immorality into the field of music which has been the main vehicle of cultural revolution in the West. For the first time ever, a unified theory of music and cultural revolution links the work of figures like Wagner, Nietzsche, Schönborg, Jagger and others to show the connection between the demise of classical music and the rise of rock 'n' roll. Beginning with Nietzsche's appropriation of Wagner's opera Tristan and Isolde, music became the instrument for cultural upheaval. What began at the barricades of Dresden in 1849 found its culmination at Woodstock and Altamont and the other Dionysian festivals of 1969. Jones shows the connection between the death of classical music and the rise of the African sensibility which Nietzsche saw as the antidote to Wagner prostrating himself before the cross in Parsifal. Nietzsche prophesied the end of the age of Christ/Socrates and the return of the spirit of music to philosophy. That return took place at the end of 1969 at an abandoned racetrack outside of San Francisco, and the world has never been the same. "And a man who has not `music' in him is apt to disintegrate states since music is equally suggestive of personal love or political concord." - G. Wilson Knight, The Shakespearean Tempest

Hide more