Music in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

The Oxford History of Western Music #2

by Richard Taruskin

The universally acclaimed and award-winning Oxford History of Western Music is the eminent musicologist Richard Taruskin's provocative, erudite telling of the story of Western music from its earliest days to the present. Each book in this superlative five-volume set illuminates-through a representative sampling of masterworks-the themes, styles, and currents that give shape and direction to a significant period in the history of Western music.

Music in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, the second volume Richard Taruskin's monumental history, illuminates the explosion of musical creativity that occurred in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Examining a wealth of topics, Taruskin looks at the elegant masques and consort music of Jacobean England, the Italian concerto style of Corelli and Vivaldi, and the progression from Baroque to Rococo to romantic style. Perhaps most important, he offers a fascinating account of the giants of this period: Bach, Handel, Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven. Laced with brilliant observations, memorable musical analysis, and a panoramic sense of the interactions between history, culture, politics, art, literature, religion, and music, this book will be essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand this rich and diverse period.

Genres: Music, History, Nonfiction, Art

805 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2009

Reviews

[Robert McDonald · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you, Taruskin, for making these books so much better than they had any right to be.

[Christian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had to read 11 out of the 13 chapters in this book for my music history class, so I figured I would just finish it to make my Goodreads goal of 30 books. I don't find reading music analysis to be that interesting and that unfortunately takes up a large portion of this book. However, the parts where Taruskin writes on historical events and trends that affected musical life were pretty fun to read.

[Jeff · Rating 3 out of 5]

Taruskin is alternately brilliant and frustrating, in approximately equal measures. Useful, informative, admittedly opinionated, and likely to become the standard by which future histories are measured.

[Steven Eldredge · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utterly brilliant book. Unconventional and challenging, both to the reader and to accepted tropes of classical music criticism. Now I will go back and read Volume One, and hope it is one half so entertaining as Volume Two has been!

[Andrew Davis · Rating 3 out of 5]

A comprehensive review of baroque, classical and early romantic music. Would like to see more of the less known composers and less of the giants, who are covered by the separate sources.

[Virgilijus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good book

[Philip Koslow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yes, volume 2 of the Oxford History of Western Music authored by Richard Taruskin deserves a 5 star rating. However, some warnings for the uninitiated regarding musical jargon and little background in harmonic, thematic, motivic and melodic processes. Much of it required before wading into this 739 page survey of Western music of the 17th and 18th centuries. As in Volume 1 in this series, the format and presentation continue with copious musical examples and analyses, biographical information on the chosen composers, the political, social and economic environment in which the creative musical works existed and a number of the author’s reflections that may encourage a reader to pursue further exploration beyond the pages of this book. Unlike volume 1 however, many of the names, locales, events and the music considered in volume 2 are more familiar to the average concert audience. Monteverdi to Beethoven is a large swath of 200 years of musical “progression” as styles morphed, overlapped, adopted new and sometimes contrary procedures adapted to the expressive needs of new and succeeding generations of composers and to re-evaluating the hierarchy of melody, harmony and rhythm as constituent elements of music. All of this is ably handled by the author in detail of words as well as the aforementioned musical examples noted above. It is the author’s reflections on the unfolding of the story of music which is always thoughtful and an implicit urge to the reader to pursue what has piqued this reviewer’s curiosity. Some are listed below:

Page 221: “….the concerto form has always been viewed, in one way or another, as a kind of microcosm, a model of social interaction, and a coordinated activity. That is one of the things that has always invested its seemingly abstract patterns with meanings….”

Page 327: G.F. Handel “borrowed” (a parody technique) music from other composers. Recycling his own music does not burden modern listeners with questions of authorship but to modern sensibilities, “borrowing” from others gives pause. Taruskin muses “is this issue anachronistic? Does Handel actually improve a composition through “borrowing?”

Page 342: Bach’s Cantatas are “reflective” not “dramatic.”

Page 389: The “cursed question.” Taruskin addresses the question of the text in Bach’s St. John Passion regarding who or whom was responsible for Christ’s mortal destiny. John’s narrative places the onus on the Jews. Mathew, however, uses the word “People/Romans” in his narrative. Do modern sensibilities beg for a change of one word? Is the experience for modern audiences harmed by encountering the original text that Bach used?

Page 533: ….”norms are not laws that must be adhered to simply for the sake of coherence or intelligibility, although that is their primary purpose, Absolutely unchallenged “normality” is perhaps the most boring mode of discourse.”

Page 539: Taruskin dips his toe into the mid 20th century aesthetic discussion of musical semiology as espoused by Susanne Langer, Ernst Cassirer and Jean-Jacques Nattiez (since criticized by the late Roger Scruton) where other music historians have left such reflections to philosophers outside mainstream historical narratives. Yet Taruskin does give shout outs to Aesthetic thinkers such as Baumgarten, Hoffman, Burke, Kant and others. All welcome asides indeed.

Page 639: The birth of concert halls taking on the aspect of museums. And the elevation of the literate tradition and the denigration of the oral one.

So, volume 2 concludes with Beethoven and his legacy. And the acceptance that German speakers are essentially “driving the bus.” The 17th and 18th century is bereft of Russian, French, English, and Scandinavian composers. And it is apparent that “classical’ music is the “popular” music of the time as there is nary a mention of "popular" in this volume. And the Italians seems the ones left to have influence on the story. But all of this will change in the 19th century in volume 3. As they say….stay tuned. Volume 2 highly recommended.

[Dan Graser · Rating 5 out of 5]

This second volume of Richard Taruskin's magnum opus history of Western Classical Music is very much up to the standard you would expect from one of the preeminent musicologists in the world. As I mentioned in a review for an earlier volume in this collection, these works are meant for musicians and those with significant musical study. If you have the right background, this is a particularly illuminating examination of the musical world from Monteverdi through Beethoven with a focus on compositional technique in historical context. If you don't have the musical vocabulary required you may be disappointed with how much you can gain from these books. I absolutely adore them, great reading and a huge accomplishment!

[David · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finished.