The Story of Music: From Babylon to the Beatles; How Music Has Shaped Civilization Audiobook

Quotes

• “What really makes the book sing is the author’s argumentative style, giving it narrative momentum from paragraph to paragraph. This really is the ‘story’ of music, not just a chronological laundry list of important people and events.”

  — Boston Globe

• “A lively zip through some forty-five millennia, jumping back and forth between classical, folk, and pop.”

  — Sunday Times (London)

• “Now comes Howard Goodall and everyone’s prayers are answered. He starts right at the beginning, with 25,000-year-old bone flutes. A racily written, learned, and often shrewdly insightful book.”

  — Daily Telegraph (London)

• “An accessible guide to roughly 42,000 years of music in just over 300 pages that manages neither to sacrifice precise detail nor pugnacious opinion. This sweep is the book’s key strength, even if it means that some composers receive relatively short shrift. But it is in keeping with the title: this is about music, not a roll call of the greats, and Goodall is unfailingly acute on how technology drives musical innovation…The Story of Music is a clever, engaging read.”

  — Scotsman (Edinburgh)

• “Most of us take music for granted, and yet, as explained in this insightful exploration on the origins of music, someone had to come up with harmony and rhythm; someone had to create musical notation…A masterful and illuminating whirlwind tour through thousands of years of musical history.”

  — Booklist (starred review)

• “British composer Goodall…focus[es] on the Western classical tradition and popular music…The musical analysis…[is] well informed…For music listeners interested in Western classical and popular music.”

  — Library Journal

• “It’s a big story that lives up to its subtitle as it spans centuries…Narrator Simon Vance presents the facts and occasional opinions with all the author’s diligence. Like a lecture from a favorite professor, though, the book always entertains and engages…Goodall’s writing is thoughtful, considering such topics as the European influence on the blues and the stresses on composers who worked under Nazi or Soviet regimes. There’s much for the music scholar and casual listeners.”

  — AudioFile