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
