Between the Lines: Private Lives reading list

New Zealand String Quartet
3 hours ago
3 min read

Welcome to Between the Lines, our brand-new musical book club series created with Te Matapihi ki te Ao Nui Wellington Central Library, Orchestra Wellington and New Zealand School of Music - Te Kōkī. We're bringing music and literature into conversation across seven free, monthly concerts.

For the third session in the series, curated and performed by NZSQ, we're exploring private lives. Music and literature both have the power to transport an audience deep into the interior private lives of the composer and author. For our June musical book club, which will take place on the anniversary of the publication of Anne Frank’s diaries in 1947, we have devised a programme of music that explores the ‘Private Lives’, secret thoughts, and hidden desires of six composers.

Explore our music and reading lists below.

See you there: Thursday 25 June, 5:30pm on the Bleachers, Ground Floor of Te Matapihi Wellington Central Library. Its free to attend, but we recommend you book a spot.

BOOK YOUR FREE SPOT

MUSIC

Amadeus Mozart | String quartet Kv. 465 “Dissonance”, 1st movement

Leoš Janáček | Intimate Letters, 3rd movement

Dmitri Shostakovich | String Quartet No. 8, 1st & 2nd movement

Felix Mendelssohn | String Quartet No.6, Op.80, 1st movement

Pyotr Tchaikovsky | String Quartet No. 1, Op. 11, 2nd movement

Florence Price | "Adoration"

LITERATURE

The reading list for ‘Private Lives’ brings together a variety of primary sources – the letters and diaries of artists, writers, composers and people living through extraordinary and difficult times – alongside fiction that utilises diary and letter forms.

	*Diaries of Note: 366 Lives, One Day at a Time* by Shaun Usher Find it in WCC's catalogue Diaries
	*Shostakovich: A Life Remembered* by Elizabeth Wilson Find it in WCC's catalogue Biography
	*Anne Frank: The Collected Works* by Anne Frank Find it in WCC's catalogue Diary
	*Mozart: The Reign of Love* by Jan Swafford Find it in WCC's catalogue Biography
	*The Drone Eats With Me: A Gaza Diary* by ʻĀṭif Abū Sayf Find it in WCC's catalogue Biography, auto biography
	*Tchaikovsky's Empire: A New Life of Russia's Greatest Composer* by Simon Alexander Morrison Find it in WCC's catalogue Biography
	*The Cancer Journals* by Audre Lorde Find it in WCC's catalogue Diary
	*The Diary of Anne Frank: The Critical Edition* by Anne Frank Find it in WCC's catalogue Diary
	*The Journals of Sylvia Plath* [electronic resource] by Sylvia Plath Find it in WCC's catalogue Diary
	*Vincent by Himself: A Selection of his Paintings and Drawings Together with Extracts from his Letters* by Vincent van Gogh Find it in WCC's catalogue Letters
	*The Diaries of Tchaikovsky* by Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky Find it in WCC's catalogue Autobiographies
	*Letters from Gaza: By the People, from the Year That Has Been* curated and edited by Mohammed Al-Zaqzooq, Mahmoud Alshaer; introduction by Atef Abu Saif Find it in WCC's catalogue Letters
	*Happiness, as Such* by Natalia Ginzburg Find it in WCC's catalogue Fiction
	*Mozart's Letters, Mozart's Life: Selected Letters* by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Find it in WCC's catalogue Letters
	*I Will Bear Witness: A Diary of the Nazi Years* by Victor Klemperer Find it in WCC's catalogue Diary
	*The Lesser Evil: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer 1945-1959* by Victor Klemperer Find it in WCC's catalogue Diary