Volume 55, Number 8 · May 15, 2008
Playing in Time
By Joseph Kerman
A Concise History of Western Music
by Paul Griffiths
Cambridge University Press,348 pp., $35.00
Oblivious of logjams looming in the future, Paul Griffiths begins A Concise History of Western Music in a leisurely, almost lyrical fashion. Music's prehistory can be inferred not only by studying the remains of ancient flutes, but by listening to 'the archaeology in our own bodies'; as our hearts beat and we walk, run, and breathe, we experience pulse, speed, phrasing, and cadence, the sense of completion or punctuation that we also feel in verse and melody. 'These...are matters—formal, structural, expressive, existential—that attached themselves to music permanently.' Although they have attached themselves very differently in different world cultures, Griffiths can speak generally:
Review, 3736 words
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