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Synopsis

The power and prestige of music in the modern world has given its practitioners extraordinary wealth and moral authority. This is taken for granted now and yet for much of Europe's history musicians have been mere servants. The rise of music and musicians in the West is the subject of Tim Blanning's fascinating new book, from poorly-paid balladeers to music-masters employed by fickle patrons, to the great composers of genius, to today's rock stars. How, he asks, did music progress from subordinate status to its present position of supremacy among the creative arts? Mozart was booted out of the service of the Archbishop of Salzburg 'with a kick to my arse', as he expressed it. Yet, less than a hundred years later, Europe's most powerful ruler - Emperor William I of Germany - paid homage to Wagner by travelling to Bayreuth to attend the debut of The Ring. Today Bono, who was touted as the next president of the World Bank in 2006, travels the world advising politicians - and they seem to listen.

The path to fame and independence began when new instruments allowed musicians to showcase their creativity, and music publishing allowed masterworks to be performed widely in concert halls erected to accommodate growing public interest. No longer merely an instrument to celebrate the greater glory of a reigning sovereign or Supreme Being, music was, by the nineteenth century, to be worshipped in its own right. In the twentieth century, new technological, social, and spatial forces combined to make music ever more popular and ubiquitous.

In a concluding chapter, Blanning considers music's alliances with nationalism, race and sex. Although not always in step, music, society, and politics, he shows, march in the same direction. The Triumph of Music is a marvellous work of cultural history, packed with surprising stories and insights.

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Interview

You have a very interesting thesis about the social status of musicians changing over the last three hundred years.  Can you tell us where your idea came from and what inspired you to write about it?
In as much as I have ever had any interesting ideas, they have come from teaching – thinking about what I am going to say in a lecture or at a seminar, saying it, and then  discussing it and arguing about it with students. The idea of the ‘triumph of music’ was no exception.

You write about lots of different kinds of music and musicians, classical, jazz, and contemporary events such as Brian May playing 'God Save the Queen' on the roof of Buckingham Palace.  Did you have fans of all of those genres in mind when you wrote the book?      
Not really. I know most about – and am most interested in – the music of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, but I wanted to follow the various lines of argument through the twentieth century and up to the present day.

Do you have particular musical favourites who have influenced the way you think about music?
My musical preferences are very eclectic. The core of my interest has always been the German classical and romantic repertoire from Bach through Haydn and Mozart to Wagner,  especially the last-named. But I have always liked jazz too, having played the trombone (very very badly) in a band at school. And of course I still love the rock music of my youth, especially the Rolling Stones and Creedence Clearwater Revival. It’s great to see that most of the Stones and one of CCR (John Fogerty) are still going strong. So I feel reasonably well equipped to make comparisons across time, although a lot of the modern scene – especially rap and its derivatives – remain a blind spot.

What writers and thinkers have most influenced your work, do you think?
The biggest influence on the way I view the relationship between music and the environment in which it was/is created has been the German musicologist Paul Bekker, who died in exile in 1937. His book German musical life, first published in 1919, is a masterpiece. It is a great shame it has not been translated. I have also been greatly influenced by Wagner’s writings.

During the process of writing, what surprises did you discover?
The biggest surprise was just how much musicians of different periods have in common, however different their music may sound.

And if you could construct your ideal musical evening with musicians, performers and composers throughout history (feel free to indulge in a bit of theoretical resurrection), who would be entertaining you and with what?
That’s an easy one: if its an intimate environment, then it would have to be an evening spent in the company of Franz Schubert and his friends. The more I listen to Schubert, the more I admire and am moved by his music. If a grander scale is available, then Wagner’s Ring or Parsifal at Bayreuth in the presence of the Master is the obvious choice.

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