Big Bangs

Fascinating and so well done. Leonard Bernstein, move over. This man is good!

Yes indeed, Howard Goodall's tome is a wonderful look at (arguably) the five most important 'inventions' that made music what it is today. Well written and easy to comprehend, the book demystifies some of the more detailed workings of music, and gives credit to those who helped to make it happen. Highly useful in the music classroom, it is just as easily a bedside book, where one could be fascinated by the historical figures and events discussed. Definitely a relevant and necessary work!

Howard Goodall (UK composer and broadcaster) based this book on his fascinating TV series of the same name (Howard Goodall's Big Bangs). He proposes that the 5 critical turning points in Western musical history were:1. Invention of notation (music transferable without memorisation, complicated works became possible)2. Opera (sung drama)3. Equal temperament (the modern tuning system which corrects - on average - the Harmonic Series found by Pythagoras)4. The piano ("the amazing loud and soft machine")5. Recorded soundHe goes into quite a bit of detail about what made these discoveries special and what they meant to music and society at the time. It's an entertaining way to learn something about musical history, even if you don't know much about music.