Sound Bites - by Ed Le Brocq (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Ed Le Brocq invites you to come on a journey with him through a living tradition that spans a millennium - the tradition of Western classical music.

Have you ever wondered where our music comes from? How did we arrive here, a place where we can have a hundred musicians on stage executing the wildest rhythms, a singer performing the most heartbreaking of melodies, or a solitary pianist playing an instrument that weighs half a tonne? How did the melodies and harmonies we listen to today, right now, come about?

Ed Le Brocq invites you on a journey through a living tradition that spans millennia: the tradition of Western classical music. With Ed, you will roam its magnificently bendy path, from the Mesopotamians to the mediaeval age to music composed just last week by Australia's most creative minds. You will discover how notes from the Indus Valley influenced the development of scales by Pythagoras and his mates in Ancient Greece, finding their way through the Romans into church music of the Middle Ages, and why some of those notes were banned. You'll find out how the invention of clocks changed rhythm, how pianos changed society, which composer was afraid of the number thirteen (and why we should be a little afraid of their music) and which composer had two skulls in their grave.

This canter through the development of one of humankind's greatest achievements will delight and exhilarate you and have you listening to music with fresh ears.

PRAISE

'A fun and an educational entree to classical music' Sydney Morning Herald/Age