How Can We Keep from Singing: Music and the Passionate Life.(Book Review)(Brief Article)

by Joan Oliver Goldsmith. W. W. Norton & Co. (500 5th Ave., New lark, NY 10110), 2002. 223 pp., $13.95.

The subtitle to Joan Oliver Goldsmith's book, How Can We Keep from Singing, gives us our first clue that this is not a book about vocal pedagogy. The book is a collection of personal essays on the lessons of life and the extraordinary parallels to be found in music making.

Goldsmith is a freelance writer who reviews classical music for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. She is a well-trained and experienced musician, who, like the majority of us, performs on the sidelines instead of center stage, bringing a perspective to music making to which many musicians can relate.

There are fifteen essays, all of which grow from one of many of Goldsmith's personal musical experiences, not necessarily presented in chronological order. The starting point of the book, "Overture: Playing the Invisible Instrument," is an essay on the importance of finding and pursuing that which drives us, our invisible instrument. As the essays unfold, Goldsmith reminds us how we came to the place where we are. Examples of her early "musical" experiences include the variety of thuds one can create by skipping rocks on a frozen pond, the crashing and banging of the garbage men in the morning and the Sunday church bells in Manhattan--"sound bites" that ...