Distant Melodies: Music in Search of Home

Distant Melodies is a book by Edward Dusinberre that explores how music heard and played over many years informs one's sense of home. It examines the lives and chamber works of four composers: Antonin Dvorák, Edward Elgar, Bela Bartók, and Benjamin Britten, and how music can both accentuate and ameliorate homesickness. Dusinberre also looks at his own evolving relationship to England through the prism of Elgar's Piano Quintet and the landscapes that inspired it. The book combines travel writing with revealing and humorous insights into the working lives of string quartet musicians, illuminating the relationship between music and home.

Format: Hardback
Length: 256 pages
Publication date: 03 November 2022
Publisher: Faber & Faber

Distant Melodies, a captivating exploration by Edward Dusinberre, the esteemed English first violinist of the Takács Quartet, delves into the profound connection between music and one's sense of home. Through the lens of four composers—Antonin Dvorák, Edward Elgar, Bela Bartók, and Benjamin Britten—Dusinberre uncovers the evolving notions of belonging, exile, and return in their lives and respective chamber works. With nearly three decades of residency in Boulder, Colorado, Dusinberre explores how music can both exacerbate and alleviate homesickness, as he visits and imagines the sites that inspired these composers' creative genius.

Drawing inspiration from the stories of Dvorák, Bartók, and Britten's American sojourns, Dusinberre examines his evolving relationship with England through the prism of Edward Elgar's extraordinary Piano Quintet and the landscapes that inspired it. As he delves into the forty-eight years since the Takács Quartet's founding in Budapest, Dusinberre explores how music can both reinforce roots and transcend borders.

In the context of travel restrictions imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, Dusinberre examines the heightened significance of music in affirming home and transcending distances. As the Takács Quartet welcomes a new violist during this challenging time, Britten's string quartets shape the ensemble's unique experience of rehearsing at home. Distant Melodies seamlessly blends travel writing with insightful and humorous perspectives into the lives of string quartet musicians, shedding light on the profound relationship between music and home.

Weight: 370g
Dimension: 145 x 223 x 29 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780571366545
Edition number: Main