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A Short History of Music
Sections on primitive music, ancient civilizations, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, & modern times, plus 159 pages providing models of old, hard-to-find musical examples.
- GenresMusicHistoryNonfiction
205 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1934
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
September 6, 2019
Una piccola gemma. Il volume è denso di nozioni e risulta a tratti ostico, sia per la mole di materiale trattato, sia perché buona metà del testo copre musica (dai greci fino al rinascimento) con cui anche un ascoltatore di musica classica o un musicista ha poca familiarità: di conseguenza è difficile capire nel concreto di cosa si sta parlando senza ricorrere ogni volta all'ascolto. Secondo il mio gusto personale la parte veramente interessante comincia col paragrafo relativo a Bach: inizia così una serie di tanti brevi paragrafi dedicati ai singoli, grandi, compositori (Bach e Händel; Haydn, Mozart e Beethoven; ma anche sezioni collettive contenenti Schubert e Mendelssohn). Dato che si parla poi di correnti ben più note (barocco, classicismo, romanticismo), anche se non si conoscono i dettagli specifici di tutte le opere che vengono continuamente citate, le si riesce lo stesso a contestualizzare.
Il valore aggiunto di questo saggio non sta tanto nel suo essere un riassunto compattissimo, bensì nelle considerazioni personali dell'autore che illuminano e delineano il soggetto trattato, sia esso un compositore, un'opera, o una corrente artistica. Altamente consigliato.
Il valore aggiunto di questo saggio non sta tanto nel suo essere un riassunto compattissimo, bensì nelle considerazioni personali dell'autore che illuminano e delineano il soggetto trattato, sia esso un compositore, un'opera, o una corrente artistica. Altamente consigliato.
November 25, 2023
Nice little read. What stood out to me was Einstein’s apparent insistence that music has always been intertwined with other art forms and that art begets art.
February 25, 2020
Essential
There’s a lot to be said for a good short history: it can bring out the main figures, and the main lines of development, more clearly than a detailed one. It’s hard to imagine the job being done more effectively for classical music than it is here. Firstly it’s a proper story. History should be a story, not merely comments and details: the clue’s in the name. It develops composer by composer, which I think is the right way to go about it; individual works can only really be understood as part of an oeuvre, and the influence of individuals is more significant than that of ideas. Einstein admires all the people you would want him to admire, not just because you’re supposed to but because they’re the best; he doesn’t disparage Mozart because he’s not Beethoven, or Handel because he’s not Bach; and unlike some books on music, his deep love of all their work is unmistakeable (he’s not one of those historians who mistake a lack of engagement with their subject for objectivity).
He was German, and the book is from a German perspective; he always refers to his own country even when there’s nothing much to say about it, and he says more about Germany’s composers than anybody else’s. But I think any music history would have to do that; and he does justice to France and Italy, the other main centres of Western music, and also to England which (as not many people realise) first developed it. Maybe the Russians don’t get enough of a look-in; and sorry folks, but – in spite of this being an ‘American edition’ – America hardly gets a mention. And nor should it.
Einstein sees the disintegration into subjectivity and atonalism which was far gone even in his time; possibly he doesn’t recognise that its origins go back even as far as Beethoven. It’s a serious reflection on classical music that, though this book was first published in 1936, all the people you would want someone to learn about when approaching classical music for the first time are here. Who has come along since then, that will still be known and revered in two hundred years as Mozart and Beethoven are now – or even in a hundred? Music has become detached from its public. Of course it has never been popular enough to pay its own way, has always been dependent on rich patrons; but now the only alternatives seem to be film music, overly-populist and usually of little intrinsic value, or composers – funded by Arts bodies – indulging their private technical schemas which have no appeal to the ear and so cannot spread or last. The only hope the author sees is for a renewed encounter with tradition, which I suppose means a return to basics. Indeed this is the only possible way out of the cul-de-sac into which music has wandered, but I don’t see any sign of it happening.
A couple of caveats: Einstein is clear in his introduction that the book isn’t for those who know nothing about music, because it could mean nothing to them. Despite what is often said by those who find it too much like hard work, it is possible to write usefully, or read rewardingly, about music, but you have to do a lot of listening first so that you can recognise what the writing is about. And the book is shorter even than it appears, because there are no fewer than 150 pages of musical examples. This, nowadays, is unnecessary bulk; any new edition should just refer us to YouTube.
There’s a lot to be said for a good short history: it can bring out the main figures, and the main lines of development, more clearly than a detailed one. It’s hard to imagine the job being done more effectively for classical music than it is here. Firstly it’s a proper story. History should be a story, not merely comments and details: the clue’s in the name. It develops composer by composer, which I think is the right way to go about it; individual works can only really be understood as part of an oeuvre, and the influence of individuals is more significant than that of ideas. Einstein admires all the people you would want him to admire, not just because you’re supposed to but because they’re the best; he doesn’t disparage Mozart because he’s not Beethoven, or Handel because he’s not Bach; and unlike some books on music, his deep love of all their work is unmistakeable (he’s not one of those historians who mistake a lack of engagement with their subject for objectivity).
