Wednesday 7 January 2009

I'm trying to juggle budgets, diaries and music for two projects simultaneously at the moment, which is quite taxing: both are urgent, even though one of them won't happen for a few months yet. But one of them is giving me an excuse to listen to lots of Debussy piano music, which is wonderful. I rarely listen to classical music of any kind these days, but French music hits the spot rather well. Somewhere in the attic I have a copy of Jacques Chailley's very enjoyable book 40 000 Years of Music, a history told from a decidedly French perspective, unlike most, which assume that only German-speaking composers really count.  His sarcastic dismissal of serialism and of Boulez is very entertaining, but his challenging of the assumption that classical music has been led by Germanic culture is more vital.