The Triumph of Music: The Rise of Composers, Musicians and Their Art
Trenchant, wise and richly ironic, Tim Blanning's book travels spectacular distances between Plato and Elton John, Baroque liturgy and Robbie Williams, opera seria and internet downloads. With a masterly eye for detail he explains why music and audiences are interdependent and reveals the enduring potency of music as a sovereign art. (Jonathan Keates, author ofThe Siege of Venice)Tim Blanning'sThe Triumph of Musicis an absorbing study of how the composition and performance of music responded to radically changing conditions--religious, political, social, technological--until, in an era of electronic production and the iPod, it has become the most diverse, ubiquitous, influential, and financially rewarding of all the creative arts. (M. H. Abrams)Blanning's provocative thesis is that music has become our most dynamic and successful art form, its history an extraordinary journey to cultural supremacy.  An altogether delightful book. (James Sheehan, Stanford University)Drawing on examples ranging across the last four centuries, Blanning traces the path of music from its place as servant to its current position of supremacy over all other arts in terms of status, influence, and material rewards. The author intermixes popular and classical music and musicians, jumping back and forth from one era to another, from the concert hall to the iPod, to demonstrate how music has reinforced various social and political agendas...This is not intended to be a history of music; it is a brilliantly written history of the steady growth of the power of music and its performers. (Timothy J. McGeeLibrary Journal2008-10-15)This is a provocative and amusing book. Blanning describes not the triumph of good music but the development of Western music generally, from an aristocratic court frill to a powerful social force. (The Atlantic2008-12-01)Very entertaining...[Blanning] makes [his case] with grace, humor and a mountain of fascinating detail. (Peter KeepnewsNew York Times Book Review2009-01-04)This isn't a history of music but a work connecting music to politics and culture to show how it becomes integral to the souls of specific nations and groups. Music, it implies, will remain when other arts fade away. (Alan HirschBooklist2008-11-01)The Triumph of Musicsucceeds in its goal of describing music as an instrument of cultural and political change...Perhaps the most interesting chapter ofThe Triumph of Musicis the one concerning music's mobilizing and liberating power in politics and culture. Blanning elegantly describes music's influential role in the rise of nationalism...The Triumph of Musicis certainly topical--in both senses of the word. It succeeds as cultural history and has the added attraction of being full of good stories told in an amusingly irreverent style. (James PenroseNew Criterion2009-02-01)The position of musicians in society and the mechanisms by which they reach their audiences are explored in fascinating depth. The book is not about music itself, but about its creators and consumers. Blanning evokes the life of the eighteenth-century musician with marvelous clarity; Haydn is particularly well treated, and the shifting status of musicians in the revolutionary period is held under the historian's sharp gaze. As a social history of music in the period from Bach to Wagner, the book is penetrating and richly documented. There are fascinating nuggets of information throughout, illuminating but not detracting from the chronicle of musicians and the responses of audiences, politicians, and critics. (Hugh MacDonaldTimes Literary Supplement2009-02-27)The Triumph of Musicbulges with interesting facts and factoids...Blanning's is a more-often-than-not fascinating and impassioned book. (Peter JacobiHerald-Times2009-03-22)The book is full of illuminating, often surprising and usually arresting details, as well as some excellent illustrations. If you would like to know why Louis XIV built Versailles and how he made it the center of the universe, why brass bands became the excitement of the working class, and how melody could inspire and even create nations, you will find riches in these pages. (Elaine SismanNew Leader2008-11-01)