Year of Wonder, by Clemency Burton-Hill

Book number 120 for 2023; 5+ stars

This book is amazing. I was given this for Christmas last year, and thoroughly enjoyed looking at it through the year, and listening to the piece of music that was featured each day. Ms. Burton-Hill did a fantastic job of curating all of these pieces of music! It’s like  Classical music “devotional, if you will. Each day features a different piece of music, some of them less than two minutes long, and some of them more than ten minutes long. Occasionally, a suite of more than one song is featured. 

Each selection is informative, giving biographical information about the composer, as well as influences on them, and other information about them. As much as can be fit into a single page reading, that is. I learned of many, many composers of whom I had never heard before. Of course, there are very familiar composers, and my favorites were all featured, as well. 

This book was a joy to read and really enhanced my classical music listening in 2023. So much so that I now have a Spotify playlist that features every single song that is in this book. That’s a very long playlist.

Thank you, Clemency Burton-Hill, for writing this book!

TTFN, y’all!