But where is Colonel Blimp?

The Triumph of Music, by Tim Blanning

This is an often entertaining, occasionally illuminating, but cur- iously unsatisfying book, written by a distinguished historian of early modern Europe. Subtitled ‘Composers, Musicians and their Audiences, 1700 to the Present’, it purports to be a study of the ways that the art of music has increasingly come to dominate western culture. ‘Triumph’ is not, I think, the mot juste here; something more like ‘increasing ubiquity’ would be more apt.

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Professor Blanning is never dull or dryasdust: he writes with lucidity, grace and wry wit, and he clearly has a passionate enthusiasm for music. But given the vast scope of his subject, it is inevitable that much of the material amounts to little more than a breezy skimming of the surface, in which major figures and issues are sketched in a summary or introductory fashion.