A couple of days ago I discovered – via Twitter, where else? – that people have been making Spotify playlists out of Music after the Fall. Among those people is Andrew Tholl (@andrewtholl), violinist, drummer, composer and co-founder of the excellent populist records, who has made chapter-by-chapter lists for use in classes at UC Santa Barbara. After making my own (enormous) playlist summary of the whole book, I’ve meant for a long time to put together more detailed chapter-length lists. I was therefore delighted when Andrew made his lists public and allowed me to share them here. You can find them all at the following links:
Necessarily, lists like these are partial – not everything in the book is available on Spotify, for a start. And some of it is too long to make much sense in a playlist. So there’s a process of curation that goes on, choosing movements, or maybe a similar work by the same composer. What about order? And what about works that are mentioned only in passing versus those that get more detailed attention? There’s more going on here than just typing things into a search bar.
At the risk of adding even more self-indulgence to this short post, I want to end by noting how touched I am that people are doing this sort of thing in response to my work; it feels like a very special kind of reading, so thank you.
If any of my readers have made playlists of their own, or are aware of others out there, I would love to hear about them – please leave links in the comments.
