Homi Dastoor’s book is for lovers of Western classical music
Homi Dastoor’s book is a resource for young listeners who want to get acquainted with Western classical music.
Homi Dastoor’s book is a result of his 70-year research on Western classical music.
The foreword by Zubin Mehta to Musical Journeys: A Personal Introduction to Western Classical Composers, is apt. It praises author Homi Dastoor’s book for being a great resource for those who want to start the intense journey that is Western classical music. Classical music is often perceived as intimidating, but Musical Journeys (49/50 Books; Rs 1,000) — with interesting facts about composers that draw you in, and precise pointers to the compositions you should start from — breaks it down for a young listener.
It helps that Dastoor has been passionate about classical music for over 70 years. The 90-year-old author started listening to the genre as an 18-year-old. At a time when libraries were the best resource for information, and the first commercial CD to be cut was still over 35 years away, Dastoor fell in love with a genre that not many knew of. “I went half-crazy after watching violinist Jascha Heifetz in They Shall Have Music.”
Dastoor watched the movie five times at Palace Cinema in Byculla. “They’d play it every Sunday because word spread among the Christian community that Heifetz was the best violinist in the world. The hall would be full for every show,” says the noctogenarian.
The movie began a hunger for information that consumed both his pocket money (he was fined money by Sydenham College for skipping classes) and his mind. He spent two years obsessing over the genre, spending copious amounts of time at the American Library and JN Petit Institute Library, reading anything he could find on classical music. As a college student who couldn’t afford to buy any of the books, Dastoor decided to take notes. These notebooks formed the basis of Musical Journeys.
It was upon the insistence of his son and daughter that Dastoor collated the information he had accumulated over the last 70 years into a book.He spent the last two years painstakingly writing the 192-page book, which has been published by his daughter Meher Marfatia’s publishing house 49/50 Publishing. “It has been a one-man effort,” he says, adding that he could have written about more composers but he just got tired.
However, he is already thinking about his second book. “Mr Mehta has asked me to write a book about classical music for children, but that is going to be tricky. I have to start work on it soon,” says Dastoor.
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