Parallels and Paradoxes: Explorations in Music and Society - Softcover

"Crammed with oversized ideas. . . . Over and over, they find the points where music touches other aspects of being alive: politics, literature, home, war." --Newsday

"Fascinating. . . . These conversations, filled with a passionate commitment to the life of the mind and the complexities of the arts, have an intoxicating richness."-San Jose Mercury News

"[A] genuine give-and-take between keen minds and open hearts. . . . The fluidity of their relationship, like musicians in an orchestra, is a compelling model for a world often splintered by dogma, ideology and hermetically sealed minds." -Los Angeles Times

Presents an intimate conversation about music and politics between the Israeli director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and a Palestinian-American critic and scholar--two long-time friends--discussing such topics as Beethoven, education, the differences between writing prose and music, and the power of culture to transcend national and political differences. Reprint. 12,500 first printing.