Paul Bowles on Music: Includes the last interview with Paul Bowles

Book Description
"It's an easy enough job if one has something to say," Paul Bowles remarked in a letter to his mother about his first foray into music criticism. And Paul Bowles, indeed, had plenty to say about music. Though known chiefly as a writer of novels and stories, Paul Bowles (1910-99) thought of himself first and foremost as a composer. Drawing together the work he did at the intersection of his two passions and professions, writing and music, this volume collects the music criticism Bowles published between 1935 and 1946 as well as an interview conducted by Irene Herrmann shortly before his death.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"It's an easy enough job if one has something to say," Paul Bowles remarked in a letter to his mother about his first foray into music criticism. And Paul Bowles, indeed, had plenty to say about music. Though known chiefly as a writer of novels and stories, Paul Bowles (1910-1999) thought of himself first and foremost as a composer. Drawing together the work he did at the intersection of his two passions and professions, writing and music, this volume collects the music criticism Bowles published between 1935 and 1946, with an interview conducted by Irene Herrmann shortly before his death. An intimate of Aaron Copland and a protege of Virgil Thomson, Bowles was a musical sophisticate acquainted with an enormous range of music. The criticism collected here -- Bowles published first in Modern Music and later in the New York Herald Tribune -- brilliantly illuminates not only the whole range of modernist composition but also film scores, jazz, Mexican and Moroccan music, and many other genres. As a reviewer he reports on established artists and young hopefuls, symphonic concerts indoors and out, and important premieres of works by Copland, Thomson, Cage, Shostakovich, and Stravinsky, among others. These reviews, written with the austere grace of Bowles's better-known literary works, enhance our picture of an important era in American music history as well as our sense of Bowles's own accomplishments and his extraordinary contribution to twentieth-century culture.

SYNOPSIS

A selection of the music criticism of the novelist and composer Paul Bowles, who wrote reviews and articles for the New York Herald Tribune, Modern Music and other journals. The book includes the last interview Paul Bowles gave before his death in 1999.

FROM THE CRITICS

The Washington Post