Duet

An Artful History of Music

Eleanor Chan

A lush new history of music that transcends eras, borders, personalities, and genres by revealing how music is something seen, as well as heard.

Classically trained musician and art historian, Eleanor Chan, takes us deep into the visual and material manifestations of music, transforming our understanding of the story of art and music. Plunging the reader into the body of a performer and the eyes of an art historian, this wonderful book explores the history of music through a series of objects, both everyday and unusual, revealing how music has always been something that we visualize. From the sumptuously illuminated manuscripts of Ethiopia and Safavid Iran to the decorated porcelain flutes of China, from Brazilian opera houses to the jazz-inspired abstract paintings by artists throughout the world, Chan opens windows onto the ways that art has been heard, and music has been seen, throughout time.

From France, India, Brazil, Guyana, Iraq, Italy, Turkey, Ethiopia, Egypt and Armenia, to Greece, China, Japan, Korea, Russia, Iran, the Netherlands, Germany, Wales, Nigeria, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States, Duet: An Artful History of Music reveals just how many connections and cross-pollinations there have been between art and music-making cultures over the centuries and across the globe. Music is interwoven into the fabric of our lives. We listen to it, some of us play it, but throughout history we have also attempted to capture it visually: from the musical images of Ancient Sumer to Frozen's Elsa standing on the side of a mountain, her voice making crystals in the air. In this harmonious tale of music and art, the reader embarks on visual journey through sound.

With the same wonder as Katherine Rundell’s Vanishing Creatures and the paradigm-shifting power of The Story of Art Without Men by Katy Hessell, this deep and winding exploration of music’s visual and material manifestations transforms our understanding of its story - to one built by communities and the every (wo)man, not just by the artists, performers, composers whose flame shines brightest.

Eleanor Chan is currently a research fellow at the Warburg Institute, University of London. She has studied at the University of Cambridge and the Courtauld Institute of Art, has taught at the Universities of Cambridge, Doshisha, Sheffield and Manchester, and held fellowships with the Leverhulme Trust, Society for Renaissance Studies, Paul Mellon Center for Studies in British Art and the Renaissance Society of America. She is the author of Mathematics and the Craft of Thought (Routledge, 2021) and Syrene Sounds: False Relations in the English Renaissance (Oxford University Press, 2024). Chan is a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker.

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