A tour de force, but …

It doesn’t cover music!!!

Brilliantly informative on the visual arts and their social and political well-spring: Chairman Mao wrote that all art is inseparable from politics which is a defensible statement and well illustrated in this beautifully written set of essays.

Even on topics I thought I knew well - Florence, Amsterdam — certainly London, there are fresh insights and connections; and to choose Benin and Brazilia , not to mention Pyongyang -is original.

Whether the decision to exclude music arose from considerations of space or policy it is a mistake in light of the book’s raison d’etre: even in the ancient world music was deployed as an adjunct of power, both in Babylon and Jerusalem, where the Torah was chanted and the psalms often amplify religious beliefs and traditions while many are in praise or support of the king. The church invariably used music to enhance its own or the rulers’ prestige, and African polities were never without it; what were the griots for? The Chinese empire depended for its maintenance on its music as did the major Indian belief systems. To think of Vienna in this period without reference to music is a serious oversight and New York???

There are certainly choices the author has made that might beg questions such as: ‘What do we know about the music of this or that society during X period, but information is available; a more interesting one, perhaps, is why very rich and opulent powers apparently failed to foster native musical talent: Florence and Amsterdam come to mind. While the latter boasted a very flourishing music-publishing trade for middle-class amateurs, the Florentine families of c15 imported their musicians from among the predominant Franco-Flemish schools. No mention either of opera, which WAS a tool of the rich and powerful

Despite this rant, the book is superb for what it does cover, and itvwoukd be churlish to award less than five stars particularly for the reader who dealt with pronunciation without dropping a stitch.

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