Music: A Very Short Introduction

Description

Nicholas Cook explores the nature of music, how we think about it, its social and cultural dimensions, and its history. He discusses the many musical traditions across the world and the interactions between them. He also considers performance, how composers create music, and the position of music in today's globalized society.

• Considers how we think about music, and the basic principles and processes that apply across all musical cultures
• Presents the Western classical tradition within the context of many other musical cultures across the world
• Explores the history of music
• Considers the nature of performance and how composers create music
• Part of the Very Short Introductions series - over ten million copies sold worldwide

New to this edition

• Engages with fundamental changes in the creation, production, and monetisation of music resulting from digital technology
• Considers the role of music in our increasingly globalized world
• Thoroughly restructured and rewritten throughout
• Incorporates discussion of gender issues in music throughout the book
• Offers a new emphasis on music as performance

About the Author(s)

Nicholas Cook, 1684 Professor of Music Emeritus, University of Cambridge

Nicholas Cook is Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Cambridge. He has published widely across many fields of music studies; his book The Schenker Project: Culture, Race, and Music Theory in Fin-de-siècle Vienna (2007) won the SMT's Wallace Berry Award, while his most recent book is Music as Creative Practice (2018). Director of the AHRC Research Centre for the History and Analysis of Music (CHARM) from 2004-9, he was elected Fellow of the British Academy in 2001 and holds a Doctorate of Humane Letters from the University of Chicago.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1:Music in the moment
2:Thinking in music
3:The presence of the past
4:Music 2.0
5:Music in a global world
References
Further Reading
Index