Paul Morley’s A Sound Mind may seem like a book about music, but really it’s about death. This is both in the sense that Morley is preoccupied with it throughout and that he writes as much about the mysterious, metaphysical nature of music as what it sounds like. In music there is an overwhelming sense of the present moment and the certainty that it, like everything else, will end.
This is ironic, because at points it feels like Morley’s book might be the one thing that never does. At 600 pages it’s an intimidating volume, though perhaps this is to be expected of a book that attempts “to rewrite [classical music’s] entire history”. Organised loosely around Morley’s own journey of musical discovery – initially, his quest to find out which piece of music will be the last he hears before he dies – it is written in a detailed stream of consciousness, which gives way to published articles, interviews and pages and pages of musical lists. As well as a history of music, A Sound Mind is a sort of collage of Morley’s life as a long-time music journalist, slightly shorter-time classical music advocate, and conspicuously mortal human being.
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