The story of music : from Babylon to the Beatles : how music has shaped civilization

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. In his dynamic tour through 40,000 years of music, from prehistoric instruments to modern-day pop, Howard Goodall leads us through the story of music as it happened, idea by idea, so that each musical innovation{u2014}harmony, notation, sung theater, the orchestra, dance music, recording{u2014}strikes us with its original force. 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{u2014}and entertain. Goodall{u2019}s beautifully clear and compelling account is both a hymn to human endeavor and a groundbreaking map of our musical journey

Why did prehistoric people start making music? What does every postwar pop song have in common? A “masterful” tour of music through the ages ( Booklist, starred review).
 
From Mozart to Motown and beyond, this “racily written, learned, and often shrewdly insightful” social history reveals music’s role in our societies as well as its power to affect us on a personal level ( The Daily Telegraph ).
 
Once a building block of communication and social ritual, today music is also a worldwide tangle of genres, industries, and identities. But how did we get from single notes to multilayered orchestration, from prehistoric instruments like bone flutes to modern-day pop? In this dynamic tour, acclaimed composer and broadcaster Howard Goodall leads us through the development of music as it happened, idea by idea. In Goodall’s telling, each innovation that we now take for granted?harmony, notation, dance music, recording?strikes us anew. And along the way, Goodall gives listeners a crash course in how music works on a technical level.
 
The story of music is the story of human ambition: the urge to invent, to connect, to rebel. Offering “a lively zip through some forty-five millennia, jumping back and forth between classical, folk, and pop, ” Howard Goodall’s beautifully accessible and entertaining ode to joy is a groundbreaking look at just how far we’ve come ( The Sunday Times, London).
 

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 Accompanies BBC2's TV series and The Story of Music in 50 Pieces on Radio 3. The author 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. The age of discovery, 40,000 BC - AD 1450 The age of penitence, 1450-1650 The age of invention, 1650-1750 The age of elegance and sentiment, 1750-1850 The age of tragedy, 1850-1890 The age of rebellion, 1890-1918 The popular age I, 1918-1945 The popular age II, 1945-2012. Discusses topics ranging from prehistoric instruments to modern-day pop to explain how respective musical innovations were inspired by original forces that reflected common human themes.