Illegal Harmonies
Music in the Modern Age
A delightful and informative history of modern music.
Harmony is created by bringing sounds together. In music lessons, we learn how to do this in a formal way: we learn about chords and keys, and we are given rules for using them. This is the textbook way; this is legal harmony. Everything else – including the sounds that constantly surround us, those of ticking clocks, dogs, traffic, birdsong and aeroplanes – is illegal harmony.
Illegal Harmonies charts the course of music over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, linking it to developments in literature, theatre, cinema and the visual arts, and to popular music from Irving Berlin to The Beatles to rap. The result is a stimulating, provocative and always informative cultural history.
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Praise for Illegal Harmonies:
"brilliant" - the Age
"You could write a review of this book in four words: Buy it and rejoice." - Geoffrey Tozer, 24 Hours
Andrew Ford is the author of Try Whistling This, Illegal Harmonies and The Sound of Pictures. He is a composer, writer and broadcaster and presents The Music Show on ABC Radio National.