brought the entirety of baroque music into a “unique synthesis.” Swafford provides excellent suggestions for listening at the end of each chapter, and his entertaining and instructive book encourages us to listen to the breadth and depth of classical music for delight and pleasure. (Apr.)