The Story of Music - Hardcover

Goodall, Howard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0701187522 ISBN 13: 9780701187521

Publisher: Chatto & Windus, 2013

Synopsis

Published to coincide with Howard Goodall's major new BBC TV series, this is an accessible history for all music lovers.
 
For many of us, 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 complex and specialised.
 
In his energetic tour through 30,000 years of music, from prehistoric instruments to pop, Goodall does away with stuffy biographies, unhelpful labels and tired terminology and leads us through the story of music as it really happened, so that each musical innovation strikes us with its original force. He focuses on what changed when and why, picking out the discoveries that revolutionised man-made sound. Along the way, he also gives refreshingly clear descriptions of what music is and how it works: what scales are all about, what happens in harmony, why some chords sound discordant.
 
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 man's musical journey.

About this title

About the Author:

HOWARD GOODALL is an Emmy, BRIT and BAFTA award-winning composer of choral music, stage musicals, film and TV scores -- among them Red Dwarf, QI and Blackadder -- as well as a distinguished broadcaster and the author of Big Bangs: The Story of Five Discoveries that Changed Musical History. In recent years he has been England's first ever National Ambassador for Singing, the Classical Brit Composer of the Year, and Classic FM's Composer-in-Residence. He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2011 New Year Honours for services 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: Chatto & Windus
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0701187522
• ISBN 13: 9780701187521
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 368