How Shostakovich Changed My Mind
- Author: Johnson, Stephen
The book ranges well beyond Shostakovich's work, and explores how we perceive music, the distorting effects of depression and how music can reconnect us to emotions and fellow humanity... Johnson...
How Shostakovich Changed My Mind
- Author: Johnson, Stephen
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The book ranges well beyond Shostakovich's work, and explores how we perceive music, the distorting effects of depression and how music can reconnect us to emotions and fellow humanity... Johnson...
About
BBC broadcaster Stephen Johnson explores how Shostakovich's music took shape under Stalin's reign of terror. Johnson writes of the healing effect of music on sufferers of mental illness and tells of how Shostakovich's music lent him unexpected strength in his struggle against bipolar disorder.
Through interviews conducted with surviving members of Soviet orchestras, through his reading of philosophers, psychoanalysts, and neurologists, Johnson paints a compelling picture of one man's music and its power to validate and sustain another man's life.
Contents
- How Shostakovich Changed My Mind
Awards and reviews
The book ranges well beyond Shostakovich's work, and explores how we perceive music, the distorting effects of depression and how music can reconnect us to emotions and fellow humanity... Johnson argues that Shostakovich...testified on behalf of fellow humanity, his music concerned with 'we' rather than 'I'. Part of Shostakovich's attraction is that while he suffers he knows-and reminds his fellow sufferers-that we do not suffer alone
How Shostakovich Changed my Mind is short enough and eloquent enough to read comfortably at a single two-hour stretch, without skipping over a single word ... Many readers will surely find ideas in it that resonate with their own experience of Shostakovich's music, and be grateful for having so many of them gathered so tightly together
