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.

Introduction

In modern times, three British monarchs have reigned long enough to celebrate a golden jubilee: George III in 1809, Queen Victoria in 1887 and Elizabeth II in 2002.1 All three marked the occasion with a church service. King George contented himself with a private affair in the chapel at Windsor. Queen Victoria attended a Service of Thanksgiving at Westminster Abbey, where she heard her late husband’s setting of the ‘Te Deum’ and another of his compositions, the anthem ‘Gotha.’ The present queen went to St. Paul’s Cathedral for a similar event, albeit without the prince consort’s music, and was told by the arch bishop of Canterbury that ‘unlike so much in the modern world, this relationship, the one between Sovereign and people, has grown stronger and deeper with the passage of time’. For these three monarchs—heads of the Church of England and devout Christians all—the religious ser vice may well have marked the highpoint of the jubilee celebration. For the subjects of George and Victoria, however, it was more likely the ox roasts, free beer and fireworks that went down best.

Plenty of food and drink were consumed in 2002 also, but for the majority of Queen Elizabeth’s subjects the climax was the great open air pop concert held in the grounds of Buckingham Palace on Monday, 3 June. Although the limited space meant that only the 12,500 people who had been successful in a ballot could attend, a million more watched it on giant screens in the Mall and the royal parks, while another 20 million in the United Kingdom and more than 200 million worldwide watched it on television. A hundred thousand copies of the CD were sold within a week, and untold millions more have watched the concert on DVD since. Together with the classical concert (Prom at the Palace) staged the previous Saturday, the Party at the Palace (as the event was officially known) gave the jubilee a public impact greater than any previous royal occasion.

The DVD revealed many good moments: an Atomic Kitten constantly threatening to pop out of her dress without ever quite succeeding; the once satanic Ozzy Osbourne, former lead singer of Black Sabbath, growling ‘God Save the Queen’ as he left the stage after performing his anthem ‘Paranoid’; the comely Rachel Stevens looking somewhat nonplussed when seized by Cliff Richard during their performance of ‘Move It’—just to mention three. Undoubtedly the highlight, however, was the concert’s opening, with Brian May playing ‘God Save the Queen’ on the roof of Buckingham Palace. Although the Queen herself perhaps did not make the fullest possible use of the opportunities presented by the event—she arrived shortly before the end sporting ear plugs and was visibly unamused by the proceedings— most commentators concluded that it had been a mighty public relations coup. Even self-confessed republicans were impressed.

Typical was the reaction of the columnist India Knight, who was in Ireland on the evening of the concert: “I idly switched on the television while I ran a bath. The first thing I thought, with a sort of kick of excitement around the stomach, was: ‘Oh my goodness, how fabulous is this?’ The second thing was: ‘It’s Brian May and his horrible hair playing the guitar on the roof of Buckingham Palace, ergo it can’t be fabulous, ergo I need to get a grip, sharpish.’ I was supposed to go to the pub, but watched the concert instead, mesmerised—the same grandad-friendly concert I had been sniggering about for weeks: Rod Stewart, Ozzy Osbourne, Paul McCartney, the remaining members of Queen, the exact opposite of cool. And yet it was fantastic. More fantastic still was the sight of one million people waving their flags and roaring their approval: every time the camera panned to them. I felt choked.”

Her story was published under the title: ‘So Help Me, I’m a Patriot’. If that seems a little impressionistic, one could add the more hard-headed response of Hans Petri, the managing director of Opus Arte, the company responsible for marketing the DVD, who found himself overwhelmed by orders from would-be distributors: ‘When they saw that picture of Brian May on the roof of the palace, they just all went through the roof’, he said. For once, the application of the overworked adjective ‘iconic’ to Brian’s performance seems justified.

The event attracted a great deal of attention, of course, but none of the millions of words that fl owed—so far as I can tell, at least—tried to place it in its historical context, apart from the occasional brief reference to the two previous royal jubilees (or three, if Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee of 1897 is included). This book will show how the concert was the culmination of three centuries of musical development. Of course other occasions could have been chosen, but the Prom and Party at the Palace serve very well as a starting point, because present on those two June evenings were at least four of the five essential ingredients that have fused to ensure the triumph of music (and which the five chapters that follow will take up in turn).

First was the elevated status of the musician. No group of comparably famous and rich creative artists working in fields other than music could have been assembled. Almost every one who appeared was a household name, several were knights or dames, and most were very rich. The Sunday Times ‘rich list’ included Sir Paul McCartney with a fortune of £760m, Sir Elton John with £170m, Sir Tom Jones with £150m, Ozzy Osbourne with £100m, Brian May with £55m, Roger Taylor with £50m, John Deacon with £50m, Sir Cliff Richard with £40m (almost certainly a serious underestimate), Annie Lennox with £30m, and so on. How things have changed since 1781, when Mozart was literally booted out of the ser vice of the archbishop of Salzburg ‘with a kick to my arse’.

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.