''Music at Night'' is a 1931 collection of

essays An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal ...

Aldous Huxley Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems. Born into the prominent Huxley ...

. The essays in this book cover different subjects, such as morality in arts ('To the Puritan All Things are Impure', a defence of his friend

D. H. Lawrence David Herbert Lawrence (11 September 1885 – 2 March 1930) was an English writer, novelist, poet and essayist. His works reflect on modernity, industrialization, sexuality, emotional health, vitality, spontaneity and instinct. His best-k ...

), music ("After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music", he writes in 'The Rest is Silence'), similarities in the behaviour of men and cats ('Sermons in Cats'). Part of these essays may be regarded as a description of changes in society at the first half of the 20th century: 'Forehead Villanious Low' deals with the fruits of

universal education Universal access to education is the ability of all people to have equal opportunity in education, regardless of their social class, race, gender, sexuality, ethnic background or physical and mental disabilities. The term is used both in colleg ...

, while 'Art and the Great Truth' defines

modernist literature Literary modernism, or modernist literature, originated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and is characterized by a self-conscious break with traditional ways of writing, in both poetry and prose fiction writing. Modernism experimented ...

as "A terror for the obvious in his he writer'sartistic medium - (...) which leads him to make laborious efforts to destroy the gradually perfected instrument of language".

Adaptation

The book served as the inspiration for the eponymous ''Music at Night (and Other Stories)'' jazz album by ''The New York Second'' jazz septet.

References

External links

* 1931 non-fiction books Books by Aldous Huxley Essay collections by Aldous Huxley English essay collections {{essay-stub