Music in relation to science is a theme that James has explored in popular articles (Discover, etc.). Here, he contends that, until the 19th century, music embodied the classic ideals of an ordered universe—having harmonies among the music of the spheres (musica mundana), the music of the human organism (musica humana), and ordinary music-making (musica instrumentalis). In parallel, science was a noble pursuit aimed at establishing the natural order of things (embodied, for example, in the Great Chain of Being). James cites Pythagoras as the prime begetter of these ideas. The sixth-century Greek thinker espoused a philosophy of the interrelatedness of all things and a system of dualities (one/many; odd/even; limited/unlimited, etc.) that led to his elaborate numerology. Pythagoras is also credited with the discovery of the ratios (1/2, 2/3, 3/4...) that define the harmonic intervals of the scale: the octave, the major fifth, the fourth, etc. The tradition of cosmic harmonies continued through Plato, Plotinus, the Christian mystics, and the Hermetic cults, with James reminding us of the links that joined astronomy/astrology and science/alchemy in the works of Kepler and Newton. In the 19th century came what James regards as the great anomaly in music history: Romanticism, with its earthy expression of human passions. Similarly, science divorced itself from lofty ideals to be measured on the human scale. Paradoxically, music and science became pursuits of an elite—a tradition that has continued to the present, albeit with a reaction to Romanticism in atonality, aleatory music, and other experiments. Ours is not a happy time, James notes rather sadly, saying that perhaps we need to be reinfused with cosmic consciousness....or to seek it outside the concert hall. Doubtless, experts will accuse the author of overstatement and will find exceptions and countercurrents; but, overall, his discussion is lively and stimulating.
Pub Date: April 1, 1993
ISBN: 0-8021-1307-9
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1993
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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