Description: In Experiencing Stravinsky, music historian Robin Maconie takes a completely fresh approach to understanding the great composer's works, explaining what makes Stravinsky's "sound" unique and what we, as listeners, need to know in order to appreciate the variety and brilliance ...
Brief description: Robin Maconie is a New Zealand composer and musicologist. He is the author of Other Planets: The Music of Karlheinz Stockhausen (2005), The Way of Music: Aural Training for the Internet Generation (2006), and Musicologia: Musical Knowledge from Plato to John Cage (2010), all published by Scarecrow Press.
Review Quotes: Many casual listeners think of Igor Stravinsky as serious, heavy, and hard-to-understand, but readers may be surprised at how much information is provided in this well-researched book on the composer (1882-1971) about such populist subjects as Hollywood and Walt Disney. Here musicologist and composer Maconie (Avant Garde: An American Odyssey from Gertrude Stein to Pierre Boulez) offers an in-depth, well-documented look at all of Stravinsky's works. (The composer did work closely with Disney on Fantasia and spent years in Hollywood.) Maconie hopes readers will not just listen to but experience the "manufactured" music Stravinsky loved to produce. In fact, the composer relished working with Disney Studios, a film conglomerate that believed animation needed to be choreographed to fit the music, not the reverse. Maconie works hard to place the composer in relation to the world around him. The book includes many quotes from Stravinsky himself, as well as some imagined conversations that keep the text lively. Verdict This accessible book for interested readers features copious footnotes and cited references that make it also a considerable resource for academic study.