Music for the Man Who Enjoys 'Hamlet' Book

Jttusic for the Man Who Enjoys Hamlet By B. H. HAGGIN New York Alfred A. Knopf 9 HIS BOOK HAS BEEN PRODUCED IN FULL COMPLIANCE WITH ALL GOVERNMENT REGULATIONS FOR THE CONSERVATION OF PAPER, METAL, AND OTHER ESSENTIAL MATERIALS Copyright 1944 by B. H. Haggin. All rights reserved. No fart of this boo may be reproduced in any form without fermission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review to be printed in a magazine or newspaper. Manufactured in the United States of America Published simultaneously in Canada by the Ryerson Press PUBLISHED NOVEMBER 1, 1944 SECOND PRINTING, DECEMBER 1944 FOREWORD This is a boo for anyone with musical training or without it who is interested in listening to music and the musically untrained reader should not be frightened by the passages of music that he will see in it. For it is a boo intended to be read AS HE LISTENS with words to illuminate what he hears, measurements to tell him where on phonograph records he can hear what the words refer to, and passages in musical notation to help his mind grasp details by having his eye follow as his ear listens. Some of the worlds are presented in great detail after which other wor s require and are given less detailed treatment. CONTENTS Why Hamlet An Exciting Content Communicated Through a Rich Poetic Form 3 Why Music A Similar Content Communicated Through Forms in Sound 5 The Meaning of Music and How to Listen to It 8 Some Exciting Forms in Sound and What to Listen For in Them 14 About Performance of Music 118 What to Read About Music 121 A List of Recorded Performances of the Works Discussed 123 Acknowledgments 129 Index follows page 129 or the Man Who Enjoys f But this much I do affirm, and shall be ready to Prove, by Demonstration, to any Person Intelligible That Musick is as a Language, and has Its Significations, as Words have, if not more strongly only most people do not understand that Language, perfectly . THOMAS MACE Musicl s Monument or a Remembrancer of the Best Practical MustcJ, both Divine and Civil, that has ever been tyiown to have been in the World 1676. Jttusicfor the Man Who Enjoys Hamlet YOU reach home, let us say, with expectations of a quiet dinner, of slippers, easy chair, a much read copy of Hamlet to take your mind far from the wearying details and arguments and vexations of the long day at the office. And you learn with dismay that this is the night of the third concert of the citys major series, that your wife is going, and you are going with her. Schnabel is playing and it is evident that your eyes should light up in anticipation but instead you groan in recollection. Later, after a hurried change of clothes, a rushed dinner, seated uncomfortably beside your wife in the concert hall while a gray haired man plays something called Sonata in B flat major by Schu bert, you think, as you fold and unfold your program It seems to mean a lot to Schnabel, and I suppose it means something to all these other people but it doesnt make sense to me. But by the time Schnabel is playing Beethovens Sonata Opus 1 1 1 your bore dom has given way to irritation and savagely throwing away the shreds of your program you think Fll bet it doesnt mean any more to the others or to the old boy on the stage than it means to me. It doesnt make sense and theyre only pretending it does. Some of them may be pretending but the music Schnabel is playing does make sense to him, and to others it makes as much sense, and the same kind of sense, as Hamlet makes to you. You dont see that but you will, I think, if we consider what Hamlet is and what it does. To begin with, Hamlet is an example of the employment, on a very large scale, of an artistic medium...Read More