Life in wartime, etched in sound
For Radcliffe Fellow Jeremy Eichler, music and words developed along parallel tracks. A Newton native and the Boston Globe’s classical music critic, Eichler started violin at a young age, played viola in youth orchestras, and co-founded a string quartet at Brown University, where he earned a degree in environmental studies. Separately and simultaneously, a love of writing also took hold. Eventually, the tracks of his two passions converged. “I had enjoyed working on my writing, paying close attention to craft, and I was inspired by Alfred Kazin’s notion that the best critical writing could be thought of, in a way, as its own branch of literature,” said Eichler, who still plays violin and viola, and who went on to earn a Ph.D. in history at Columbia University. Music and writing, he said, “were separate interests for many years, but in retrospect, it was inevitable that they would come together.” In 2003, while...