Gateways to Understanding Music

by Timothy Rice, Dave Wilson

Gateways to Understanding Music, Second Edition, explores music in all the categories that constitute contemporary musical European classical, popular, jazz, and world music. Covering the oldest forms of human music making to the newest, this chronology presents music from a global rather than a Eurocentric perspective. Each of 60 "gateways" addresses a particular genre, style, or period of music. Every gateway opens with a guided listening example that unlocks a world of music through careful study of its structural elements. How did the piece come to be composed or performed? How did it respond to the social and cultural issues at the time, and what does that music mean today? Students learn to listen to, explain, understand, and ultimately value all the music they encounter in their world.

New to this edition is a broader selection of musical examples that reflect the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion advocated by North American universities. Eight gateways have been replaced. A timeline of gateways helps students see the book’s historical narrative at a glance.

Features

Values orientation - Diverse, equitable, and inclusive approach to music history. All genres of music - Presents all music as worthy of study, including classical, world, popular, and jazz. Global scope within a historical narrative - Begins with small-scale forager societies up to the present, with a shifting focus from global to European to American influences. Recurring themes - Aesthetics, emotion, social life, links to culture, politics, economics, and technology. Modular framework - 60 gateways - each with a listening example - allow flexibility to organize chronologically or by the seven themes. Consistent structure - With the same step-by-step format, students learn through repeated practice how to listen and how to think about music. Anthology of scores - For those courses that use the textbook in a music history sequence. Gateways to Understanding Music continues to employ a website to host the audio examples and instructor’s resources.

Genres: Music

Kindle Edition

Published November 14, 2022

About the author

Timothy Rice is a professor of ethnomusicology at the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music. He specializes in the traditional music of the Balkans, especially from the Slavic-speaking nations of Bulgaria and Macedonia. He has served the field of ethnomusicology in a variety of ways, including editing the journal Ethnomusicology (1981-1984), acting as President of the Society for Ethnomusicology (2003-2005), and serving on the Executive Board of the International Council for Traditional Music (2007-20013). He served as Associate Dean of the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture from 2005 to 2008. He served as director of The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music from 2007 to 2013.