In Der Klang der Monarchie, Philipp Ther offers an accessible and ambitious account of music in the Habsburg Empire. His central proposition is stated early: the Monarchy held together not primarily by virtue of tradition or military force but because it was an imperium of music—a political entity in which music helped connect its heterogeneous regions and populations (11). Culture generally, and music in particular, are thus presented as means of power in conflicts and struggles for influence. The book, according to Ther, foregrounds composers when their activities were politically significant or when they affected social change (19), and it follows music through war, revolution, mobility, national politics, urban culture, gender relations, and modernism.

The volume opens with a short prelude introducing this rationale, but without methodological contextualization or a chapter outline. The prelude is followed by 10 chapters, moving from Haydn and aristocratic Austria, through Mozart as a Josephinian composer and Beethoven as a state composer, to Schubert and Škroup in the Biedermeier period; Bohemian waltzes and Viennese polkas (deliberately choosing this pun to show the mobility of genres within the Empire); military music and the revolution of 1848/49; music as Romantic language; women in music; operetta and the First World War; and, finally, the musical afterlife of the Habsburg Empire in Viennese, Prague, and Budapest modernisms. The organization is not always fully transparent. It initially appears chronological, yet it is also structured by genre: waltzes and polkas, national anthems, military music, and operetta serve as thematic frames as much as period markers. The first four chapters are particularly centered on major individuals—Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Škroup—although many other figures are discussed as well. This combination of chronology, genre history, and composer-centered historiography gives the volume an exciting dynamic, but it also makes the principles of selection somewhat difficult to determine.

Three aspects of the book’s overall scope are especially noteworthy. First, Ther makes a welcome attempt to move beyond such large-scale genres as the symphony, cantata, and opera by including song, Singspiel, Sprechgesang, dances, military music, and operetta. Second, Der Klang der Monarchie—luckily—does not remain wholly confined to Vienna: Bohemia, Prague, Moravia, Budapest, Croatian towns, and smaller Habsburg villages repeatedly enter the narrative. Third, the careful treatment of the Biedermeier period is one of the volume’s more compelling aspects. Rather than reproducing the outdated image of the period as one of stagnation, Ther emphasizes industrialization, the growth of administration, changes in education, and the resulting opportunities for physical and social mobility (136). At the same time, the book remains strongly canonical. Viennese, Austrian, and Bohemian composers are mentioned frequently, while the South Slavic regions, for instance, seem less fully integrated. This does not invalidate Ther’s choices, but it confirms that the volume represents one possible selection from the Empire’s musical past rather than a comprehensive account. Indeed, A Sound of the Monarchy might perhaps be a more precise title than The Sound of the Monarchy.

These choices are closely related to Ther’s intended readership. His prose is deliberately directed toward a broad audience rather than the specialist music scholar. The language is quite colloquial in places, and personal experience similarly creates proximity to the reader, as when Ther refers to Trutnov as his Bohemian grandmother’s hometown (8). These strategies make for engaging reading, though they are not accompanied by much reflection on the author’s own position. They can also lead to simplification or somewhat tongue-in-cheek exaggeration: the Radetzky March becomes “one of the most well-known melodies in the world” (7), while Beethoven is an “icon” of Viennese Classicism (108). Similarly, the claim that the Baroque dynasty cultivated music because it recognized its political significance is persuasive within the Habsburg context (11), but music was, of course, cultivated and politically instrumentalized outside the Monarchy as well.

The chapter on women in music is among the most revealing parts of the book, precisely because it exposes some of the tensions between Ther’s analytical aims and his own selection of material. Its title, “Das misogyne Reich” (The Misogynous Empire), and subtitle, “Musik als Männerwelt” (Music as a Men’s World, p. 327), are somewhat awkward for a chapter devoted to women. Indeed, the whole idea of devoting a chapter to women rather than integrating women naturally in a balanced way within all chapters raises some important questions. At any rate, said chapter includes some details on Josepha Auernhammer, Marianna Martines, Maria Theresia Paradis, and Josepha Müllner, who was not only a harpist, virtuoso, and teacher but also a published composer. Ther also mentions conservatories and female teachers, without pursuing these subjects further, likely because his focus is on composers rather than musical protagonists more generally. The chapter offers some additional interesting individual examples: the German-Jewish composer Sara Jessel (1855–1900), who spoke at the Allgemeine Deutsche Frauenverein in Frankfurt/Main about why there were so few women composers (339); Julie von Baroni-Cavalcabò (1813–87) and her strategy of keeping friendly with the court and the noble classes (340); and Mathilde Kralik von Meyrswalden (1857–1944), a member of the Österreichischer Komponistenbund (343). Yet these examples remain heavily Austria-centered. A fuller Bohemian context, including figures such as Elise von Schlik or Josefina Brdlíková, would have widened the picture a little.

This is particularly striking because Ther himself identifies the male-centered perspective on music and cultural history of the Habsburg Empire when explaining why Prince Lichnowsky received more attention than his wife Maria Christiane von Thun-Hohenstein (190). The book, however, sometimes reproduces this imbalance. Salons and women who hosted them receive very little attention, while female opera stars are mentioned without a single singer being investigated in greater detail. The observation that women rarely held permanent positions at the opera, working instead through seasonal arrangements, is interesting (331), but it is not developed. The discussion of Viennese Czechs similarly acknowledges an important subculture lacking public recognition, but it, too, receives little room (236–37). These omissions point to the difficulties of representing complex cultural formations within a linear narrative. At its best, however, the volume moves beyond these limitations. The discussion of Pejačević is especially effective. The Habsburg Monarchy is described as a crucial site of literary modernism because its languages had long fertilized one another, and Pejačević is presented as moving between Hungarian, German, and Croatian. The inclusion of a full poem of hers gives the passage a sense of deeper analysis and appreciation (345).

The book’s physical and scholarly apparatus supports its accessibility. It contains endnotes for each chapter, a selected bibliography, separate indexes of people and works, acknowledgments, and a list of illustrations. The illustrations are attractive and plentiful but small and clearly secondary to the argument. This is somewhat regrettable in a book that explicitly evokes the combination of different senses. In contrast, the QR codes leading to musical examples are an excellent feature, especially since some of the examples were produced specifically for the volume. Ther writes that music increasingly came to occupy a larger place in people’s lives during the nineteenth century (21), partly because daily life was quieter, without radio, supermarket music, or traffic noise. Nevertheless, the book’s complementary “audio guide” is a useful feature, not only for entertainment but also because the recordings include some lesser-known music.

Ther states that one of the most beautiful functions of history is the discovery of worlds rendered strange by temporal distance (22). Der Klang der Monarchie certainly makes an imagined Habsburg soundscape audible. But history may also reveal one’s own world—its benefits and flaws, as well as one’s emotional and intellectual needs. The book consequently demonstrates not only a musical past but also some of the limits of historical scholarship: linear narration, selection, canonical preference, and personal biases. These are not shortcomings peculiar to Ther’s work; they are inherent in the attempt to make sense of a past as heterogeneous and expansive as that of the Habsburg Empire. No single book can capture all its musical worlds, nor could it reasonably do so: the very diversity that makes the subject so compelling also makes any representation necessarily selective. Der Klang der Monarchie is perhaps best understood in this sense—not as the definitive sound of the Monarchy but as one ambitious attempt to make its many, sometimes conflicting voices audible to a general readership.