Peter Bastian (1943-2017) was a Danish genius-type person who has devoted his life to music. This is a compressed version of his thoughts on music, full of examples of his experiences and meetings with various musical luminaries of the 20th century. Sometimes quite meandering, the book is still effective in activating thinking on music and musicianship.
I had better mention this going in, as it affects my reading of this book: I see myself as a musician. I don’t make a living off it, I’ve never even tried, but I’ve nurtured a loving relationship with musicality ever since childhood. I think that’s wherein the proverbial “rub” lies; if you see yourself as a musician. For me, it has always been evident because of my talent for and love of playing music (I started out playing the piano, then guitar, bass, drums, and a few other instruments). This self-proclaimed identity (ability?) of musician, paired with my proclivity for science, scholarship and learning, made me naturally gravitate toward the ill-defined world of “music psychology”, and read a book on it as a young adult. I later signed up for a course while at university too. Since then, I haven’t really gone particularly much into music scholarship – that is, until now.
I did learn the musical modes (on my own), explore tonality (I remember jazz musician George Russell constructing his own Lydian scale) and try my luck in Indian Carnatic music traditions (I was a bass player for an Indian group for a while) and some arabic hijaz and maqam stuff. I kind of lost my appetite for music learning when there was so many other things to learn (mostly philosophy, history, science). I have recently got hold of Richard Taruskins series Oxford History of Western Music, but it would require a lot of time to read through!
When I saw wiz kid piano player Jacob Collier talk about the concept of “negative harmony” I figured I had to find out what that was. But I haven’t. Yet. Another moving encounter was a video of guitarist Allan Holdsworth explaining his mathematical view of the guitar fretboard and his totally out of left-field approach to scales. But what am I to do with all this music learning? It’s not like I play with anyone, where that knowledge might be useful… I guess I’ll have to start playing or stop learning. I can’t do both.
Ok – now that we’ve gotten that mild fit of self-flagellation out of the way, let’s continue with the actual review.
Bastian is a physicist and bassoon player (uncomfortable appellations on their own and in combination) who has an infinite curiosity for music. Reading his thoughts on the ins and outs of performing and listening to music is quite interesting. He starts the first chapter with an episode from his period of infatuation with Balkan music. He tries to track down a certain musician in a remote village on the Yugoslavian countryside.
He goes in to a lot of theory – some of it pretty impenetrable for a non-classical player. He seems inspired by Buddhism and Indian religious perspectives in his thoughts on music. He played in a Danish “prog” band in the 70’s and 80’s – Bazaar – that was quite inspired by a lot of Eastern and Turkish musical traditions. Sometimes the writing is a little unfocussed, but I see it as a way to initiate thoughts and try out different ideas, which can be fun if you’ve even taken music seriously. Bastian is pretty well-known in his native Denmark, but I think his name remains quite unfamiliar in the rest of the world. I read a Swedish translation, published at the Gothenburg publisher Bo Ejeby förlag.
There is an impressive video of Peter Bastian playing a regular plastic drinking straw like a medieval flute, proving that music can be found everywhere, if you know how to look. Click the picture to view the clip.
Kinship of all Species 