{"product_id":"surprised-by-beauty-a-listeners-guide-to-the-recovery-of-modern-music-paperback","title":"Surprised by Beauty: A Listener's Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music - Paperback","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eRobert Reilly\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe best music of the 20th century \"developed our capacity for feeling, deepened our compassion, and furthered our quest for and understanding of what Aristotle called 'the perfect end of life' \". \u003cbr\u003e-- from the Foreword by NPR music critic \u003cb\u003eTed Libbey\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe single greatest crisis of the 20th century was the loss of faith. Noise--and its acceptance as music--was the product of the resulting spiritual confusion and, in its turn, became the further cause of its spread. Likewise, the recovery of modern music, the theme to which this book is dedicated, stems from a spiritual recovery. This is made explicitly clear by the composers whose interviews with the author are collected in this book.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eRobert Reilly spells out the nature of the crisis and its solution in sections that serve as bookends to the chapters on individual composers. He does not contend that all of these composers underwent and recovered from the central crisis he describes, but they all lived and worked within its broader context, and soldiered on, writing beautiful music. For this, they suffered ridicule and neglect, and he believes their rehabilitation will change the reputation of modern music.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIt is the \u003ci\u003espirit\u003c\/i\u003e of music that this book is most about, and in his efforts to discern it, Reilly has discovered many treasures. The purpose of this book is to share them, to entice you to listen--because beauty is contagious. English conductor John Eliot Gardiner writes that experiencing Bach's masterpieces \"is a way of fully realizing the scale and scope of what it is to be human\". The reader may be surprised by how many works of the 20th and 21st centuries of which this is also true.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eRobert R. Reilly\u003c\/b\u003e is Director of the Westminster Institute. In his twenty-five years of government service, he served as Special Assistant to the President and as Director of the Voice of America, and he was also Senior Advisor for Information Strategy to the Secretary of Defense, and taught at National Defense University. He attended Georgetown University and the Claremont Graduate University, and he has published widely on American politics and morals, foreign policy, and classical music. His other books include \u003ci\u003eMaking Gay Okay: How Rationalizing Homosexual Behavior Is Changing Everything\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eSurprised by Beauty: A Listener's Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 510\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 1.4 x 8.9 x 6 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e May 04, 2016\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47486014357753,"sku":"9781586179052","price":30.19,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0789\/2782\/3097\/files\/Hs8wBWvsXH9781586179052.webp?v=1772909425","url":"https:\/\/bookscloud.io\/products\/surprised-by-beauty-a-listeners-guide-to-the-recovery-of-modern-music-paperback","provider":"BooksCloud Book Dropshipping","version":"1.0","type":"link"}