A Sound Mind: How I Fell in Love with Classical Music (and Decided to Rewrite its Entire History)

"'Exhilarating'" - Sunday Times

"'Funny and moving'" - Jarvis Cocker

Music critic and writer Paul Morley blends memoir and history in a spiralling narrative that posits classical music as the most rebellious genre of all. Paul Morley had reached a point where modern pop music no longer surprised him, leading him to seek solace in the sounds of artists he had loved when he was an emerging music journalist for NME in the 1970s. However, unwilling to succumb to dreary nostalgia and endlessly revisit the bands of his past, he embarked on a search for something new, rare, and wondrous – and discovered it in classical music.

A Sound Mind is presented as a soaring polemic, a somewhat grumpy reflection on modern rock, and a passionate fan's love letter. It rejects the notion that classical music is merely establishment, old-fashioned, or dull. Instead, the book reveals this genre to be the most exciting and varied in the entire musical landscape.

This multi-layered memoir charts Morley's evolving musical tastes, but it also serves as a compelling history of classical music, uncovering the genre's rich and often unconventional past – and, hopefully, its future. Like a conductor leading an orchestra, Morley intricately weaves together timelines and timeframes in a grand narrative that proclaims the transformative and resilient power of classical music, spanning from Bach to Shostakovich, Brahms to Birtwistle, Mozart to Cage, and journeying from eighteenth-century salons to the modern age of Spotify.

"'His passion for centuries of music - both celebrated and obscure - is infectious'" - Irish Independent