ABSTRACT
The author, who seems to be pedagogue, psychoanalyst, poet, and musician, composed the volume from several articles written during a period of five years, which may account for some of its unevenness. The two greatest weaknesses of Michel Andre's approach are insufficient documentation and even more detrimental, an almost exclusive preoccupation with genetic id psychology, which leads to an overly schematic classification of composers according to the classical stages of the development of the libido. Michel corroborates his theory by pointing out that during the Reformation the musical style in the Protestant countries changed, with Schutz, from the former Flemish influence to the Italian tradition. A good deal of difficulty could have been avoided by stressing less the antithesis of conscious versus unconscious, and more the psychoeconomic differences between primary and secondary mental processes. To end this review on a note of criticism would leave a wrong impression of the reviewer's over-all evaluation.
