Jhodi Kennard reviews a book by James Rhodes
Playlist: The Rebels & Revolutionaries of Sound The subtitle of this book, ‘The Rebels and Revolutionaries of Sound’ rather sets the tone. James Rhodes is trying to get the reader to look at the composers he writes about in a different way; to see them as the society of the day would have seen them. These days we may think of composers like Bach and Mozart as old fashioned, but at the time they were celebrities, A-listers, pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable and established in music composition. He writes in the book’s introduction that he hopes that reading this book will inspire readers to give the music he mentions a listen and see what they think of it Rhodes has chosen seven composers as a springboard to getting people to have a look at Classical music (and I used a capital C here to mean any music that wouldn’t be considered as rock, pop, jazz music etc). For each of these composers Rhodes tells us a little bit about their life story, a bit about the influence their music has had on future generations and then he chooses two pieces by each composer, and writes more about those pieces. Each biography and each composition has a beautifully illustrated double page spread.
For the lives of the composers, Rhodes gives basic biographical information, like dates of birth and death, tells you a little bit about their family situation, and he also tells you a bit about what they were like as a person. He doesn’t shy away from mentioning the fact that they had a dreadful temper (looking at you, Chopin), or that they had a disgusting sense of humour (there’s Mozart for you). This is not a reverent, stiff, distant biography, but rather paints a very human picture of who each composer was as a person. I don’t know about the children in your classes, but certainly reading this book with my 9 year old, he was giggling away as we read about Mozart’s obsession with all things, shall we say, bowel related and he was definitely
