If It Ain't Baroque: More Music History as It Ought to Be Taught

I was unfamiliar with Barber's works and from the title expected the book to accompany my Mus 312 class on Baroque Music History and focus completely on that. (whoops) The book's real goal is a comical approach to music history in its entirety. None the less, I still read the book and enjoyed it immensely. I wish I would have had this (and now Barber's other books which I also highly recommend) for my Mus 100 class (Introduction to Music Masterpieces). Barber's books take the information a textbook offer in an easygoing and funny way. Had my professor assigned all of Barber's Music History books together instead of a normal textbook for an Introduction to Music History, I would have left with the same knowledge a textbook offers but having enjoyed many more laughs along the way. Informative yet funny, how can you lose with that?

David Barber wrote Bach beethoven and the Boys some years ago. Since then he has added When the Fat Lady sings and even more recently If it Ain't BAroque.While the first book metioned deals with Music History as a history of personae, here composers in the newer book he covers the same territory from another angle of view. This Music history is compiled from Genres. It was hardly evitable to tell some tales he had told again and all in all it is funny and instructive. Only for readers knowing the former two books some jokes were rubbed out already.