He was German, and the book is from a German perspective; he always refers to his own country even when there’s nothing much to say about it, and he says more about Germany’s composers than anybody else’s. But I think any music history would have to do that; and he does justice to France and Italy, the other main centres of Western music, and also to England which (as not many people realise) first developed it. Maybe the Russians don’t get enough of a look-in; and sorry folks, but – in spite of this being an ‘American edition’ – America hardly gets a mention. And nor should it.
Einstein sees the disintegration into subjectivity and atonalism which was far gone even in his time; possibly he doesn’t recognise that its origins go back even as far as Beethoven. It’s a serious reflection on classical music that, though this book was first published in 1936, all the people you would want someone to learn about when approaching classical music for the first time are here. Who has come along since then, that will still be known and revered in two hundred years as Mozart and Beethoven are now – or even in a hundred? Music has become detached from its public. Of course it has never been popular enough to pay its own way, has always been dependent on rich patrons; but now the only alternatives seem to be film music, overly-populist and usually of little intrinsic value, or composers – funded by Arts bodies – indulging their private technical schemas which have no appeal to the ear and so cannot spread or last. The only hope the author sees is for a renewed encounter with tradition, which I suppose means a return to basics. Indeed this is the only possible way out of the cul-de-sac into which music has wandered, but I don’t see any sign of it happening.
A couple of caveats: Einstein is clear in his introduction that the book isn’t for those who know nothing about music, because it could mean nothing to them. Despite what is often said by those who find it too much like hard work, it is possible to write usefully, or read rewardingly, about music, but you have to do a lot of listening first so that you can recognise what the writing is about. And the book is shorter even than it appears, because there are no fewer than 150 pages of musical examples. This, nowadays, is unnecessary bulk; any new edition should just refer us to YouTube.
September 24, 2014
I must confess, I bought this years ago under the mistaken assumption that it was authored by Albert Einstein. It sat on my shelf for a couple of decades, and now I have read it. My copy has neatly inscribed in it "Sow not your seed in anger, nor in hatred nor in fears, for he who sows in anger shall for certain reap in tears." I find this kind of creepy and I think it is from novelist Fred Mustard Stewart.
any hoot, for this author the history of music is the history of Western classical music and is written for the lay musicologist that can glibly move from monody to the Phrygian mode, as the author basically introduces. In the gamut from ancient civilizations to Bartok, I find the mini biographies most interesting. It is also at this point the author steps out from behind the podium to wax poetic to praise genius:
"...only those who know certain major movements of [Mozart's], such as the finale of the A major Quartet or the wild, disconsolate mirth of the Quintet in D, written a year before his death, and have rightly understood the daemonic fatalism with which they glow, will see the true significance of the clarity and joyousness Mozart could set off on such a dark background. For them the magical, athematic melodies, which
are a characteristic of the later Mozartian rondo form and seem to bid the wheel of inexorable destiny
stand still for once, will become a joy that will never fade."
"There comes a point in the Mass, in the Agnus Dei, at which the burden of the message devolves upon pure instrumental music; while in the symphony, out of the orchestral complex, human voices emerge at last, as
the final and most explicit utterance of the composer's purpose..."
"The successors of Verdian opera are little works, of no significance in the historic tale, for their composers were little men." (Ouch!)
Full Text
any hoot, for this author the history of music is the history of Western classical music and is written for the lay musicologist that can glibly move from monody to the Phrygian mode, as the author basically introduces. In the gamut from ancient civilizations to Bartok, I find the mini biographies most interesting. It is also at this point the author steps out from behind the podium to wax poetic to praise genius:
"...only those who know certain major movements of [Mozart's], such as the finale of the A major Quartet or the wild, disconsolate mirth of the Quintet in D, written a year before his death, and have rightly understood the daemonic fatalism with which they glow, will see the true significance of the clarity and joyousness Mozart could set off on such a dark background. For them the magical, athematic melodies, which
are a characteristic of the later Mozartian rondo form and seem to bid the wheel of inexorable destiny
stand still for once, will become a joy that will never fade."
"There comes a point in the Mass, in the Agnus Dei, at which the burden of the message devolves upon pure instrumental music; while in the symphony, out of the orchestral complex, human voices emerge at last, as
the final and most explicit utterance of the composer's purpose..."
"The successors of Verdian opera are little works, of no significance in the historic tale, for their composers were little men." (Ouch!)
Full Text
February 27, 2019
Einstein did tell us it would be incomprehensible to those without some prior introduction to the terminology and history of music. Notwithstanding, I tore through it, retaining nothing, wondering about everything.
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November 21, 2009None
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews