Birmingham’s present musical eminence is principally associated
with Simon Rattle’s brilliant seasons with the City of Birmingham
Symphony Orchestra from 1980 to 1998. This exciting and very prestigious
development was in fact a transformation, based on a solid musical
foundation built up through the endeavour of many interesting and
active musicians and music-lovers over a period of several centuries.
It did not, like Athene, spring fully armed from the head of Zeus
so to speak.
Moving through the ages, from the chantries of the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, to the busy eighteenth century organists whose
enterprise led to the great nineteenth century Musical Festivals and
culminating in the age of the orchestra in the twentieth, the book
describes how the foundation was laid.
The reader will enjoy thumbnail sketches of the personalities involved,
as well as appreciating them in their own settings and in the wider
perspective.
The consequence of all their efforts and achievements is that Birmingham’s
reputation as an industrial centre has now been equalled by its present
reputation as a cultural one. This is an account of how, with no single
architect but many men of vision, the present-day much admired edifice
has been established.
Book Review
"Margaret Handford's Sounds Unlikely is
a joy to handle and is a fascinating bran-tub of information about
the history of music in Birmingham...this attractive book, well-indexed
and well-illustrated is both a valuable research tool and an excellent
read."
Christopher
Morley, The Birmingham Post, 14/12/06
