MUSIC The Shortest History of Music Andrew Ford Black Inc., $27.99 Music is the art of agony, wrote the eccentric Australian composer Percy Grainger.
“Music is after all derived from screaming; it is not derived from laughing.” Andrew Ford, who quotes Grainger in his entertaining and informative The Shortest History of Music , prefers the idea that music begins with the gurgles of a baby, “protomusic”, and the lullabies that croon a child to sleep. Music in this form, Ford speculates, might even predate speech.
Chairman Mao loathed the music of Claude Debussy (above) and had the conductor of the Shanghai Symphony shot. Credit: Alamy Stock Photo In some form music is happening around us all the time, in every culture and place and, although it has long been used formally for ritual, religion and state occasions, it is mainly small-scale and domestic. The book’s delight is its stream of asides and anecdotes.
What music is not, though this is often claimed, is a universal language. It is neither universal nor a language, Ford insists. It does not speak equally to all people, as ‘universal’ implies, it is generally culturally appreciated and, while it can generate emotion, it communicates nothing.
Ford wants to set out the breadth and importance of music in human experience but admits that historically, with nearly all the music in the world other than Western art music, we know little and have access to virtually none of it. Given this sizeable impediment, his spec.