Karte, Uhr und Partitur

What connects maps with sheet music, seafaring with sonata form, and central perspective with orchestral placement?

Armed with a map, a clock, and a score, Johannes Schöllhorn presents one of the most original and thought-provoking books on music to emerge in recent years. In a series of essays, miniatures, and intellectual digressions, the composer explores the hidden connections between music, history, technology, geography, and power. The starting point is a question as simple as it is far-reaching: How do the ways in which people measure, organize, and conquer the world also shape their musical thinking?

Schöllhorn weaves together the Renaissance and the present, philosophy and composition, art history, politics, and cultural theory into a dense network of observations. In doing so, he questions seemingly self-evident concepts such as progress, originality, authorship, or “classical music,” and opens up surprising perspectives on European music history. His texts are neither scholarly treatises nor instructional works on music theory, but rather deliberately open-ended trains of thought that invite readers to think along, challenge the ideas, and read on.

More than 200 color illustrations from the worlds of art, architecture, music, film, and everyday culture accompany the essays, transforming the book itself into a visual space for reflection. The result is an extraordinary volume that lends itself equally well to reading from cover to cover as it does to browsing at random, constantly revealing new connections.

With this second edition, this volume—which has since become a modern classic of music essay writing—is once again available. An indispensable book for anyone who not only wants to listen to music but also to understand it as part of broader cultural, historical, and social contexts.

The book will be released on October 31 and is available for pre-order now!