Music: A Very Short Introduction by Nicholas Cook

 

Music: A Very Short Introduction by Nicholas Cook

 

This could be useful. I thought I am in for a very informative, eye opening book. It turns out, I did not like it all that much.

First of all, I am in the process of reading a marvelous book on the history of music, which has inserts with the music mentioned: If it is Mozart the narrator is talking about, we have Eine Kleine Nacht Music, The Magic Flute – as exemplification.

With a Very Short Introduction, there is nothing of that and the scope of the book seems to be too large and anyway, not what I am looking for.

You could find it informative and great, but when I compared it with the mentioned History of Music I found it very poor, because of no real music to speak of

An effort is made to look into various kinds of music and their origin. From the very beginning, we learn about an Awards Ceremony where classical music and some rappers and other modern day musicians are invited together.

The modern day musicians win, but the point is that they converge and influence each other

 

There are some inside stories that could make for an instructive, funny at times read:

I read that Milly Vannili have been stripped of an award, when knowledge came out of the fact that they had no contribution, no “presence” in the music recordings which have won in competition.

The fact is that, with time passing and technology getting better and better- it is a point of contention: how much today’s musicians contribute to the melody and what percentage is mixing, electric instrument input, software and Photoshop??

The book refers to the now famous: << wr5iting about music is like dancing about architecture>> only here they attribute it to someone else. In a book by Tal Ben-Shahar, I have read that it is Frank Zappa who said it, in Music: A Very Short Introduction this has changed …

Regardless of whoever said it first, it seems wrong to write about or read about music without having some reference to…a song, a melody.

The best format would be an audio book which gives an example: if it claims rock was born from blues, the best proof would be to let the listener hear it.

Plus, Cook speaks about genres, like progressive rock which I couldn’t place, but would have gladly listened to a few notes.

Maybe you will like it…I didn’t.