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Music’s Odyssey
  • Published: 10 February 2026
  • ISBN: 9780241183014
  • Imprint: Allen Lane
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 1184
  • RRP: $125.00
Categories:

Music’s Odyssey

An Invitation to Western Classical Music

Formats & editions
Hardback
10 Feb 2026
EBook
18 Sept 2025
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A triumphant journey through the history of Western classical music and the minds of all its great composers

‘My aim in this book is to offer an invitation to the glorious long voyage of Western classical music for all those who enjoy and love it, and seek to deepen their enjoyment and love without getting caught up in musicology and technicalities: an entry to Aladdin’s cave, an injunction to ‘taste and see’ re-angled for the sense of hearing in all its complex and various modes. Not historical, but broadly chronological and thematic, from the earliest adventures in notation up to the present day – some fourteen centuries of continuity and interruptions, revolutions and renewals, complements and contrasts, via many detailed descriptions of individual composers and individual pieces.

‘In part, it is an account of how music is made – its core of practice, skills, conventions, traditions – but also an attempt to chart the evolution of expression, what is being said, what felt, what communicated ‘from the heart to the heart’ – how music works upon its listeners, how it moves and stirs, how it reaches and appeals to the highest flights and deepest places (and everything between) of the organising pattern-making mind, the ebb and flow of the sensual body, the centres of emotion.

‘Everything is within the art itself, at whatever epoch, in whatever idiom, whatever genre or intention. Nor is evaluation eschewed – why, as well as how, it is so good and why sometimes so deplorable. The style throughout is inherently allusive and I have tried everywhere to preserve the intonations and rhythms of speech – spontaneous, improvised, natural as breathing’

- Robin Holloway
  • Published: 10 February 2026
  • ISBN: 9780241183014
  • Imprint: Allen Lane
  • Format: Hardback
  • Pages: 1184
  • RRP: $125.00
Categories:

Praise for Music’s Odyssey

The delight sings loudly off the page ... [Holloway] is fascinated by musical lineage and is a meticulous tracer and charter of influence , throwing cables across centuries and pulling seemingly disparate figures suddenly near. Irreverent , outspoken and unfailingly opinionated, with knowledge as broad as his vocabulary, [he[ offers an unofficial alternative account [of the history of Western music]; 'an enthusiast's record of delighted discoveries'; and a playful compendium ... alongside close listening and biographical fragments. Saying the unsayable is a repeated theme .... he wrestles with the toughest of repertoire and wins

Alexandra Coghlan, Spectator

Enthusiasts picking up this book will straightaway recognise a companion for life. They will be inexhaustibly educated, provoked and amused by the absoluteness of its commitment and the sharpness of its judgement … the book’s endearing loquacity, humour and energy bring to mind the literary fecundity of a Burgess or a Joyce. It is hard to believe that one person possesses and has been able to put on paper such an accumulation of knowledge

Jonathan Gaisman, The Critic

Music's Odyssey is a summation of [Robin Holloway]'s work as a writer on music ... an idiosyncratic and personal tour of the glories of classical music. Holloway loves to trace influence and lineage, but more delightful are the wormholes he finds between centuries ... he toys with tailoring his writing, chamelon-like, to echo the musical style of his subjects ... each word is worth savouring

Rebecca Franks, The Times