Perceptive and entertaining, Try Whistling This is a pleasurable journey through music, ideas and history.
Andrew Ford traces the concept of dirty dancing back to the sixteenth century, marvels at the weirdness of Percy Grainger and considers the decision of Wilhelm Furtwängler to keep conducting under the Nazis. He explores the intersection of words and music, the bugbear of Australian musical identity, and the fundamental importance, in music and in life, of listening.
There are essays based on Ford’s acclaimed radio series Music and Fashion, as well as illuminating examinations of music-makers from Mozart to Shostakovich, Elgar to Britten, Cole Porter to Bob Dylan.
In Try Whistling This, a brilliant communicator offers a fresh take on music and changing times.
‘In his latest collection, Andrew Ford delivers with such rare clarity and passion that even the self-confessed cloth-eared and tone deaf will be musically awakened and enlightened’—Richard Tognetti
‘a top-notch critic…Our own answer to America’s Alex Ross.’—Rolling Stone
‘entertaining and knowledgeable.’—Courier Mail
‘Ford is the most literate of composers; the most musical of writers. He demonstrates a seemingly endless knowledge of his field, while writing brilliant, entertaining criticism.’—Australian Book Review
Andrew Ford is the author of Earth Dances, Try Whistling This, Illegal Harmonies and The Sound of Pictures. He is a composer and broadcaster and presents The Music Show on ABC Radio National.
