Music's Odyssey

Robin Holloway's long-awaited Music's Odyssey is a book about classical music unlike any other. With the sensibility of a composer himself, he takes us to the essence of baroque, classical, romantic and modern classical music - lesser-known composers and their works, as well as the greats - through close readings, daring comparisons and brilliant insights. He writes: 'My aim in this book is to offer an invitation to the glorious long voyage of Western classical music for all who enjoy and love it, and seek to deepen their enjoyment and love without getting bogged down in musicology and technicalities: an invitation au voyage, an entry to Aladdin's cave, an injunction to "taste and see" re-angled for the sense of hearing in all its complex and various modes. Not historical; but broadly chronological and thematic, from the earliest adventures in notation up to the present day - some fourteen centuries of continuity and interruptions, revolutions and renewals, complements and contrasts, via many detailed descriptions of individual composers and individual pieces.'