Volume 7, No. 3 (Fall 2004)
Quarter Notes and Banknotes is a genuinely interdisciplinary book and shows that an economic perspective can illuminate our understanding of the development of classical music. Unfortunately the book is not interdisciplinary enough. When Scherer wanders away from his chosen fields of economics and music, he appears to be on unfamiliar and shaky ground. By far the weakest part of the book is the section on intellectual history, as he tries to show how the Enlightenment provided the background for the political, social, and economic developments he is tracing.
