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No art form is as widely discussed—or as readily available—as music. With the click of just a few buttons, modern humans can decide what they think of the brand-new Beyoncé just as quickly as they can form opinions on Brahms or the Beatles or Bob Dylan. But things weren’t always this way. In this brisk, breakneck history, award-winning musician and broadcaster Andrew Ford dives into the constant evolutions and reinventions that have led to the popularity and accessibility of modern music—from early oral songs, to the invention of a notation, to the first recording technology and record companies—all paving the way for the multibillion-dollar industry we know today. In fewer than 300 pages, Ford explores:

• Why playing history’s earliest example of notated music—clay tablets from 1400 BCE Syria—doesn’t produce a consistent sound
• How colonization and the slave trade led to one region in West Africa having an unparalleled influence on world music
• How clerical and royal support allowed early composers to invent the symphony
• Why the BBC hired a bird impersonator to sound like a nightingale in an early live broadcast of cello music
• What leads humans to make music in the first place—and why music plays such a massive role in our culture.

With photographs, illustrations, and notational diagrams throughout, The Shortest History of Music takes us on a lively, authoritative tour through several thousands of years of music history, tracing our relationship with this essential art and allowing us to freshly appreciate and understand music today.