... an encyclopedic, thoroughly researched chronicle of three periods during which classical music became a focus of ferocious public battles, with human lives seriously affected and even endangered ... Mr. Rosenberg writes lucid if not brilliant prose. His generic epithets (at one point, in successive paragraphs, he uses 'distinguished' to describe two very different figures) don’t help 'distinguish' the figures he’s describing for readers unfamiliar with them. There are 74 pages of endnotes, all of some interest, yet the surfeit of citations makes this exhaustive work feel exhausting. But these are minor quibbles about a riveting and illuminating book, with its painful stories about the ignorance, shallowness and unfounded hysteria that have recurringly shaped America’s music world—and more.
Read Full Review >>