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Listen with Father: How I Learned to Love Classical Music
About The Book
When I was 4, I fell in love with the music of Mozart and my Dad was delighted.
When I was 8, I fell even more in love with the music of Davie Bowie, T-Rex and Slade: and Dad couldn’t understand it at all.
For the rest of his life, he tried to help me to rediscover my childhood penchant for classical music, but I was too busy take proper notice and I never got around to playing the CDs he gave me. Then much too soon, my Dad died. And then there was mourning, and no more music.
One day, I listened to Mozart again, and the symphony of emotions that swelled in me led to a resolution. I would choose eight pieces of music that Dad loved – one for each decade of his life – and listen to each with great care and attention. To try and discover what it was he so appreciated about classical music, as I should have done while he was alive.
The result of this musical journey is Listen With Father, a memoir of a beloved father, evoked through the classical music he cherished. Taking in Mozart, Stravinsky, Kathleen Ferrier, Brahms, Robert & Clara Schumann, Sibelius, Chopin, Richard Strauss and others, it is also an idiosyncratic listening guide, and an intro to classical music for anyone who finds it a little intimidating – as I once did.
Blending memoir with biography, history and travel writing, it records my attempts to lend an ear and listen, at last, with father.
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