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good book about the history of music... theory


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I just posted a thread about the flattened 7th and I'm now asking myself so many questions :

who first decided to flatten the 7th in Rock ?

what was the first song with this ?

is it something we also see in classical ?

 

is there a definite referential book that would answer all these questions and talk about modal music before the age of tonal, the discovery of the melodic and harmonic minor scales, back to modal with Miles Davis... ?

 

and other things such as why Wagner si so important (suspended chords and no resolution ?) ? what about Debussy, Schoenberg and so many others... ? what's the difference between Baroque, Classical, Romantic... ? why the well-tempered clavier ? etc etc...

 

I have several books about the history of music, about composers but none talks deeply about theory. so I'd love to find a book like that. not a book of music theory, not a regular book about the history of music (usually meant for non-musicians), but a book that talks about the history of music in the western world (from the greeks to blues, jazz and rock, including the different ages of serious/art music, dodecaphonism, serialism...) and puts emphasis on the evolution of melody and harmony (that's what music theory is about, right ?).

 

any idea anyone ?:)

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is there a definite referential book that would answer all these questions and talk about modal music before the age of tonal, the discovery of the melodic and harmonic minor scales, back to modal with Miles Davis... ?


and other things such as why Wagner si so important (suspended chords and no resolution ?) ? what about Debussy, Schoenberg and so many others... ? what's the difference between Baroque, Classical, Romantic... ? why the well-tempered clavier ? etc etc...


I have several books about the history of music, about composers but none talks deeply about theory. so I'd love to find a book like that. not a book of music theory, not a regular book about the history of music (usually meant for non-musicians), but a book that talks about the history of music in the western world (from the greeks to blues, jazz and rock, including the different ages of serious/art music, dodecaphonism, serialism...) and puts emphasis on the evolution of melody and harmony (that's what music theory is about, right ?).


any idea anyone ?
:)

I doubt you'll find one book that answers all those questions! (I'd like to read it if it exists.)

 

 

All I can do is recommend a few books I've read that might answer some of those questions (and if they don't, they're great books anyway, that answer a lot of others):

 

 

Howard Goodall "Big Bangs"

Christopher Small "Music of the Common Tongue"

Philip Ball "The Music Instinct"

Daniel Levitin "This is Your Brain on Music"

Greg Milner "Perfecting Sound Forever" (history of recorded music)

John Powell "How Music Works"

 

Some of your other questions (differences between Baroque, Classical, Romantic, etc) should be answered well enough by wiki. There's a lot of good stuff free online, which should at least help you narrow down your search for something more authoritative.

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thanks, I'll take a look at all this on Amazon and read reviews.
I already watched several documentaries by Howard Goodall and they were all pretty good. of course, they're only video documentaries so everything there goes too fast and is super simplified, that's why I'm looking for books now.

one problem I have is sometimes to understand why a specific musician is considered innovative or even groundbreaking. when I'm listening to Jazz or Rock, it's pretty obvious (probably because I know these music genres way better than Classical). it's also quite obvious for classical composers going back so far in time as Stravinsky or Bartok and I even understand a little bit why Wagner has been so innovative (because of so many film sountracks obviously very inspired by him, because of the Leitmotiv and the Gesamtkunstwerk...) but it's much harder for Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven...
maybe because their music sounds so natural today that it's hard to hear why it was sounding so different from the pack by the time they composed it.

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I read an old hardback called "The Enjoyment of Music" which covered a lot of the History of the classical composers. It was written for the layman, but contained excerpts and such. That gave me a good overview of the older Western tradition.

 

Keith Waters book on Miles's 2nd quintet is great for modal and beyond, even if you are not a big fan on the 2nd quintet recordings. It's fantastic. The Studio Recordings of the Miles Davis Quintet, 1965-68" He also wrote a good jazz history book "Jazz: The First 100 Years" with ample transcriptions and audio clips.

 

"Music the Brain and Ecstasy" by Robert Jourdian is great for understanding the human biological hardware behind music and more. It is more substantial than Daniel Levitin's "This is Your Brain on Music", though that is also a really fun read.

 

There is no single book with the answers. I too, would like to know more, but I fear many of the little details have fallen into the cracks... Just read everything you can and compile it in your mind.

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Another 3 I left off the above list:

 

James Naughtie: The Making of Music - very readable history of European music, from medieval times to the 20th century, by an enthusiast/critic rather than an academic expert

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Making-Music-Journey-Notes/dp/0719562546/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332258444&sr=1-2

Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise - history of 20th century music: post-classical "art" music as well as jazz, pop and rock.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Rest-Noise-Listening-Twentieth/dp/1841154768/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332258408&sr=1-1

Elijah Ward: Escaping the Delta - great history of blues, demolishing a few myths (subtitled "Robert Johnson", but about a lot more than him.)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Escaping-Delta-Robert-Johnson-Invention/dp/0060524278/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1332258044&sr=1-1

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I have "Musicophilia" on my Kindle, but I haven't read it yet. It has good to great reviews in Amazon:


I agree with them - great book. Psychology rather than history, from the perspective of a psychiatrist; but lots of great stories and insights concerning issues of "musicality", "tone-deafness", synaesthesia, etc.

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