CLASSICAL COOKS: A GASTROHISTORY OF WESTERN MUSIC by Ira Braus The
expression, "Classical music is an acquired taste" takes on new
meaning in Ira Braus's Classical Cooks: A Gastrohistory of Western
Music. Unlike most classical music guides, Classical Cooks links
music and food synaesthetically. Synaesthesia means experiencing
one sense modality by stimulating another, such as "hearing"
colors. Music and food, as my book shows, are close enough
aesthetically, so that we can enjoy them synaesthetically. The book
correlates the respective musical and culinary talents of composers
living between 1350 and 2000; it also suggests ways for listeners
to distinguish composers' styles by way of gastro-musical
association. Classical Cooks complements a recent line of books
dealing with food and culture, e.g., The Toulouse Lautrec Cookbook,
Keats's Porridge, and Jazz Cooks. To be sure, American orchestras,
like the Boston Symphony and New York Philharmonic, have published
recipes contributed by their players. But no substantial anthology
of composer recipes has thus far appeared. Classical Cooks has
Three Courses, plus Dessert. Course 1, "Why Musicians Love to Talk
Shop in the Kitchen," matches food categories with musical ones.
Take fat. Musicians associate fat with lush, full-bodied
orchestration as we hear in, say, Hollywood scores of the 1950s.
These composers learned their craft from lipid composers like
Puccini and Debussy. Puccini's "fat," mellifluous as it is, may be
compared to olive oil - clear, fruity, digestible, while Debussy's
is voluptuous, like butter - filmy, artery-clogging, and
delectable. Course 2, "A Gastrohistory of Music in Documents"
offers accounts of composers as gastro-nomes. Beethoven's culinary
disasters are juxtaposed with Rossini's haute cuisine, so haute in
fact, that one of his recipes ("Tournedos Rossini") appears in
Larousse Gastronomique. One also reads stories of Liszt's
food-fights with his pupils and of his chiding the American
pianist, Amy Fay, for "making an omelette" when playing
wrist-bending passages in his piano music. Course 3, "You Eat What
you Compose, or, Will the Real Mozart Please Stand Up?" addresses
riddles of music history: how knowledge of Mozart's favorite foods
-- liver dumplings and sauerkraut -- might revise his popular image
as a composer of "sweet" music, e.g. Eine kleine Nachtmusik; how a
gastronomic kinship between J.S. Bach and Brahms -- their love of
herring -- might reflect their dense musical expression, as well as
Brahms's composing minuets and sarabandes during the mid-1800s; and
how knowing Ravel's preference for "hot" food helps us to
distinguish the sound of his music from the more understated style
of Debussy. Dessert comprises "The Well-Tempered Cuisinier:
Twenty-four Pastries and Foods from the Classical Cooks." Readers
will find here a combination of recipes and menus suitable for
diverse musical occasions (concert receptions, composer birthdays,
opera caf entres).
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