Music: A Very Short Introduction

Description

Presenting an introduction to music, this book draws on many examples ranging from Beethoven to the Spice Girls to Chinese zither music. It also prompts us to call on our personal musical experiences in order to think critically about the roles of the performer and the listener, and about music as a commodity and an experience.

Author description

Nicholas Cook is Professor of Music at Cambridge University He is the author of articles and books on a wide variety of musicological and theoretical subjects; the latest, from Oxford University Press, is The Schenker Project: Culture, Race, and Music Theory in fin-de-siecle Vienna. He was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2001.

Table of contents

Introduction; 1. Musical Values; 2. Back to Beethoven; 3. A State of Crisis?; 4. An Imaginary Object; 5. A Matter of Representation; 6. Music and the Academy; 7. Music and Gender; Conclusion; References; Index