- 256 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
The Shortest History of Music
About this book
'Wonderful... as erudite as it is enjoyable; as riveting as it is revelatory'
Clemency Burton-Hill
'Although music is as intrinsic to human life as the air we breathe, we must never fall for the line that it is a universal language. Music is neither universal, nor a language.'
From an infant's first experimental sounds to the voice of Elvis – via Hildegard of Bingen, Beethoven and bebop – The Shortest History of Music sets out to understand what exactly music is, and why humans are irresistibly drawn to making it.
Ranging across millennia, Andrew Ford explores music's great themes: writing it down and recording it; paying for it and making it modern. With brilliant insight, he traces the story of the symphony and the opera, blues and jazz; the oral traditions of folk singers and chain gangs; and the lives of the greats – Bach and Mozart, Clara Schumann and Schoenberg, Charlie Parker and Nina Simone.
From lullabies to national anthems, songlines to streaming, this is a sparkling account of what music has meant at different times and in different places.
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Information
Subtopic
Classical MusicTable of contents
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1: The Tradition of Music: from Prehistory to the Present
- 2: Music and Notation: Blueprints for Building in Sound from 1400 BCE to the Present
- 3: Music for Sale: Paying the Piper from 1000 BCE to the Present
- 4: Music and Modernism: Reinventing the Art from 1150 to the Present
- 5: Recording Music: from 1900 to the Present
- Epilogue: What Is Music?
- Further Reading
- Acknowledgements
- Image Credits
- Index
- Also by Andrew Ford
- Also in this series
- Advertisement
- Copyright
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Yes, you can access The Shortest History of Music by Andrew Ford in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Media & Performing Arts & Classical Music. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.