Toward a Materialist Conception of Music History makes a convincing case for the relevance, appropriateness, and usefulness of historical materialism to the musicological project.

The book interrogates the history of encounters between Marxism and music studies — both within and outside of the Soviet sphere — before staging the missed encounter between classical musicology and Second International Marxism. It concludes by constructing a new framework for understanding the history of style in terms of changes in the forces and relations of musical production.