Happy World Book day to everybody !
Books. We are so forgetful about them.
Because of our digital environment, we tend to forget how fundamental they have been, and still are, for education, entertainment and research.
We tend to forget that for centuries before the Internet, books have been the only reliable source of information; that before the appearance of digital and open-source versions in the 21st century, such as Wikipedia, we only had written encyclopedias, huge collection of volumes, providing summaries of knowledge either general or special to a particular field or discipline.
And we're talking about encyclopedias here; but what about all the other kinds of literature ?
For so long books have been a source of entertainment, of conversation, of scandal, even ! Books were - and still are, fortunately - windows opening on an imaginary and dreamy world where people could forget about the heaviness of everyday life.
What about art ? For us musicians, today, we have IMSLP, the International Music Score Library Project, a sort of Wikipedia, but for musicians. This digital library allows anyone to find public-domain scores, for any instrument in any style.The project has uploaded more than 630,000 scores and 73,000 recordings of more than 195,000 works by 25,000 composers. https://imslp.org/wiki/Main_Page
But before, the only way we could possibly get to play a piece was to have the score - books, but full of notes ! Before Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music and many more, the only way we could ever hear again a piece we've been seeing in concert was to have a reduction of that said piece, let's say - an opera, a symphony, but re-written, arranged for piano, for example. Then again, books !
So. For all these reasons - and there are many more, let's take a moment to celebrate this simple object that shaped our societies, our cultures, in what they are today <3
Gema's pick is the spanish edition of “The Musical interpretation” by John Rink.
Vincent's pick is the French edition of "Study of Orchestration", by Samuel Adler, Henry Lemoine Editions.
"This book is truly a must-have for anybody wanting to get to know how every instrument of the orchestra works, alone, or in sections. It contains every piece of information I've been looking for in my own practice as a composer and arranger."
