Great composers’ music is to be enjoyed, not fretted about! An Anti-Woke Guide to Classical Music, with chapters on numerous dead white male composers, aims to help. Classical music, like much of Western culture, is increasingly under pressure and criticism. Past evils, or perceived evils, seem to be haunting it, and raise the question of what, if anything, in our cultural canon can be appreciated without a guilty conscience. Was Mozart an apologist for colonialization? Did Beethoven harbor unjustifiable views about the emancipation of women? What were Mendelssohn’s feelings on equal pay in the workplace. How did Brahms feel about pronouns? Other books have examined the merits of Western Civilization, relative and absolute, before it entered the age of agonizing self-deprecation. An Anti-Woke Guide to Classical Music is not that book.

Instead, this book is completely unapologetic. It is unashamed to presume the superiority of Western classical music as the greatest ever written. It proposes that the inclined reader (and listener) sit back, shed any anxiety, and be variously calmed, jolted, disturbed, and intrigued, but always delighted, by the greatest (and some lesser-known great) composers throughout history. This survey of their personalities, their best works, and some great interpretations is meant as a friendly guide to entice entry into a better world. It attempts to provide insights into the meaning of this music so that the apprentice listener has a friendly chaperon pointing the way, but with enough depth that the connoisseur may find enjoyment and an invitation to a great adventure, one the reader may be more inclined to accept if the obstacle of wokeness is removed.