Music’s Odyssey

A triumphant journey through the history of Western classical music and the minds of all its great composers.

Robin Holloway's long-awaited Music’s Odyssey is a book about classical music unlike any other. With the insights 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.

Holloway characterises, illuminates, and energises his subject with musical empathy, sureness of judgment, and mastery of descriptive language, tracing not only the evolution of forms of music but also the history of feeling and the emotion behind the creation and enjoyment of composition.

Noel Malcolm of All Souls College Oxford, biographer of Enescu, writes:

"Music’s Odyssey is extraordinary and wonderful. No one else could have written it. There may be a few others, though not many, who have this range and knowledge, but none of them could possibly have the ability to characterise, illuminate, bring to life and indeed energise their subject matter with such depth of musical empathy, sureness of judgment and extraordinary mastery of descriptive language. All serious reviews will tell their readers that the work is extraordinary and will indulge in extensive quotation to illustrate that. It will make a huge splash, and deservedly so."