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Origins of the Popular Style : The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music - Peter van der Merwe

Origins of the Popular Style

The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music

By: Peter van der Merwe

Paperback | 23 July 1992

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Here, for the first time, is a book which analyses popular music from a musical, as opposed to a sociological, biographical, or political point of view. Peter van der Merwe has made an extensive survey of Western popular music in all its forms - blues, ragtime, music hall, waltzes, marches, parlour ballads, folk music - uncovering the common musical language which unites these disparate styles. The book examines the split between `classical' and`popular' Western music in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, shedding light, in the process, on the `serious' music of the time. With a wealth of musical illustrations ranging from Strauss waltzes to Mississippi blues and from the Middle Ages to the 1920s, the author lays bare the tangled roots of the popular music of today in a book which is often provocative, always readable, and outstandingly comprehensive in its scope.
Industry Reviews
`intriguing new speculative survey ... Chapters devoted to "the historical background" cast a wide net and show the author to have intelligently synthesized the literature on developments on both sides of the Atlantic ... Origins of the Popular Style contains a wealth of ingenious speculations ... Anyone interested in exploring the musical syntax of popular genres would do well to take advantage of the insights presented so cogently here' American Music `In a worthy academic work Peter van der Merwe ... guides the student through musical history from antiquity to ragtime, stopping off in the Arab world of the Middle Ages, the Afro-Arab culture, the Blues mode in Britain, and a long spell with ... Gregory Walker ... if detailed musical analysis is your cup of tea, this book is for you.' Weekend Telegraph `This is a ground-breaking book on an enormous, intractable subject.' Musical Times `The ripples this remarkable, perhaps great, book has left on the musicological pool will be spread wide and deep. It remains to add that it has been produced handsomely, with generous, clearly printed musical examples.' Wilfrid Mellers, Times Literary Supplement `richly detailed text, with numerous music examples' The Wire 'It is a very readable study on the subject.' Come-All-Ye, Summer 1993, Vol. 14, No. 2 'This book will have repercussions not only on the study of popular music, but on those debates about cultural identity which are centred on blues and jazz. The range of scholarship here is extraordinary and, in its combination of available materials, unprecedented. Origins of the Popular Style is a major intervention in th study of American popular music, and should be known not only to musicians and musicologists, but to anyone interested in the sociology of American culture.' David Ayrs, University of Kent, Journal of American Studies, 27 (1993)

You Can Find This Book In

Non-FictionArts & EntertainmentMusicTheory of Music & MusicologyMusic Styles & GenresWestern Classical Music & OperaLight Orchestral & Big Band MusicBluesFolk & Traditional MusicJazzRock & Pop Music

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