Bach's Cycle, Mozart's Arrow ― An Essay on the Origins of Musical Modernity

"Karol Berger may have gone further than any other scholar before him--and very successfully so--in teasing out the historicity of music in a way that makes his discoveries convergent with the historicity of other media and art forms. In its argumentative brilliance, Berger's approach enhances our aesthetic pleasure in listening to music."--Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Albert Guerard Professor in Literature, Stanford University

"This is a major work by a major scholar. Berger is unique; there is something uncanny about his powers of synthesis and his quality of insight. No one else can relate, as he does, the closest technical analysis of music to the broadest questions of philosophy."--Richard Taruskin, author of The Oxford History of Western Music

"This book is an event. The musical styles of Bach and Mozart are admirably contrasted to illustrate an epochal shift in the cultural construction of time occurring around 1750. Berger combines careful musical analysis with grand perspectives on the plane of cultural theory and the history of ideas. The intellectual world has long been waiting for musicology to open up to the "cultural turn" that other disciplines of the humanities took long ago: here is a book which can serve as a model."--Jan Assmann author of Die Zauberflote: Oper und Mysterium

Karol Berger is the Osgood Hooker Professor in Fine Arts at Stanford University. His books include A Theory of Art (2000) .