Musical Lives and Times Examined

"Musicology’s all-time happiest warrior leaves us with an omnibus collection that balances history and historiography, past and present, East and West, while exploring presentism and intolerant progressivism as well as the bad blood between music history and theory. Even when he’s reminiscing, the writing is fresh and often very funny, teeming with bright ideas that will take on lives of their own."—Simon Morrison, Princeton University

"Who else but Richard Taruskin could combine dazzling erudition with such humor and irresistible charm? His final book, cast as a series of gracious and heartfelt tributes to beloved friends, is the ultimate measure of the man himself, the embodiment of one who always sought, in Joseph Kerman's words, 'broad, original, humane horizons' in music."—Pauline Fairclough, University of Bristol

"For nearly four decades, Richard Taruskin tried to reverse the decline in status suffered by art music in the United States, arguing that music must be emancipated from its purely aesthetic ghetto and brought into contact with the public's most pressing ethical and political concerns. One is grateful for this latest collection of his inimitably brilliant and informative dispatches from the cultural battlefield and sad to learn that it will be his last one."—Karol Berger, Stanford University