TPP

TPP: "History of Western Music.
Publication: Notes
Publication Date: 01-MAR-06 Format: Online
Delivery: Immediate Online Access
Full Article Title: The Oxford History of Western Music.(Book review)

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Article Excerpt
The Oxford History of Western Music. By Richard Taruskin. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. [6 vols. ISBN 0-19-516979-4 (set). $699,00.] Music examples, illustrations, timeline, bibliography, index.

In my university mailbox recently, I received an advertisement for a quiz book titled Classical Music Trivia. After reading Richard Taruskin's Oxford History of Western Music, one might wonder whether there is such a thing--not. however, because the scope of the book appears to take in everything. Rather, Taruskin is capable of finding significance everywhere his attention turns.

Experience compels me to observe at the outset that readers will not wish to carry the Oxford History on airline flights. Students will not likely carry it to college classes in their backpacks. At six bulky volumes, it looks like a reference book--yet it does not organize itself like a reference book or read anything like one. Taruskin offers a grand survey of Western music, replete with information, generously laced with opinion (and even sermons), in a style both magisterial and witty.

As much as Taruskin has given us a book of music history, he has also given us a book about music history--that is, about music historiography and the assumptions that underlie the writing of music histo"