The indefatigable Richard Taruskin has done it again – he’s taken the six-volume Oxford History of Western Music ($750), and boiled it down to five paperback volumes that will go on sale in April and May. Each volume will be priced to move at $40 each, or $185 for the entire set. So if you didn’t acquire it when it was first published (that would be me), you don’t have the argument of the price barrier to stop you anymore. From the Oxford University Press’ description:
“The universally acclaimed and award-winning Oxford History of Western Music by one of the most prominent and provocative musicologists of our time, Richard Taruskin. Now in paperback, the set has been reconstructed to be available for the first time as individual books, each one taking on a critical time period in the history of western music. All five books are also being offered in a shrink wrapped set for a discounted price.”
More Taruskiniana is available in the May 2008 Kritikos lecture Taruskin gave at the University of Oregon titled “Did Somebody Say Censorship?”
And of course there’s the recent 488-page collection of his newspaper and magazine writings The Danger of Music. Why do I feel so unproductive?