The Story of Music

Not long ago it occurred to me that not only did I have the most threadbare sense of the history of music, what with never having studied it much (save for one class on jazz I took the spring of my senior year in college), but that this problem was in principle quite easily redressed with the help of YouTube. It just took a quick query and I was off and running with Howard Goodall's 2013 six-part The Story of Music.

To be clear, I had never heard of Goodall and did not pause to check his credentials, but he seems to know a lot about music. He narrates. He plays the piano. He even sings. It's all very BBC, to be sure, and his focus for the most part is very much on what we refer to as "classical music," orchestras, violins, oboes, all that whatnot, though he does address popular music and music in the age of mechanical reproduction.

There were some surprises.

First, from the perspective of musical form, he doesn't seem to think of either Mozart or Beethoven as huge innovators. Bach, yes, to be sure, but not the two that we most often think of as the big boys. He gives them credit for changing the status of the composer in the world and how composers could earn a living, making them more self-sustaining than vassals of this or that court or patron, but not much else. Maybe he's right.

There's barely any mention of Schubert, Hayden, Chopin. I guess six hours just isn't a lot when you've got a lot of ground to cover.

Also, he spends a good chunk of time talking about how Liszt was really the innovative one and that so much of what Wagner did just derives from innovation done by Liszt. To which I'm like, OK, don't really have a dog in that fight. But Goodall clearly does.

Anyhoo, it was six hours well spent. I learned a lot. I have more of a timeline in mind now for the history of music, which is what I was after. I did snooze a little on my couch while listening/watching, but then again that's what couches are for. Onward.