Modernism: The Strange Story of Art and Music in the Twentieth Century cover art

Modernism: The Strange Story of Art and Music in the Twentieth Century

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Modernism: The Strange Story of Art and Music in the Twentieth Century

By: Max Ridgway
Narrated by: David Wright
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About this listen

The 20th century witnessed an explosion of creativity as artists, musicians, and writers rejected centuries of past practice and boldly created new visual forms, new musical languages, and new ways of thinking. This is the story of the individuals who created the art, told within the context of the times in which they lived.

©2018 Max Ridgway (P)2019 Max Ridgway Art History & Criticism Music Imperialism

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This is a fairly typical overview of the more important movement and events of Modernism, with an unexpectedly large focus on music. It feels a bit like the authors first attempt at writing a book, as it tends to skip backwards to cover ground that had been forgotten about, and lacks detail for some important movements, while giving a great deal of time to comparatively minor events.

The narrator has an occasional tendency to pronounce words incorrectly, be lying his ignorance of the subject matter - something which would have required only a quick retake. Occasionally he sounds a little bored too, despite the contents being fairly interesting.

The meat of the audiobook itself is fine, but rarely provides any sparkling moments of drama or controversy. I listened to it all the way through, but felt that it could have been given a lot more energy than it was provided with, and the narrators performance reflects that.

Fairly by the numbers overview

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This is a good solid overview,that provides those intrested in a broad introdution to Modernism with a solid first step to investigate matters further. The narrator is clear, though whilst not necessarily bringing the text to life, paces it well. My one big, and it is big, criticism is the pronunciations of names. I can only believe that there has been a deliberate attempt made, either on the basis of some anti-intellectualism or misplaced principle that books in English should have names from other countries pronounced as if they were written in English. Even, if proninciations were chosen randomly, statistically more names should be pronounced correctly than they are in this title. Nietzsche, Egon Schiele, Mallarme, Rodin, etc jar and distract everytime they are pronounced. A book whose subject matter is a journey through the international ideas and people of the twentieth century should at the very least be able to get names pronounced correctly. If you can get past this, and it's a big obstacle, then the content is a decent overview fo the subject.

Good solid overview but......

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