Letters of Note: Music
Compiled by Shaun Usher
Available as Paperback, eBook, Downloadable audio
A compulsive collection of the world’s most entertaining, inspiring and powerful letters with music at their heart, curated by the founder of the global phenomenon lettersofnote.com
In Letters of Note: Music, Shaun Usher brings together a riveting collection of letters by and about some of the musicians and music that enrich our lives. It is a wonderfully wide-ranging and illuminating book that will delight music lovers of all stripes.
Includes letters by:
Ludgwig van Beethoven, Nick Cave,
Helen Keller, Keith Richards,
Yo-Yo Ma, Tom Waits, Erik Satie,
Angélique Kidjo, Leonard Cohen
John Coltrane, Kim Gordon
& many more
“Praise for Shaun Usher: Another mailbag stuffed with funny, heartbreaking and passionate letters … engaging, eclectic, geekily and gleefully enthusiastic and laugh-out-loud funny”
the Times
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“Shaun Usher’s More Letters of Note mines the archives for more gems of the epistolary arts”
guardian
“Funny, tragic, brilliantly incisive, historic, lyrical, romantic and studiedly offensive, this stupendous compendium of letters ancient and modern is my book of the year. You will never tire of it”
Stephen Fry
“From the genuinely funny: Marge Simpson duelling with First Lady Barbara Bush to the truly heart-breaking: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg’s last goodbye to their children before execution. Usher’s book is unlike anything else you have read. After all, where else can you find out why Norman Mailer refused money to his father, or how Janis Joplin felt before breaking America? Exactly”
gq
“Funny, shocking and poignant, More Letters of Note must be one of the most entertaining books of the year”
financial Times
Compiled by Shaun Usher
Shaun Usher is a writer and sole custodian of the popular blogs lettersofnote.com and listsofnote.com. He has transformed both blogs into bestselling books, crowd-funded by Unbound and jointly published by Unbound and Canongate. He lives in Wilmslow with his wife Karina and their two sons. He is the author of the bestselling Letters of Note, More Letters of Note, Lists of Note and Speeches of Note. Along with Simon Garfield’s To the Letter, Letters of Note inspired Letters Live, a series of live performances celebrating the enduring power of literary correspondence, with great performers reading remarkable letters to a live audience.
@LettersOfNote | lettersofnote.com | shaunusher.com | letterslive.com
From the book Letters of Note: Music, compiled by Shaun Usher. ‘Get at the very heart of it’, a letter from Ludwig Van Beethoven to Emilie H. Introduced by Shaun Usher.
Letter read by Simon Callow.