The Shortest History of Music

‘A wonderful read… as erudite as it is enjoyable; as riveting as it is revelatory. Andrew Ford’s history of music may be short, but it is deep. With the lightest of touches, he has excavated many layers of human history and global culture... A highly readable (and persuasive) thesis of what music is, why it exists and how we couldn’t survive without it. Indispensable’
CLEMENCY BURTON-HILL, bestselling author of Year of Wonder: Classical Music for Every Day

As he ranges across the millennia, Andrew Ford traces the stories of the symphony and the opera, of blues and jazz, exploring the oral traditions of folk singers and chain gangs alongside the lives of the greats, from Bach and Mozart to Charlie Parker and Nina Simone. This is a sparkling account of music down the ages by an acclaimed composer and gifted writer.