Cultural history with some attitude and considerable rhythm and melody.
A celebrated British composer and broadcaster surveys the evolution and cultural significance of music, from prehistoric caves to Coldplay.
There’s been nothing too new under the sun about the fundamentals of music since about 1450, begins Goodall (Big Bangs: The Story of Five Discoveries That Changed Musical History, 2001). Then he whisks us back to caves and prehistoric instruments (flutes, whistles) and begins his swift journey through the centuries. He recognizes that the subject requires much inference until the ages of notation, print and recording, but he plunges bravely into the lake of darkness and manages some illumination. We pause to look at “the magic of musical pitch,” the concepts of octaves and harmony, the invention of the musical staff (A.D. 1000), and the evolution of rhythm, chords, chord progressions, musical keys and tempo. Goodall also explores the invention and modification of significant instruments—the violin, organ, piano—and the creation of various musical forms—songs, operas, oratorios, sonatas (a subject that bores him, he writes). The big names retain their size in his account. Bach, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin and myriads of others will surprise none by their presence and prominence. The author is also alert to the significance of popular music and has some passages about Broadway and the movies, blues, rock ’n’ roll (whose origin he traces to Benny Goodman!), jazz and hip-hop. Goodall also discusses the effects of political systems on music and musicians—from pre-revolutionary France to Nazi Germany to the Soviet Union and others. The author continually reminds us of technological advances—print, recordings, radio, films—that enabled music to spread as never before. He does not like conventional terms for musical periods (e.g., Classical, Neo-Classical) but finds himself forced to use them occasionally.
Cultural history with some attitude and considerable rhythm and melody.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-60598-538-1
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Nov. 9, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2013
Elegant essays marked by surprising shifts and unexpected connections.
Largely autobiographical meditations and wanderings through landscapes external and internal.
National Book Critics Circle Award–winner Solnit (River of Shadows: Edward Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, 2003, etc.) roams through a large territory here. The book cries out for an explanatory subtitle: “field guide” shouldn’t be taken as a literal description of these eclectic memories, keen observations and provocative musings. Four of Solnit’s essays have the same title, “The Blue of Distance,” but the first segues from the blue in Renaissance paintings to a turquoise blouse the author wore as a child, then to the blue of distance seen on a walk across the drought-shrunken Great Salt Lake. The second presents Cabeza de Vaca, a Spanish explorer who wandered for years in the Americas, and then several white children taken captive by Indians; their stories demonstrate that a person can cease to be lost not only by returning, but also by turning into someone else. The third blue essay explores the world of country and western music, full of tales of loss and longing. The fourth introduces the eccentric artist Yves Klein, who patented the formula for his special electric blue paint and claimed to be launching a new Blue Age. How does it all fit in? Don’t ask, just enjoy, for Solnit is a captivating writer. Woven in and out of these four pieces and the five others that alternate with them are Solnit’s immigrant ancestors, lost friends, former lovers, favorite old movies, her own dreams, the house she grew up in, harsh deserts, animals on the edge of extinction and abandoned buildings. All become material for the author’s explorations of loss, losing and being lost.
Elegant essays marked by surprising shifts and unexpected connections.Pub Date: July 11, 2005
ISBN: 0-670-03421-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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