Eagle Minds - a selection from the correspondence between the Canadian composer and scholar Istvan Anhalt and his American counterpart George Rochberg - is a chronicle and an analysis of the
swerving socio-cultural movements of a volatile half-century as observed by two highly gifted individuals.
Beginning in 1961 and spanning forty-four years, their conversation embraces not only music but other forms of contemporary art, as well as politics, philosophy, religion, and mysticism. The
letters chronicle the deepening of their friendship over the years, and the openness, honesty, and genuine warmth between them provide the reader with an intimate look at their personalities. A
fascinating intellectual tension emerges between the two men as they record their individual responses to musical modernism, to changing political and social realities, and to their Jewish
heritage and sense of place, one as a son of Ukrainian immigrants to the United States, the other as a refugee from war-torn Hungary.
