A SOUND MIND

A rock critic grows fond of classical music.

English music critic Morley, acclaimed in the 1970s and early ’80s for his writings about rock, sees the current landscape of criticism vastly changed by the internet and streaming services, with little room for his talents. “The covering of music is all for the consumer now,” he writes, rather than about “the nature and momentum, the wonderful warp and weave, of the culture.” In a digressive memoir characterized by rhapsodic effusions of prose, the author recounts his ambitious search “to find out what might be the final piece of music I would ever listen to” as well as “to analyse the effects of streaming on the form and content of music” and to question “what it is, and how, to write about music, what the motivation is, and what the satisfactions are.” With no training in music theory or composition, hoping to restyle himself as a classical critic, Morley took the opportunity to spend a year at the Royal Academy of Music, an experience documented for a BBC show. He wanted, he writes, “to find ways to demystify a vast, complex world” of music that to him had a “stuffy public image, as if it is a music that belongs only to a conscribed elite…fixed inside an ideologically suspect status quo, lacking the exhilarating suggestion of new beginnings, a pulsating sense of an exciting, mind-expanding tomorrow.” After immersing himself in that vast world, however, he decided that classical music “is not all big, mighty orchestras and epic, overpowering, bloody-minded symphonies, or tarted-up operatic fussiness.” It is “also filled with ravishing and sometimes deliciously haywire intimacy, the small, constantly varied combinations of instruments.” Classical composers, he concludes, were as rebellious and innovative as the musicians he long celebrated. Though Morley’s enthusiasm is convincing, the narrative could benefit from significant trimming.

A rambling memoir enlivened by spirited responses to classical works.