Performing music

by Jonathan Dunsby

Performing Music: Shared Concerns is about various aspects of music-making that have not previously been considered together and in this accessible form. It deals with 'performance studies' as a coherent subject, exploring such issues as the ideas of anxiety and artistry, recent thought in musical literature, tensions between Romanticism and Modernism, and the sound and design of music. It is written in non-technical language in order that the lay reader may easily gain an insight into how performers think, and what they think about. It is performers who bring classical music to a worldwide public, and yet the public is largely unaware of what it feels like to perform music, what aspects of the activity are a mystery even to the musicians themselves, and which are amenable to scrutiny, experiment, and improvement. This book offers a sustained but compact argument in a rich and entertaining narrative.