"Here are some of the many things I learned from reading “The Triumph of Music”:
The tension of violin strings was increased in the late 18th century “to produce a louder and more penetrating sound”; as a result, the pitch of most orchestras rose by a half step.
In the course of a single battle in 1792, the singing of the “Marseillaise” by French soldiers “was given credit for turning the tide on three separate occasions.”
The tension of violin strings was increased in the late 18th century “to produce a louder and more penetrating sound”; as a result, the pitch of most orchestras rose by a half step.
In the course of a single battle in 1792, the singing of the “Marseillaise” by French soldiers “was given credit for turning the tide on three separate occasions.”
The Paris Opera House originally contained an area known as the Foyer de la Danse, “in which members of the corps de ballet could be approached during the interval and assignations made.”
Some audience members at a performance by the violinist Niccolò Paganini “claimed to have seen the Devil directing his bow, thus allowing him to play at superhuman speed.”
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.” He probably didn’t need 400 pages to make this case, but he makes it with grace, humor and a mountain of fascinating detail.
Rather than telling his story chronologically, Blanning divides it into five thematic chapters. “Status” traces the changing nature of musicians’ place in society, from servants to superstars. “Purpose” looks at the function of music in people’s lives. “Places and Spaces” and “Technology” examine how music has been made increasingly accessible through the emergence of the opera house and the concert hall and advances in instruments and in delivery systems, from the Edison cylinder to the iPod. “Liberation” views music in a sociopolitical context, beginning with national anthems and ending with the civil rights, feminist and gay rights movements.
All this information is marshaled in support of the thesis not just that music is more important than it used to be, which is hard to argue with, but also that it has become the most important, or at least the most dominant, of all the arts, which is more debatable. At any rate, Blanning has not entirely convinced me — especially since one way he supports his claim is by noting the impact of music videos and the “winning formula” of MTV, an argument that would carry more weight if MTV hadn’t spent the last few years systematically removing music programming from its schedule.
As his evocation of iPods and MTV indicates, Blanning brings things all the way (or almost all the way) to the present. But while he can be dazzling when his focus is the European concert tradition — which understandably, given the scope of his narrative, is most of the time — the facts have a way of eluding him when he turns his attention to subjects like jazz and rock.
Take his discussion of “A Love Supreme,” John Coltrane’s album-length declaration of religious faith, which Blanning cites in addressing the transformation of jazz after World War II from entertainment to something “more ambitious, both in theory and in practice.” His examination of this justly celebrated recording and its “powerful and enduring appeal,” which he attributes to Coltrane’s “ability to combine deep introspection with a transcendental vision,” is thoughtful. But while every jazz aficionado surely knows that the pianist on “A Love Supreme” was McCoy Tyner — an indispensable member of Coltrane’s quartet for many years, and one of the most influential musicians of his generation — Blanning inexplicably says it was Wynton Kelly, a talented if considerably less influential player who was Coltrane’s fellow sideman in Miles Davis’s group and did participate in one recording session under Coltrane’s leadership, but who is nowhere to be heard on “A Love Supreme.” To someone who doesn’t know jazz, this may seem like a small mistake; to those who do, it is roughly equivalent to saying that Mozart wrote the “Ring” cycle, or that Vladimir Horowitz was a cellist.
Further evidence that Blanning is out of his depth when navigating these waters: He includes Celine Dion, few people’s idea of a rock ’n’ roller, on a list of female rock stars, and identifies Harry Weinger, a Caucasian music journalist and record producer, as a member of the Platters, the African-American vocal group. And he has a tendency to overexplain some things, perhaps because he needed to have them explained to him. As cogent and detailed as his analysis of the rise of radio may be, he insults our intelligence by telling us that the word “deejay” comes “from ‘D.J.’ standing for disc jockey.” Even if you never listen to the radio, you probably figured that out on your own.
Then again, overexplaining is better than underexplaining. And Blanning’s occasional stumbles, though annoying, are ultimately a small price to pay for a book that covers as much ground, with as much passion, as this one does."
THE TRIUMPH OF MUSIC
The Rise of Composers, Musicians and Their Art
By Tim Blanning
Illustrated. 416 pp. The Belknap Press/ Harvard University Press. $29.95
