Book description
*** 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.
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.
