"Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation at a standstill."
— Barbara W. Tuchman
What We Believe
Literature, art and music transcend language, gender, geography, and time. They bind civilization globally and carry it to unborn generations.
Nadia Boulanger, composer, conductor, and perhaps the most influential teacher of music of the twentieth century, witnessed cultural devastation during the Second World War. The European musical world in shatters, lives of creative people she loved were twisted, threatened, or lost. In 1942, as Nazi invaders laid siege to Stalingrad, a student asked if she should stop her study of music to be a nurse or work in a tank factory, to better help the war effort.
Nadia Boulanger wrote back,
when a whole civilization is in mortal danger, only each of our wills can help save it. We must be ready to die for values we believe in, if we are to counter the primitive, destructive, and accumulated forces to destroy what centuries have created at the price of a great labor and great honor. . . There must be men to fight, making the gift of their best years, their lives, but the ones who cannot fight, or women, must defend not our less precious treasury.
Civilization is a living treasury of humanistic traditions, Mlle. Boulanger believed. She encouraged her student to engage in music, literature and art because they are important in the struggle to save civilization from “primitive, destructive forces”.
Hmm... Primitive, destructive forces? How about today's barbarians at the gate—corporate lobbyists, oligarchs, antigovernment funders, media potentates, philistine politicians, and insane presidents? They assault our cherished institutions and values. You can vote, donate to a PAC, or put up a sign. But what truly protects the values of global civilization is to create and consume music, art, and literature.
Try something new today. Listen to our musicians, enjoy our writers and artists. We aim to keep you entertained and informed with books, blogs, and links.
You, too, can support the struggle against primitive destructive forces. Join our army of aesthetes and become a warrior for civilization!
We welcome your ideas and suggestions!
Who We Are
Philadelphia independent publisher Chestnut Hill Press has an exclusive focus on world literature, art, and music. Our Fall 2022 list includes Aldek’s Bestiary, the first English language publication of popular Polish writer Romuald Roman’s fiction, and Benjamin Franklin Radzi Jak Źyć.
In Fall 2023, we will release Nadia Boulanger: War Years in America and Her Last Decades, a groundbreaking study of Nadia Boulanger, the French master teacher, composer and conductor. No Entry Zone, Romuald Roman’s new novel, will appear in the Fall of 2023.
In Spring 2024, Life & Music, the memoir of magnificent Turkish pianist Idil Biret will hit the shelves, and we will release Landscapes, the first publication of Philadelphia artist Alden Heck’s landscape paintings.