Music in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries

The universally acclaimed and award-winning Oxford History of Western Music is the eminent musicologist Richard Taruskin''s provocative erudite telling of the story of Western music from its earliest days to the present. Each book in this superlative five-volume set illuminates-through a representative sampling of masterworks-the themes styles and currents that give shape and direction to a significant period in the history of Western music. Music in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries the second volume Richard Taruskin''s monumental history illuminates the explosion of musical creativity that occurred in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Examining a wealth of topics Taruskin looks at the elegant masques and consort music of Jacobean England the Italian concerto style of Corelli and Vivaldi and the progression from Baroque to Rococo to romantic style. Perhaps most important he offers a fascinating account of the giants of this period: Bach Handel Mozart Haydn and Beethoven. Laced with brilliant observations memorable musical analysis and a panoramic sense of the interactions between history culture politics art literature religion and music this book will be essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand this rich and diverse period.