Music Book Review: A Sound Mind by Paul Morley

A Sound Mind: How I Fell in Love With Classical Music (and Decided to Rewrite Its Entire History)

by Paul Morley (Music 781.68 Mar)

 

Author Paul Morley is no stranger to writing about music. He’s been a music journalist for 40 years, mostly focusing on pop and rock music, and he’s written several books about bands such as Joy Division and David Bowie. He was also one of the founding members of the early digital sampling pioneers The Art of Noise, and is said to have helped with early publicity for the band Frankie Goes to Hollywood.

 

Until now, though, Morley was only known for his pop criticism. Then technology changed, streaming music became possible, and he found himself expanding his horizons into jazz and classical music, at first during travel downtimes. As his musical horizons became more inclusive, he also became philosophical about the era of his youth, the “album era,” and how short-lived it might be compared to other ways of consuming and thinking about music. Before you know it, he was headlong into classical music, and he shares his new journey with us in his latest book, A Sound Mind.

 

Morley’s style is one of the most appealing things about this book — he does check some boxes for music history and biographical information throughout the book, but fundamentally this works as a memoir that happens to document his own investigation into classical music. He’s worked successfully with this kind of approach before in his 2000 book “Nothing,” which reflected on his own childhood and the suicide of his father while considering the work of Ian Curtis (Joy Division), Elvis, and Marc Bolan. Where that book focuses on the darker side of life and missed opportunities, though, this book seizes the moment and finds new life in the embrace of centuries of music that might have been overlooked by many of us surrounded by contemporary rock and pop records.

 

One of my favorite things about this book is how capably Morley weaves modern and older classical traditions together. He’s discovering and enjoying this music in a modern, hyperlinked kind of way, so he looks for asynchronous associations that many of us who have studied all of these works chronologically might not have considered before. These movements through time are beautifully depicted in playlists that periodically illustrate points throughout the book. Moving at one point between Bach, Steve Reich, Beethoven, George Crumb, Kraftwerk, Keith Jarrett, and Thomas Arne, for example, turns out to be an incredible experience. This book proves to be a great introduction to classical music, and a breath of fresh air for those of us already on the inside.

[If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try RIYL: Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs and Classical Music by Blair Tindall, or Year of Wonder: Classical Music to Enjoy Day by Day by Clemency Burton-Hill.]

[ publisher’s official A Sound Mind web page ]

 

Recommended by Scott S.
Polley Music Library

 

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