The Shortest History of Music

'Wonderful... as erudite as it is enjoyable; as riveting as it is revelatory'Clemency Burton-Hill'Although music is as intrinsic to human life as the air we breathe, we must never fall for the line that it is a universal language. Music is neither universal, nor a language.'From an infant's first experimental sounds to the voice of Elvis – via Hildegard of Bingen, Beethoven and bebop – The Shortest History of Music sets out to understand what exactly music is, and why humans are irresistibly drawn to making it.Ranging across millennia, Andrew Ford explores music's great themes: writing it down and recording it; paying for it and making it modern. With brilliant insight, he traces the story of the symphony and the opera, blues and jazz; the oral traditions of folk singers and chain gangs; and the lives of the greats – Bach and Mozart, Clara Schumann and Schoenberg, Charlie Parker and Nina Simone.From lullabies to national anthems, songlines to streaming, this is a sparkling account of what music has meant at different times and in different places.