‘Griffiths has the gift of making you immediately want to listen to the music he is discussing. Not only is he among the wisest and most perceptive of modern critics, but his actual style of writing is a model of erudition, clarity, sincerity and elegance. Bons mots are here in abundance.’ (Philip Borg-Wheeler, Classical Music)  

This brilliant collection brings home how an astute human observer can preserve aspects of a performance that even the best recording cannot....[The author’]s keen awareness of the subtle and complex interrelationships between musical composition, execution, reception, and the act of writing has liberated him to compile a collection of his own writings that gives us both the authority of historical comprehensiveness and the immediacy of being in the thick of things as a journalist. Mr. Griffiths’ passion for poet-war music is infectious, and if you have not appreciated it in the past, you will surely be converted. Experts should also not fail to read it; they, too, will learnthings they never imagined....The Substance of Things Heard now joins my favorite books on music. (Michael Miller, The Berkshire Review for the Arts)