Reviews
Scott Messing is a good digger. He successfully unearths the cultural politics out of which nouveau classicisme (in German, Klassizitat) began to emerge - not as nostalgia, and long before the Great War... He demonstrates the connections between (neo)classicism and youth culture, (neo)classicism and cultural elitism, (neo)classicism and authoritarianism, (neo)classicism and the politics of exclusion. He knows how (neo)classicism relates to `decadence'. His book, in short, is a breakthrough in culturally informed music historiography. The fact that in five years it has not managed to attract interest commensurate with its deserts...[is largely] the result of some long-standing academic biases. 19TH CENTURY MUSIC [sic] (Richard Taruskin) (US)