Stephen Fry's Incomplete
& Utter History of Classical Music

By Tim Lihoreau
Macmillan
December 2004
ISBN: 0752225340
316 Pages, 5 ¾" x 8 ¾"
$37.95 Hardcover

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Stephen Fry's Incomplete and Utter History of Classical Music provides us with a potted and brilliantly rambling 700-year history of classical music and the world as we know it. Along this musical journey he casually throws in references to pretty much whatever takes his fancy, from the Mongol invasion of Russia and Mr. Khan (Genghis to his friends), the founding of the MCC, the Black Death (which once again became the new black in England), to the heady revolutionary atmosphere of Mozart's Don Giovanni and the deep doo-doo that Louis XVI got into (or du-du as the French would say).

Its all here - Ambrose and early-English plainsong, Bach, Mozart (beloved of mobile phones everywhere), Beethoven, Debussy, Wagner (the old romantic), right up to the present day. Entertaining and brilliantly written, this is a pretty reckless romp of a history through classical music and much much more.

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