Music Research Guide

Music history is a required course for all music students. Unfortunately, the typical music history book is dry and academic, focusing on rote memorization of important composers and works. This leads many to think that the topic is boring, but that isn't necessarily so. As he did with The Complete Idiot's Guide rm to Music Theory, best-selling author Michael Miller makes music history interesting and fun, for both music students and older music lovers. In The Complete Idiot's Guide to Music History, readers will find- Important composers and musical styles from the dawn of time through the modern era. Both classical and popular music - including the 20th century's greatest popular songwriters. The evolution of music as a continual historical flow. Examples of the most important musical works throughout history.

The music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in its cultural, social, and intellectual contexts. Joseph Auner's Music in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries explores the sense of possibility unleashed by the era's destabilizing military conflicts, social upheavals, and technological advances. Auner shows how the multiplicity of musical styles has called into question traditional assumptions about compositional practice, the boundaries of music and noise, and the relationship among composer, performer, and listener. He also shows how composers and their works have played important roles in defining ideas of nation, race, and gender, and thus in shaping the modern world for better and worse. Western Music in Context: A Norton History comprises six volumes of moderate length, each written in an engaging style by a recognized expert. Authoritative and current, the series examines music in the broadest sense--as sounds notated, performed, and heard--focusing not only on composers and works, but also on broader social and intellectual currents.