... an indeed uncommon and genre-defying book probably best shelved under 'memoir,' though its essayistic form and intermittently pedagogic style can give one the not-unpleasant feeling of sitting in a lecture or concert hall as someone else’s emotion and erudition washes over you. Hodges doesn’t mention Proust — at a heavily annotated but scant 200-ish pages, this book is perhaps the anti-Proust — but like him, she is in search of 'lost time,' accounting for and analyzing years of her young life devoted to repetitive musical study, and for what? Why? ... This personal story reflects the sad, often lilting melody of Uncommon Measure, which is written in a mostly minor key. But like a good orchestrator, Hodges deepens it by filling it out with other elements ... certainly in Hodges’s prose, you can sense a great freeing-up, what in her original discipline is called rubato, a rare ease. In words, as she could not in notes, she seems able to fruitfully process a tough past and contemplate a brighter future.
... fascinating ... Hodges presents an accessible memoir in essays that bridge the time-space continuum in musical terms ... Her description of Johann Sebastian Bach's Chaconne invites readers to listen as a violinist would. She pays tribute to her Korean immigrant mother and posits an enlightening suggestion to think of cultural 'assimilation' in terms of symmetry rather than equality. It's a book to savor. The ideas are dense; readers will want to pause and digest them. They offer a way to see the world anew, to reframe experience, the way Hodges has come to understand her own: from the inside out.
Hodges plays for readers a mourning song for the life she and her mother had envisioned for her ... Hodges is at her most vulnerable when she writes of her mother, who as a child immigrated with her family from Korea to Denver, where she began studying the violin at 9 ... Hodges’ writing leaps from the page when she describes how music has the power to both unmoor and ground her. In the essay 'Chaconne,' she writes movingly about how playing the final movement of Bach’s Partita No. 2 in D minor, written for solo violin, is akin to inhabiting the composer’s mind-set, his 'rage and grief,' and making it her own.
Part autobiography and part scientific discovery, Hodges’ investigation into music and physics is a wonderfully intimate exploration of her experiences and the enigmatic connections between music, performance, and the laws that govern our universe ... She smoothly transitions to links between sound, time, and neuroscience, which leads to an analysis of 'entrainment' or syncing to rhythms. Concepts of time and rhythm powerfully galvanize into an exquisite, eye-opening discussion of improvisation and its connection to entropy as measured in the quantum universe. In considering symmetry, the book’s flow intensifies as Hodges simultaneously and courageously illuminates her biracial upbringing with her Korean mother and white father. The book closes with a dazzling look at memory and the universe as hologram. Is reality as we perceive it? Can we know both the beginning and the end of time? Hodges ponders these puzzles with intellectual depth, unique perspectives, and an artistic, eloquent, and inspiring voice.
Hodges’s frustrations while learning violin pieces and trying to please her parents and teachers will resonate with both amateur and professional musicians. For her technical discourses, she cites luminaries such as Stephen Hawking and Richard Feynman and sustains her arguments with recent and historical references, as evidenced in the thorough chapter bibliographies. Hodges is at her best when she opens up about her mother’s experiences as a Korean immigrant in Denver and her own struggles with performance anxiety and the challenges of mastering violin warhorses by Johann Sebastian Bach and Niccolo Paganini; these poignant chapters will leave readers emotionally drained but richly rewarded. However, the fascinating science lessons will engage the more scientifically motivated but may prove heavy going for those without the requisite background ... In all, this title makes a valuable contribution to the ever-expanding universe of works addressing science and music, two seemingly disparate fields that have surprisingly much in common.
A masterful debut memoir from a classical violinist that covers far more than just music ... The author’s writing is deeply intelligent and exquisitely personal, expertly balancing emotional vulnerability with trenchant analysis, and her lyrical prose and clarity of thought render each page a pleasure to read ... A gorgeously written, profoundly felt essay collection about time, memory, and music.
... a literary mosaic of invention, inquiry, and wonder that interrogates classical music, quantum entanglement, the Tiger Mother stereotype, and the fluidity of time ... In restrained yet lyrical prose, Hodges moves toward a kind of liberation through and from the “closed system of the canon” to offer a luminous meditation on the ways in which art, freedom, and identity intertwine. This impresses at every turn.
