The Oxford History of Western Music, Volume 4: The Early Twentieth Century

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Volume 4: the early twentieth century 826pp. ISBN 0 19 522273 3.

IN HIS ADMIRABLY lucia and socially responsive fourth volume of The new Oxford history of western music Richard Taruskin addresses the breakdown of the Enlightenment ideals of humanism and progress, and the rise of Soviet communism and European fascism. 'The worst century there has ever been', pronounced the late Russo-Jewish historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin, with murderous unreason masking itself as reason. Thus we can hardly expect to find the overall sustained level of achievement attained by the classical and romantic eras, though the extraordinary constellation of early modernist masterpieces thrown up in the …