Less would be more
In his "Cultural History of European Music", Gernot Gruber brings surprising references to light, but the explanations are often abstract and do not really bring the music closer.
For thirty years I have been looking for a book on "European" music history for students. Despite the wealth of stimulating thoughts and ideas ("critical imagination", p. 8), Gernot Gruber's Cultural history of European music unsuitable for my purpose. Here - despite plausible thoughts on the subject - music history is not told, but rather discussed. The fact that different epochs are dealt with from different perspectives is pragmatic and beneficial. Nevertheless, the range from mere referencing of what has been researched (music of the first millennium), complicated music-historiographical considerations (18th century) and mere name-dropping (again and again) is somewhat too broad.
The last of seven illustrations is on p. 77; there is not a single musical example. How does the author intend to fulfill the triad of "knowing, seeing and hearing" (p. 1)? It is not the composers' achievements and the beauties of music that shine here, but the historian's erudition. All too often, it takes considerable expertise to guess what the author is trying to imply with side comments. The German language sets him insurmountable traps with abstracting word endings such as -ung and -ation, instead of allowing musical performance to unfold as concretely as simply before the reader's mind's eye and ear. What is meant by "flexible structuring" and "condensation" for a composer (J. S. Bach) of whom not a single composition is used as an example for explanation? The naming of composers (and at most work titles) without a single comment on their music is particularly annoying.
If Swiss music from 1968 to 1991 is outlined with three names (Klaus Huber, Rudolf Kelterborn and Heinz Holliger), this is one-sided. If all that remains of the latter is "Heinz Holliger (*1939), world-famous as an oboist, was a professor at the Fribourg Academy of Music from 1975 and is still very influential as a conductor and composer in and for Switzerland today", then this is meaningless, only partially correct and therefore unsuitable within a "[...] history of [...] music".
My starting point was a specific question; the answer is negative. As a reviewer, I am interested in the orientation, the concept and its implementation. This does not mean that the book cannot be read with profit as a source of information. The author understands how to make new and unfamiliar references clear and how to use his wealth of knowledge to provoke a new way of thinking about music history.
Gernot Gruber: Cultural history of European music. From the beginnings to the present, 832 p., € 49.99, Bärenreiter/Metzler, Kassel/Stuttgart 2020, ISBN 978-3-7618-2508-2
