When I was very young, I loved the fact that Bernstein's language was so vivid. I was already sold on the music. As far back as I can remember my parents had the records and were playing them, and I took to them immediately. It was really the only music that I cared about, early on. Bernstein allowed me to have a conversation – only with myself at first – about the music.
The other thing about Nietzsche's writing about Wagner is that it's wonderfully brilliant, unpredictable vivid and perceptive, even when he's deliberately distorting the material for a certain effect or working out his own profound ambivalence about Wagner.
I read Doctor Faustus when I was around 18 and something about the book just overwhelmed me. It was one of the most intense reading experiences of my life.
Silence is one of the great music books. Purely on a literary level, there's something about Cage's style which is tremendously unique, something quite special in the history of literature.
This is a wonderful book, and somewhat forgotten. It's currently very hard to find, here in America at least. It's fantastically vivid and passionate writing about music of all kinds.
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