All this and much more is discussed in Blanning's eloquent pages, which record what he unhesitatingly describes as the "triumph" of music. He refuses to segregate the classical tradition from the rise of jazz and pop, and so can include Mendelssohn and John Coltrane, Schoenberg and Eric Clapton, on equal terms. If you allow that move, then it becomes easy to show that music has risen from a pastime with a few professional applications to a universal background to human life.

But should we run the histories of classical and pop music together in this way? In his somewhat post-modern conclusion Blanning asks "why not?" He distances himself from those who would judge pop unfavourably, implying that the attention directed to Hendrix by his fans is no different from that directed to Bach by his.

I doubt this, because I believe that many lovers of pop fail to distinguish the musical object from the performer who makes use of it. It is only a minority of popular songs (the jazz classics, and after them the Beatles, Clapton, Abba) that can be given a life beyond the grave of their first performers.

Blanning is right that music has been sacralised. But it has been sacralised in two ways, one religious, the other idolatrous, one rising above our everyday condition, the other too often wallowing in the depths of it.