- Summary
- "Who among us does not have a song that triggers vivid memories - of jubilation, of belonging, of sorrow, of love? In Musically Speaking, Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer, one of America's most beloved personalities, has written a warm and contemplative book about the role music has played in her life and the ineradicable traces it has left on her thoughts, her emotions, her very being. In this memoir through song, Dr. Ruth invites us to share her story from a uniquely musical perspective. By the time she was thirty, Ruth Westheimer had lived in five countries, each with a distinctive musical culture, each with a different hold on her sensibility. For the first ten years of her life, the comforting melodies of childhood helped drown out the anthems of Nazism to be heard elsewhere in her native Germany; as an adolescent refugee in Switzerland, she came to be aware that, however loudly she sang the patriotic songs of the land that gave her shelter, she could never truly be at home there. Present at the creation of the modern state of Israel, she sang and danced to the new music of a new nation; as a young woman eagerly absorbing all that Paris had to offer in the way of romance and worldliness in the early 1950s, the songs of Edith Piaf, Mouloudji, and Yves Montand were her tutors. An almost accidental emigration to America brought new challenges and new stability, as she became a wife, mother, and professional; tremendous and unforeseen celebrity came later, and with it the giddy opportunity to indulge her love of music as never before"--Jacket.
- Series
- Personal takes
Personal takes.
- Format
- Book
- Author/Creator
- Westheimer, Ruth K. (Ruth Karola), 1928- author.
- Published
- Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003
©2003
- Locale
- United States
- Contents
-
Dear bird, fly on
Thoughts are free
Our hope is not lost
Je ne regrette rien
If I can make it there.
- Notes
-
Includes bibliographical references.
Dear bird, fly on -- Thoughts are free -- Our hope is not lost -- Je ne regrette rien -- If I can make it there.
