Musical Revolutions

From the critically acclaimed author of Temperament, a narrative account of the most defining moments in musical history-classical, jazz, rock-all of which forever altered Western culture.


The invention of music notation by a skittish Italian monk in the eleventh century. The introduction of multilayered hymns in the Middle Ages. The birth of opera in Venice fighting against the church's pious restraints. Baroque, Romantic, and atonal music; bebop, cool jazz, rhythm and blues, the English invasion and the shared social consciousness born of music at Woodstock. In telling the exciting story of Western music's evolution the author explains how politics, culture and economics became wrapped up in music, giving rise to new cultural eruptions at every turn, from the early church's attempts to bind its followers by teaching them to sing in unison, to the spread of American jazz globally through the black platoons of the First World War. He investigates questions like when does noise become music, and how did discord become the primary sound of modernity. A book replete with the stories of our most renowned musical artists, including the achievements of people of color and women, whose path to success was the most difficult.