Includes bibliographical references and index.

Et in arcadia ego, or, I didn't know I was such a pessimist until I wrote this thing -- Only time will cover the taint -- "Nationalism" : colonialism in disguise? -- Why do they all hate Horowitz? -- Optimism amid the rubble -- A survivor from the teutonic train wreck -- Does nature call the tune? -- Two stabs at the universe. Away with the Ives myth : the "universe" is here at last ; Out of hibernation : Ives's mythical beast -- In search of the "good" Hindemith legacy -- Six times six: a Bach suite selection -- A Beethoven season? -- Dispelling the contagious Wagnerian mist -- How talented composers become useless -- Making a stand against sterility -- A sturdy musical bridge to the twenty-first century -- Calling all pundits : no more predictions! -- In the Rake's progress, love conquers all, almost -- Markevitch as Icarus -- Let's rescue poor Schumann from his rescuers -- Early music: truly old-fashioned at last? -- Bartók and Stravinsky: odd couple reunited? -- Wagner's antichrist crashes a pagan party -- A surrealist composer comes to the rescue of modernism -- Corraling a herd of musical mavericks -- Can we give poor Orff a pass at last? -- Music's dangers and the case for control -- Ezra Pound: a slim sound claim to musical immortality -- Underneath the dissonance beat a Brahmsian heart -- Enter Boris Goudenow, just 295 years late -- For the New Republic, mostly -- The first modernist -- The dark side of the moon -- Of kings and divas -- The golden age of kitsch -- No ear for music: the scary purity of John Cage -- Sacred entertainments -- The poietic fallacy -- The musical mystique: defending classical music against its devotees -- Revising revision -- Back to whom? Neoclassicism as ideology -- She do the ring in different voices -- Stravinsky and us -- Setting limits.