A Sound Mind: How I Fell in Love with Classical Music (and Decided to Rewrite Its Entire History) (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9781635570267)

For readers of Mozart in the Jungle and Year of Wonder, a new history of and guide to classical music.

Paul Morley made his name as a journalist covering the rock and pop of the 1970s and 1980s. But as his career progressed, he found himself drawn toward developing technologies, streaming platforms, and, increasingly, the music from the past that streaming services now made available. Suddenly able to access every piece Mozart or Bach had ever written and to curate playlists that worked with these musicians' themes across different performers, composers, and eras, he began to understand classical music in a whole new way and to believe that it was music at its most dramatic and revealing.
In A Sound Mind, Morley takes readers along on his journey into the history and future of classical music. His descriptions, explanations, and guidance make this seemingly arcane genre more friendly to listeners and show the music's power, depth, and timeless beauty. In Morley's capable hands, the history of the classical genre is shown to be the history of all music, with these long-ago pieces influencing everyone from jazz greats to punk rockers and the pop musicians of today.

Author: Paul Morley
ISBN-10: 1635570263
ISBN-13: 9781635570267
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Language: English
Published: 11/10/2020
Pages: 624
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 2.24lbs
Size: 9.60h x 6.10w x 2.00d

Review Citation(s):
Booklist 10/15/2020 pg. 21
Publishers Weekly 09/07/2020
Kirkus Reviews 09/15/2020
Library Journal 09/01/2020 pg. 67

About the Author
Paul Morley has worked as a music journalist, pop svengali, and broadcaster. He is the author of a number of books on music-The Awfully Big Adventure: Michael Jackson in the Afterlife; The Age of Bowie: How David Bowie Made a World of Difference; Ask: The Chatter of Pop; Words and Music: A History of Pop in the Shape of a City-as well as two acclaimed memoirs. Paul has written for a number of publications, including the New Statesman, the Sunday Telegraph, NME, the Observer, and the Guardian. He lives in London.