Music, a connected Art / Die Illusion der absoluten Musik

The essay-collection offers a broad overview of musical scholarship today, specifically in the fields of historical musicology, music theory/analysis, music theater, and music pedagogy. It demonstrates the wide range of approaches that are being applied to music and musical life in the early twenty-first century. The spectrum traced by these twenty-eight essays ranges from from the earliest origins of music-making to concerns for what music will be in the future, in the face of ongoing war and increasing damage to the world's climate.

The essays treat, in exemplary fashion, such topics as the impact of technology on music and musical life, changes in how music is performed and transmitted through the electronic media, and new approaches to how music history can be taught to new generations of students growing up in a changing world. Some treat in detail the ways that realism filtered its way into composed music and that earlier myths have gotten incorporated into modern operas. Songs are a recurring point of attention, including the relationship of poetry and music in Schubert's lieder but also more recent songs that convey simplicity in new ways—and the special magic of Broadway musicals.