THE TRIUMPH OF MUSIC: The Rise of Composers, Musicians and Their Art

(NYTBR) - ... Tim Blanning, a professor of modern European history at Cambridge University, explains in his introduction that “The Triumph of Music” is meant to be “an exercise in social, cultural and political history, not musicology.” I’d characterize it more as a grab bag of anecdotes and trivia. Whatever you want to call it, it’s very entertaining.
Blanning’s central point is simple: less than three centuries ago, musicians and composers occupied an insignificant place in the Western world; today, things are very different. While “Europeans” — and by extension all Westerners — “have always cherished music,” until relatively recently “individual performers were quite a different matter.” Continued

Photo: WPA/LoC