MOTHER'S DAY SPECIALS! SHOW ME MORE

Close Notification

Your cart does not contain any items

While the Music Lasts

A Memoir of Music, Grief and Joy

Emily MacGregor

$45

Hardback

Forthcoming
Pre-Order now

QTY:

English
Duckworth
01 July 2025
An illuminating, witty and highly moving story of making and listening to music and its role and impact on grief

When her father dies, music historian and trombonist Dr Emily MacGregor finds that music has become too much. Listening, let alone playing, music is suddenly too difficult. This is problematic given that she's a broadcaster, writer and academic working with classical music.

It leads her on a journey of discovery: from the arrangement of an Isaac Albéniz piece she finds on her father's guitar stand, through encounters with psychologists, orchestras, summer schools and funeral celebrants, to the lives and works of individual composers who wrote music so often in the midst of loss. What is it about our experience of music that cuts so sharply to the heart of our emotions? And why is it more than any other artform painfully, exquisitely crucial in the evoking of memories?

An erudite, lyrical, gently humorous and healing journey to rediscover the purpose of making and participating in music.
By:  
Imprint:   Duckworth
Country of Publication:   United Kingdom
Dimensions:   Height: 216mm,  Width: 138mm, 
ISBN:   9781914613630
ISBN 10:   1914613635
Pages:   320
Publication Date:  
Audience:   General/trade ,  ELT Advanced
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming

Dr Emily MacGregor is a writer, broadcaster, and music historian. She appears regularly on BBC Radio 3 and 4, and has written for the Guardian. Her academic CV includes a doctorate from Oxford University and subsequent research positions at Harvard University and King's College London, where she's currently based. She's the author of Interwar Symphonies and the Imagination: Politics, Identity, and the Sound of 1933 (Cambridge University Press) and is winner of the Jerome Roche Prize. Emily cohabits in London with an unapologetically fluffy dog.

Reviews for While the Music Lasts: A Memoir of Music, Grief and Joy

'A book about grief that transforms into a book about life. MacGregor explores her relationships and work with an intensity leavened by warmth and wry humour. Finally, joyously, music and love break through' Laura Tunbridge, author of Beethoven: A Life in Nine Pieces 'Emily MacGregor takes two things people are often scared of - classical music, and death - and made them winningly accessible, warm, funny and real. This book is as finely tuned as the very best of orchestras. I loved it.' Alice Vincent, author of Why Women Grow and Hark


See Also