The Danger of Music gathers some two decades of Richard Taruskin’s writing on the arts and politics, ranging in approach from occasional pieces for major newspapers such as the New York Times to full-scale critical essays for leading intellectual journals. Hard-hitting, provocative, and incisive, these essays consider contemporary composition and performance, the role of critics and historians in the life of the arts, and the fraught terrain where ethics and aesthetics interact and at times conflict. Many of the works collected here have themselves excited wide debate, including the title essay, which considers the rights and obligations of artists in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In a series of lively postscripts written especially for this volume, Taruskin, America’s “public” musicologist, addresses the debates he has stirred up by insisting that art is not a utopian escape and that artists inhabit the same world as the rest of society. Among the book’s forty-two essays are two public addresses―one about the prospects for classical music at the end of the second millennium C. E., the other a revisiting of the performance issues previously discussed in the author’s Text and Act (1995)―that appear in print for the first time.
Editorial Reviews
Review
“A collection of essays by the fearsomely intelligent Berkeley-based musicologist [offering] a passionately engaging perspective.”–The Guardian (11/29/2008)
“A stimulating book that offers a wide range of topics and ideas.”–Music Educators Journal (06/01/2010)
“Erudite and passionate . . . there is much within this intellectually generous compendium that merits serious and sustained engagement.”– (02/23/2009)
“This is one of the most important books about music you’ll read this year. . . . No one has bridged the gap between music scholarship and mainstream media as virtuosically as Taruskin.”– (01/26/2009)
“Intellectually generous compendium that merits serious and sustained engagement.”–Michael Quinn”Classical Music Magazine” (02/28/2009)
“Very entertaining.”–Michael Kimmelman”New York Review Of Books” (08/13/2009)
From the Inside Flap
“Taruskin’s work is a major contribution to thinking about music in the broadest sense. The book is lucid, powerful, varied, self-aware, and courageous. It is the very best work being done today, not just in musicology, but in any discipline.” Michael Beckerman, author of New Worlds of Dvorák
From the Back Cover
“Taruskin’s work is a major contribution to thinking about music in the broadest sense. The book is lucid, powerful, varied, self-aware, and courageous. It is the very best work being done today, not just in musicology, but in any discipline.”―Michael Beckerman, author of New Worlds of Dvorák
About the Author
Richard Taruskin is Class of 1955 Chair of Music at the University of California, Berkeley and is the author of Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions (UC Press), among many other books.
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