Jeremy Eichler | |
|---|---|
| Born | Jeremy Adam Eichler August 13, 1974 Boston, Massachusetts |
| Alma mater | |
| Occupations | |
| Notable credits | |
| Website | jeremy-eichler |
Jeremy Eichler (born August 13, 1974) is an American music critic and cultural historian. [1] He teaches at Tufts University, [2] and from 2006 to 2024, he was the chief classical music critic of The Boston Globe. [3]
Eichler’s book Time’s Echo: Music, Memory, and the Second World War (2023) has garnered wide recognition. Named “History Book of the Year” by the Sunday Times, [4] it also received the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize [5] and three National Jewish Book Awards. [6]
Jeremy Adam Eichler was born on August 13, 1974. [1] [7] Growing up in Newton, Massachusetts, he played violin and viola in his youth, playing the latter in youth orchestras. [8] He received an undergraduate degree from Brown University, [8] where he co-founded the Nahanni String Quartet. [1]
"You try your best not only to say what happened onstage, but to convey those ineffable aspects of listening to this particular music at that time and place. I’ve always felt the best writing on music can set the air vibrating once more, as if the prose has somehow been charged by the energy of the original listening experience."
Eichler worked as a freelance journalist in New York, contributing to numerous publications including The New Republic , The Nation and The New Yorker , [9] and in 2003 began writing music criticism for The New York Times . [8] He then succeeded Richard Dyer as chief classical music critic of The Boston Globe in 2006, where Eichler wrote about local, national and international events for nearly two decades. [1] [10] His column, titled "Third Ear", connected "music with broader worlds of history, politics, and culture." [11] The historian Lizabeth Cohen said of Eichler’s criticism, “In his hands, cultural history and music criticism become entryways to better understandings of the past and the present.” [12]
Eichler is also a cultural historian. [9] [13] He earned a doctorate in history from Columbia University; his doctoral dissertation was on the composer Arnold Schoenberg. [8] [13] Published in 2015, the topic in discussion was Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw , a large-scale cantata that was the earliest Holocaust musical memorial from a major composer. [8] [14] His dissertation won Columbia's Salo and Jeanette Baron Prize for Jewish Studies. [8]
Eichler's 2023 book Time's Echo [9] examines the "relationship of cultural memory and music composed in the wake of the Second World War". [13] Among the works discussed are Benjamin Britten's War Requiem , Dmitri Shostakovich's Symphony No. 13, Babi Yar and Metamorphosen by Richard Strauss. [13] It was published by Alfred A. Knopf and Faber and Faber in North America and the United Kingdom respectively, [15] and has been translated into ten languages. [16] In 2024-25, Eichler served as the first Writer-in-Residence of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, which devoted its season to exploring the relationship between music and memory. [17]
ASCAP awarded Eichler the Deems Taylor Award for Music Criticism in 2013. [18] He has received fellowships from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies of Harvard University and the National Endowment for the Humanities. [9]
In addition to receiving the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize [5] and three National Jewish Book Awards, [6] Time's Echo was named “History Book of the Year” by the Sunday Times [4] and described as “the outstanding music book of this and several years” by the Times Literary Supplement. [19] It was shortlisted for the 2023 Baillie Gifford Prize, considered the UK's premier annual prize for non-fiction books. [20]
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Academics | |
| Other | |
