Yet there's a different strand to Ball's book, lurking beneath the surface: here the anti-Modernist backlash will find fodder aplenty. Ball takes the view that serialism has never been a massive hit with the public for inevitable physiological and cognitive reasons, arguing that when a serialist work has achieved widespread success, such as Berg's Violin Concerto, it's usually despite rather than because of the system used to compose it. Incidentally, he says similar things about the recitative in general, which startled me, since the recitatives in, for instance, Bach's St. Matthew Passion are terrifically moving. Many may find such views contentious or unpalatable. But Ball is right to express concern over the eschewing by composers such as Milton Babbitt, Pierre Boulez and their followers of any priority resembling communication with the audience; his coolly-worded demolition of Boulez's Le Marteau sans maître is worth reading.

That leads on to an issue that preys widely on the minds of music-lovers: the survival of music in the new century. 

When financial cutbacks loom, classical music is often first in the firing line because it is an easy target, misperceived by many in power as "irrelevant", "elitist" and all the rest. Ball's arguments pertain to this because the prevailing 20th-century avant-garde did make audiences for contemporary music desperately elitist, in an intellectual rather than financial sense, thus fuelling the unfortunate impression that classical music exists in an ivory tower with little relevance to anyone but its own protagonists. 

Music education was decimated in Britain during the Thatcher years, and even now remains generally the preserve of those who can pay for it, or who know where to find grants, scholarships and instrument loans. The same applies in the US, and the virus spreads quickly. Barenboim has spoken at length of the parlous state of musical education worldwide and the necessity of providing music lessons at kindergarten level if children are to grow up with any ability in or inclination for the art. 

Meanwhile, his own West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela and Buskaid in South Africa have provided living, breathing, audible proof that music-making is an invaluable influence that knows no social boundaries. It promotes in the case of the WEDO a grass-roots dialogue between people who would otherwise have been persuaded by their elders to regard each other as enemies, while in the case of the SBYO and Buskaid it offers youngsters a goal, a hope, a skill, a sense of discipline and an alternative life to that of poverty and crime. 

If music is an essential part of being human; if, as Ball's book says, we cannot do without it, we have to prove that to those wielding the purse strings — and the proof has to be provided in terms that even the most philistine cannot fail to acknowledge. Never again must we face a situation where music is regarded as merely an optional toy for the wealthy. Politicians, sponsors and the ideological forces that control education need to be reminded of the power and universality of music, the fact that it is part of our bodies and souls, and that to get the most out of it our children need to be shown more about how it works, and much earlier. If Barenboim and Ball cannot do the trick, then nobody can.