The Shortest History of Music

'Wonderful… as erudite as it is enjoyable; as riveting as it is revelatory'

Clemency Burton-Hill

'Although music is as intrinsic to human life as the air we breathe, we must never fall for the line that it is a universal language. Music is neither universal, nor a language.'

From an infant's first experimental sounds to the voice of Elvis – via Hildegard of Bingen, Beethoven and bebop – The Shortest History of Music sets out to understand what exactly music is, and why humans are irresistibly drawn to making it.

Ranging across millennia, Andrew Ford explores music's great themes: writing it down and recording it; paying for it and making it modern. With brilliant insight, he traces the story of the symphony and the opera, blues and jazz; the oral traditions of folk singers and chain gangs; and the lives of the greats – Bach and Mozart, Clara Schumann and Schoenberg, Charlie Parker and Nina Simone.

From lullabies to national anthems, songlines to streaming, this is a sparkling account of what music has meant at different times and in different places.