The Story of Music (Audible Audio Edition) Howard Goodall Random House Audiobooks Books
Download As PDF : The Story of Music (Audible Audio Edition) Howard Goodall Random House Audiobooks Books
Accompanies BBC2's major new TV series and The Story of Music in 50 Pieces on Radio 3
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.
The Story of Music (Audible Audio Edition) Howard Goodall Random House Audiobooks Books
Good brief history of western music. A comparative mention of developments of musical instruments, notable inventions, some cultural impacts and developments in the eastern part of the world could have enhanced the quality of this book and would fit the title more appropriately. Sorry to say that the description of such developments in the west was also not balanced.Product details
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The Story of Music (Audible Audio Edition) Howard Goodall Random House Audiobooks Books Reviews
I bought this based on an interview I saw with the author on the Daily show I believe. Mr. Goodall made the book sound very interesting and as the title states, connected the dots so to speak between a wide and vast subject. but he lied to me. This book is a history of "classical" music. He only discusses contemporary musical genres such as Rock or Jazz as they pertain in example to prove a point about the broader history of his main musical focus European "classical" music. there was virtually no discussion of African, Aboriginal Australian or pre colonial American music, and only brief snippets of Asian music forms. The last chapter is really the only place the reader gets contemporary insight/info. It's not an easy read if you are looking for anything other than educational material, but Mr. Goodall does write passionately about his subject matter and I did learn from him. I think the book needs a more accurate title, but if you want to know about the topic of "classical" music, this is an excellent resource.
Let it first be clear that one of Mr Goodall's clipped toenails has more musical talent than all of me at my peak. Which makes me wonder how I can possibly pass judgment on anything he does.
The second point is that this book is a companion to his 6-hour BBC series “The Story of Music.” I thought the series even better than the book, especially the episodes from 1650 forward, but at this writing, I can't find the series for sale anywhere, not at , not even at BBC.com. It's on YouTube in its entirety, but unlikely that will last forever.
In this book, Goodall combines scholarship with his musical gifts, and his thoughts are often delightfully expressed. The book was enjoyable and educational from first page to last.
But if I could sit down with the author, I’d ask him "Why didn’t you spend more time telling us ..."
-- How rock merged with folk to become so integral to the 1960s. (Civil rights, Vietnam War, women’s liberation, drugs, rebellion against parental controls ….)
-- Why bebop, which is for me unlistenable, didn't sink into instant obscurity.
-- Why rap/hiphop, again for me unlistenable, has become so inexplicably popular.
-- Why Aram Khatchaturian isn’t mentioned once, with the Spartacus and Gayane ballets having some of the most luscious melodies and orchestrations in the entire history of music.
-- Why or how western classical music has spread throughout the world. (I'll never forget a concert by an excellent Inchon Symphony Orchestra in Seoul in 1989, every musician Korean, and the performance exceptional.)
I can’t argue with Mr Goodall’s giving Stevie Wonder so many pages and so much praise, for Goodall’s the expert musician and I’m certainly not. I’ll just say SW isn't represented by a single CD in my large collection, and I can think of many other musicians more influential, certainly more enjoyable.
Likewise with Mr Goodall’s respect for Cuban music that I don't understand, even knowing Goodall and Ry Cooder love it so.
And his granting Steve Reich so much importance, which I’d give to his contemporary, the more accessible Philip Glass.
Enough negatives. What I did like about the book is how it helped me understand music evolving over time, and how some musicians fit their times and then influenced others. I’ve long loved Vivaldi, Mozart, Beethoven; I now better understand them and their place in music.
I also enjoyed Goodall's observations, as for example, "Vast swathes of the music written in the sixty or so years after 1750 slavishly hung on these three master chords -- the same three, as it happens, that dominate rock and roll and its various twentieth-century offspring."
Another "Musicians and poets [of the Romantic period] saw the countryside as a roughly hewn wilderness, supplying countless images to convey the swirling emotional torrents of the yearning lover. Of course, none of them actually had to WORK the land. You observed peasants from the comfortable distance of your artistic nook but you wouldn't want to be one. They were more like present-day privileged Western students trawling the developing world and writing blogs about how the world's poorest people enabled them to broaden their horizons."
Or "Listening to Faure after Brahms, Liszt, Wagner or Tchaikovsky is comparable to someone spring-cleaning and redecorating a teenage boy's bedroom. Gone are the posters of death, psychological torment, superheroes and tragedy. The augmented piles of clothes have been put away, and the windows have been opened to dispel the diminished air."
Or "...the RITE OF SPRING is the twentieth century's most thrillingly explosive, iconic piece of orchestral music; it is still astonishing a hundred years later. It is a rebellion in sound. While Mahler had layered melody on melody, tangled together like a twisted knot [aha, now I see better why I don't enjoy him], and Debussy had manipulated blocks of adjacent sound melting into each other, Stravinsky went one step further, superimposing simultaneous rhythms on top of each other."
We may not always agree with Mr Goodall's musical opinions, but no denying the pleasure reading them.
I hesitate to post this “review” and display my ignorance for all to see. I offer it to those, amateurs like me, hoping to gain a broader view of music. You will not go wrong reading this book. I just wish the author had talked with me as he was writing it. (Ha!)
I learned so much from this book and have a newfound understanding and respect for anyone who dedicates their career to music. Having said that, a more apt title for this book, however, might be "the story of WESTERN music" because that was most of the book covered. Definitely worthwhile, though!
A thought-provoking, insightful overview of the pageant of classical music's unfolding. One of the most engaging accounts I've read in recent times.
Read it from cover to cover, now re-reading it and researching the composers, eras and pieces he sites in the book. A wonderful presentation of multiple eras of music-
Tough read unbelievably detailed —-to the point of pain. Brilliant in many parts. Almost totally ignores the swing era and modern “straight ahead” jazz.
There is so much I did not know about Music history. Check out his Spotify playlist to get samples of the music he talks about.
Good brief history of western music. A comparative mention of developments of musical instruments, notable inventions, some cultural impacts and developments in the eastern part of the world could have enhanced the quality of this book and would fit the title more appropriately. Sorry to say that the description of such developments in the west was also not balanced.
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