Music

A captivating read and a nice counterpart to the standard music history textbooks. Gioia presents a compelling theory about the development of musical styles and argues his case persuasively with regard to each era and style that he covers. Much of the evidence presented is truly illuminating. Who knew that the Lydians and Phrygians were actually ethnic groups enslaved by the Greeks, for instance? I bristled a bit at Gioia's insistence upon the universality of music, but he's referring more to its social functions and patterns of development, not the particulars of any given theoretical framework such as 12TET.The book is not without notable flaws. The testimonial from Fred Hersch at the very beginning boldly asserts that Gioia argues the universality of music from all cultures, which leads one to believe that the book will present a balanced, global perspective. To Gioia's credit, Music is significantly less Eurocentric than many other music history books, especially in the beginning. However, as the book goes on, it increasingly falls into the groove of the conventional European music history timeline. Gioia gives many forms of African-American and/or popular music their due (finally), but the book is only half-committed to the idea of a global perspective. A few references to Rumi or the Shijing ultimately amount to a shallow multiculturalism. The lack of substance with which Gioia discusses Latin American music is striking in comparison to his discussion of certain other topics: references to Sid Vicious abound, yet the words “Cuba” or “Mexico” do not even appear once. A couple of distracting typographical errors made their way into the first edition, and whether they will be corrected in future editions remains to be seen.Nevertheless, I enjoyed Music for what it really is: an alternative Western music history text, [b:A People's History of the United States 2767 A People's History of the United States Howard Zinn https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1494279423l/2767.SY75.jpg 2185591] for music, if you will. It's certainly a hell of a lot more exciting than my undergrad textbook. Because of the vastness of the topic and the relative brevity of the work, many seminal figures within even the Western classical tradition don't receive their proper due, and I'd recommend reading this book as a supplement to more traditional music history material.