Hymns to the Silence: Inside the Words and Music of Van Morrison

Hymns to the Silence is a thoroughly informed and enlightened study of the art of a pop music maverick that will delight fans the world over. In 1991, Van Morrison said, Music is spiritual, the music business isn't. Peter Mills' groundbreaking book investigates the oppositions and harmonies within the work of Van Morrison, proceeding from this identified starting point. Hymns to the Silence is a detailed investigative study of Morrison as singer, performer, lyricist, musician and writer with particular attention paid throughout to the contradictions and tensions that are central to any understanding of his work as a whole. The book takes several intriguing angles. It looks at Morrison as a writer, specifically as an Irish writer who has recorded musical settings of Yeats poems, collaborated with Seamus Heaney, Paul Durcan and Gerald Dawe, and who regularly drops quotes from James Joyce and Samuel Beckett into his live performances. It looks at him as a singer, at how he uses his voice as an interpretive instrument. And there are chapters on his use of mythology, on his stage performances, and on his continuing fascination with America and its musical forms. Table of contents Acknowledgments Author's Note Introduction Chapter One Imagining America: Jazz, Blues, Country, and the Mythologies of the West Chapter Two What Makes the Irish Heart Beat? The Irishness of Van Morrison Chapter Three Get the Words on the Page: Van Morrison as Writer Chapter Four Caught One More Time: Themes and Thematics Chapter Five Listening to the Lion: Van Morrison as a Singer Chapter Six On the Burning Ground: Liveness and the Recording Studio Chapter Seven Down the Road: Van Morrison, Exile, and the Idea of Eternal Movement Chapter Eight A Three Cornered Quartet: Van Morrison and the Art of Through Composition Postscript Make It Real One More Time Again: Astral Weeks Live Appendix One - The 2006 Shows Appendix Two - Recording Studios Bibliography Discography