The Tenderness of Silent Minds

With this study of Britten’s music, centrally focused on his War Requiem, Martha C. Nussbaum has given readers a beautiful and many-sided book. It is simultaneously an insightful study of a great composer, an informed and sensitive interpretation of one of his masterpieces, and a deep philosophical reflection on attitudes to war. No previous book has demonstrated the philosophical significance and complexity of a body of musical works in so convincing a way. It is a model for future philosophical writing about music, and, in Nussbaum’s dialogue with Britten’s pacifism, an illuminating response to the horrors of war.. * Philip Kitcher, Columbia University (Emeritus) *A critic of formidable range and historical awareness, Nussbaum leads musical exegesis into wider political, legal, and moral spheres. Her study of Britten’s monumental War Requiem and the composer’s lifelong pacifist convictions is by turns meditative, passionate, and true to the inner life of each arriving musical gesture. This is a work of rare intelligence and insight. * Philip Rupprecht, Duke University, and author of Britten’s Musical Language *With clarity and generosity, Nussbaum argues that Britten’s music has something essential to tell us about violence, compassion, and the pursuit of peace. Listening closely to the War Requiem and an array of other works, while anchoring them in the composer’s shared life with Peter Pears, she draws out an idea of embodied love as a source of hope that animates both life and art. * Heather Wiebe, author of Britten’s Unquiet Pasts *

Martha C. Nussbaum is the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago. A leading scholar of emotion and morality, she is the author of The Fragility of Goodness, Creating Capabilities, and Justice for Animals, among others, and has published hundreds of articles of monumental impact on the development of philospohy in the 20th and 21st centuries.