The Story of Music - Softcover

Goodall, Howard

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099587173 ISBN 13: 9780099587170

Publisher: Vintage Books, 2014

Synopsis

Published to coincide with Howard Goodall's major new BBC TV series, this is an accessible history for all music lovers.
Music is an intrinsic part of everyday life, and yet the history of its development from single notes to multi-layered orchestration can seem bewilderingly specialised and complex.

In his dynamic tour through 40,000 years of music, from prehistoric instruments to modern-day pop, Howard Goodall does away with stuffy biographies, unhelpful labels and tired terminology. Instead he leads us through the story of music as it happened, idea by idea, so that each musical innovation -- harmony, notation, sung theatre, the orchestra, dance music, recording, broadcasting -- strikes us with its original force. He focuses on what changed when and why, picking out the discoveries that revolutionised man-made sound and bringing to life musical visionaries from the little-known Pérotin to the colossus of Wagner. Along the way, he also gives refreshingly clear descriptions of what music is and how it works: what scales are all about, why some chords sound discordant and what all post-war pop songs have in common.

The Story of Music is the story of our urge to invent, connect, rebel -- and entertain. Howard Goodall's beautifully clear and compelling account is both a hymn to human endeavour and a groundbreaking map of our musical journey.

About this title

About the Author:

HOWARD GOODALL is an Emmy, BRIT and BAFTA award-winning composer of choral music (Eternal Light: A Requiem), stage musicals (The Hired Man, Love Story), film and TV scores -- among them The Vicar of Dibley, Q.I., Red Dwarf, Blackadder and Into the Storm. He was awarded the CBE in 2011 for service to music education.

From Booklist:

*Starred Review* Most of us take music for granted, and yet, as explained in this insightful exploration on the origins of music, someone had to come up with harmony and rhythm; someone had to create musical notation. “Someone, somewhere, thought of them first.” Though Goodall’s primary focus is on Western music, that doesn’t mean he ignores other musical cultures. He begins with what he calls the Age of Discovery (40,000 BCE to 1450 CE), exploring the musical origins of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, since music, he asserts, played an important role in ritual, communication, and language development. He moves on to the ancient Greeks, who believed studying music could produce “nobler” human beings. He discusses plainchant and polyphony, explains the “huge” implications of Gutenberg’s movable-type printing on the dissemination of music as well as other landmarks in musical history, including the birth of opera; the invention of the piano; technological recording breakthroughs; the evolution of the blues, jazz, and rock ’n’ roll; and the worldwide popularity of hip-hop. Major musical figures are featured prominently, too, from Mozart to Beethoven, Wagner, Mahler, Stravinsky, and Brecht, on to Elvis Presley, the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Paul Simon, and Stephen Sondheim. With playlists for each chapter, this is a masterful and illuminating whirlwind tour through thousands of years of musical history. --June Sawyers

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Books
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0099587173
• ISBN 13: 9780099587170
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368