Five Straight Lines. The Complete History of Music (Europe Pocket)

Baroque operas or pop hits, alien melodies of the theremin or the voice of an ancient violin: music is one of the few things that truly unite us. After all, hearing rhythm, extracting sounds from handmade instruments, and connecting them into harmonious melodies has been a skill humans learned long before mastering writing. How did the long-lost music of antiquity sound? Why did religious chants become the main form of communication with God? How did composers and performers of the past make a living — and what did they themselves enjoy listening to? This book tells the centuries-old history of the Western musical order — revolutionary discoveries, scientific and technological progress, the emergence of new genres, and of course, the birth of geniuses: Mozart and McCartney, Schubert and Schönberg. “One of the peasant composers Giuseppe Verdi was shocked that his master could make money by drawing little hooks on five straight lines. These lines were not always straight, and there were not always five of them. But they caught on their inky hooks some of the most amusing, profound, unsettling, touching, and truthful descriptions of human nature. This is their story” (Andrew Gant).