Astonishing the Brickwork: Philip Larkin Set to Music – Jim Orwin

£30.00

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This is what Jim says about the book and the inspiration behind it:

“Aside from the poems, Larkin’s passion for music, particularly jazz—he called jazz musician Louis Armstrong a ‘combined Chaucer and Shakespeare of jazz’—is well documented in his collected prose writings, reviews and interviews published in Required WritingAll What Jazz, and Further Requirements. It seems therefore appropriate that so many musicians and composers have been drawn to his poetry.”

“But can poems be set to music to create new significant works of art? Can a musical setting extend, expand, illuminate and elucidate a poem in such a way that it becomes almost universally recognized as a great song?”

Astonishing the Brickwork: Philip Larkin Set to Music catalogues the attempts of composers across the world to prove that they and the poems of Philip Larkin are equal to the task.