Eleanor Chan

Duet

Genre

Non-fiction

UK & Commonwealth

Duckworth Books

North American

Pegasus Books

Film & TV

Available

Blurb

An Artful History of Music

A new history of music that transcends eras, borders, personalities and genres by focusing on the ways that music is something seen, as well as heard.

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, DUET explores the history of music through a series of objects, both everyday and unusual, revealing how music has always been something that we visualise. 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, casting aside chronological structure to follow a more organic approach, Chan opens windows onto the ways that art has been heard, and music has been seen, throughout history.

Press and Reviews

“From an 18,000-year-old ornate conch shell to the costume Beyoncé wore to the 2017 Grammys, Eleanor Chan’s highly original thesis examines the connection between music and…”

– Hannah Beckerman, the Observer

“Duet is similar to having an animated conversations with a particularly sparky, clever and knowledgeable friend.”

– Frances Forbes-Carbines, Classical Music Daily

“A swooping, capacious and beautiful history of how we see music, of the intrinsic connection of eye and ear. The scope is breathtaking: no genre, context,…”

– Emily MacGregor, author of While the Music Lasts

“A mind-expanding exploration of music as a history of human interactions with the world... Erudite, beautifully written and bursting with ideas, Chan’s Duet opens our ears…”

– Prof. Jill Burke, author of How to be a Renaissance Woman

“Scholarly, moving and with an epic scope, Chan's work shows why music is at the core of what it means to be human”

– Paul Cooper, author of Fall of Civilizations

“A sensational book. Chan roves across her vast subject with confidence and grace, thrilling the reader with one eye-opening insight after another. I will never see…”

– James Fox, author of The World According to Colour