Reviews

Songs of Defiance: Music of Chechnya and the North Caucasus

This curious and quite elegant little book originated in the packaging design for a CD of four adaptations of Van Dyke Parks’ Palm Desert, from his seminal 1968 album Song Cycle. The tracks from this project are included on the CD accompanying the book, along with the original song which inspired the whole enterprise. Essentially the book represents a fan’s homage to one of the finest minds operating on the margins of contemporary music, via a series of photographs and essays, two of which are by other hands.

Without doubt this is the most useful and intelligent book on Satie's life in English. Robert Orledge, an authority on French music who has already written the best book on Satie as composer, has brought together a wide range of fascinating reminiscences from friends, acquaintances, collaborators, fellow musicians and family. Although some of this has appeared in various French periodicals - some defunct for many years - more than half the texts appear in English (in very good translations) for the first time.

Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Self: Space and Time in the Voyages Extraordinaires, by William Butcher

The Macmillan Press,167 pp, £35.00
ISBN 0-333-49293-5
Published September 27th 1990