The History of Classical Music

By: Richard Fawkes

Narrated by: Robert Powell

Length: 5 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

From Gregorian Chant to Henryk Gorecki, the first living classical composer to get into the pop album charts, here is the fascinating story of over a thousand years of Western classical music and the composers who have sought to express in music the deepest of human feelings and emotions. Polyphony, sonata form, serial music - many musical expressions are also explained - with the text illustrated by performances from some of the most highly praised recordings of recent years.

Download the accompanying reference guide.

©1997 NAXOS AudioBooks Ltd. (P)1997 NAXOS AudioBooks Ltd.

The History of Classical Music

It wesvery good except the clips were a little short and I did not learn a great deal. As an introduction to music appreciation, it is a good start.

Exceptional

The perfect book for the classical music lover. A combination of history, insight and music bits to accompany any great fan of the classics.

Great Introduction with well-placed sample clips

Would you consider the audio edition of The History of Classical Music to be better than the print version?

Yes, because the audio edition has the distinct advantage of inline samples from important pieces being discussed, which makes it interactive in a way that a print version (even one that includes a CD with samples) cannot be.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Since this was a historical survey, it's hard to choose a favorite character! But I did enjoy learning about the Red Priest, Giuseppe Verdi.

What does Robert Powell bring to the story that you wouldn’t experience if you just read the book?

Experience pronouncing the sometimes difficult foreign words.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

No, I enjoyed the episodic nature, though I found some of the chapters to be rather long (upwards of an hour), which made it difficult to put down when I needed to do something else!

Any additional comments?

I'd make sure to download this in High Quality, since it includes orchestral samples that would be less satisfying in a more muffled/lower-quality setting.

Refrescante revisión sobre la evolución musical

Aparte de su claridad en la locución es de destacar lo adecuado de sus ilustraciones musicales.

pretty good

a decent overview of classical music history. The accompanying music interweaved helps the listener understand the concepts without having to go and find the same musical pieces on their own. I found that the amount of information conveyed was pretty minimal for each composer and so I didn't get as good a picture about them as I would have liked.

beautiful music

This is probably best suited for musicians and those more familiar with musical terminology. Nonetheless I learned some things that I didn't know before, and the music was beautiful.

Excellent

Would you listen to The History of Classical Music again? Why?

This book is on high rotation. I'm an insomniac and I enjoy this book in the early hours as it is a nice soft listen. The content is solid and the examples are excellent.

Any additional comments?

My only wish was that this book was longer and had more examples. A great listen though!

Informative, but the PDF guide is useless

Informative and you are likely to learn a lot if you aren't formally trained in music history. Might go a little over your head if you don't know some very basic music terminology like "3/4 time" but the most technical words you'll come across are words like "polyphany" which you can easily look up.

There are a lot of excepts of recordings, and this is good, but the problem is that you have no way of knowing what they are. There is an accompanying guidebook that lists all the recordings, but I cannot for the life of me figure out why NAXOS did not list in the guidebook the minute marks at which you could hear these recordings. What is stranger still is that the PDF *does* list a time for each recording that looks like a minute and second mark, but I'm unable to determine what these marks signify. They aren't the length of the recording; nor are they the length of the original recording from which the excerpt is taken; and, as I noted, they don't tell you where to find the recording in the audible book. And they go in no particular order.

So, if you decide to pay money for this, yes, you will learn a bit about the history of classical music, but one thing it won't be helpful for is learning to identify famous pieces that you do not already know, and you may rapidly forget (and find it difficult to refresh yourself) who it was who composed the piece you just heard excerpted. It seems to me this is a very casual oversight on the part of the publisher.

A good introduction

I listen to it for the fun, and ended with a greater desire to deepen my knowledge about the genius of classical music. The book is a good introduction, and traces a timeline in history with a brief sample of music when he talks about each musician.

Decent Overview

What made the experience of listening to The History of Classical Music the most enjoyable?

I enjoyed listening to the musical excerpts and hearing them in context. Closer to the modern era, the historical notes became more biographical and delved less into the development of musical forms. Still an enjoyable quick overview and a nice reminder of music history studied in high school.