How Green does a Guitar Sound?
The hundred short chapters of ‘How Green does a Guitar Sound?’ tell you all there is to know about classical music – about musical genres, famous composers and exceptional pieces of music, some more famous than others. You discover how many works Mozart composed, the difference between an opera and an operetta, which piece of music goes on for ever, what strange instructions Erik Satie noted above his scores and why John Cage put microphones on a lettuce or made the spines of a cactus vibrate.
Each chapter consists of a history section and listening tips, all in support of the main aim: to encourage the reader to go and listen to all this beautiful music. To that end, Pieter Bergé has added two Spotify lists that directly illustrate the explanations in the book.
Bergé manages to touch upon a surprising number of topics, and always in a playful manner.Het Parool
The delicate pencil drawings by Yule Hermans make the text light and transparent. On each page the illustrator condenses the text into a single image. Hermans has chosen a different colour to denote each musical period, helping readers to find their way around the periods covered. The design of the book is such that you can decide in what order to read it, the idea being that you can discover all musical eras simultaneously and lose yourself in them.
A real page-turner that stimulates and satisfies your curiosity. An exceptionally clever piece of workPluizuit
The illustrations are real little works of art.Pluizer
