No example to follow

Ahundred years ago, a character in a novel who was keen on music would, like E.M. Forster’s Lucy Honeychurch or Leo- nard Bast, be as apt to stumble through a piece at the piano as listen to it at a concert.

Ahundred years ago, a character in a novel who was keen on music would, like E. M. Forster’s Lucy Honeychurch or Leo- nard Bast, be as apt to stumble through a piece at the piano as listen to it at a concert. Given the relative- ly rare opportunities to hear a Brahms or Beethoven symphony before the invention of the LP, the easiest way to enjoy one was probably to play it in piano duet reduction. At the upper end of amateur capacity, there are those memorable small-town enthusiasts who, in Arnold Bennett’s The Death of Simon Fuge, sightread a new piece just published in Germany — the Strauss Sinfonia Domestica.

Music was something to participate in and understand, as well as enjoy, until relatively recently. Donald Tovey’s Essays in Musical Analysis now look like the preserve of the professional; they were actually written for the entertainment of a large concert-going public to help them follow the argument. Only a generation ago, books like Charles Rosen’s The Classical Style and the excellent BBC music guides, with their generous music examples and lucid, objective, analytical approach, were within the grasp of people of good general education. Things have changed a lot since then.

Here we have two books, one about a great composer, the other about a celebrated musical work, the six Bach cello suites. The thing which immediately strikes me is that neither book contains a single music example, apart from some artificially darkened reproductions of an 18th- century manuscript reproduced in Eric Siblin’s, which are worse than useless.