The Shortest History of Music, Ford

No other art is as popular — or pervasive — as music. With just a few clicks, anyone can cue up (and critique) Chopin or Cher, The Bangles or The Beatles, even the brand-new Beyoncé. But things weren’t always this way.

In this brisk, breakneck history under 300 pages, award-winning composer, author and broadcaster Andrew Ford replays the dramatic evolution of music, from early oral songs to the first orchestras and their wealthy patrons and from the emergence of recording technology to the multibillion-dollar industry we know today. The Shortest History of Music explores the immense influence of religion, politics and the economy on world music, what led humans to make music in the first place and why, in every era, we are irresistibly drawn to listen to it.

Andrew Ford is a composer, writer and broadcaster who has won awards in each of those capacities. In 2014, he was a Poynter Fellow and visiting composer at Yale University; in 2015, a visiting lecturer at the Shanghai Conservatory, and, in 2018, an HC Coombs Creative Arts Fellow at the Australian National University. Ford has written widely on all manner of music, published ten previous books and has written, presented and co-produced many radio series, mainly for Australia’s national radio.

Author: Andrew Ford
Format: Paperback, 256 pages
Publisher: The Experiment (2025)
ISBN: 9798893030525