Black Inc. August 2024
From prehistory to now, the fascinating story of why music is vital to the human experience.
This is not a traditional chronological account. Instead, Andrew Ford focuses on key themes in the history of music and considers how they have played out across the ages. How has music interacted with other social forces, such as religion and the economy? How have technological changes shaped the kinds of music humans make? From lullabies to concert halls, songlines to streaming services, what has music meant to humans at different times and in different places?
Australian edition (Black Inc.)
It is hard to believe that Andrew Ford’s The Shortest History of Music is the work of one person, given its extraordinary temporal and georgraphical reach. Offering a thematic history of that most potent of art forms, it is a jewel of a book.
David McCooey, ‘Books of the Year 2024’, Australian Book Review
An absolute belter […] this is just a marvelous book.
Nick Rheinberger, ABC Illawarra Mornings
The Shortest History of Music is an achievement in brevity and balance.
Kurt Johnson, The Saturday Paper
Ford’s emphasis on domestic music and everyday musical experiences is . . . of great interest. By considering not just famous composers and works, but also the music of ordinary people, he paints a fuller picture of music’s role in human life. As he poignantly observes, “That is, after all, how music started and how it will start again tomorrow.”
The epilogue nicely encapsulates the book’s themes, touching on the mystery and power of music. Ford’s reflection on the universality of the musical impulse is particularly moving, as he notes how even the most “avowedly unmusical among us” cannot resist making sound when presented with an instrument.
Will Yeoman, Limelight
Like an experienced jazz player, [Ford] knows how to swing his narrative, with delightful off-road lurches into unexpected or cheeky byways.
Malcolm Gillies, Australian Book Review
The Shortest History of Music by Andrew Ford, demonstrates why music is so critical to understanding the human condition.
Samuel Bernard, The Australian
In the latest in the admirable Shortest History series [Andrew Ford] considers the impulse to make music, notated music, music as a commodity, modernism and music, and the consequences of recording. All that in about 250 pages.
Jason Steger, The Sydney Morning Herald
It may be a miniature, but this story of music strikes the right note […] The book’s chief delight is its constant asides, tangents and anecdotes, which appear on almost every page.
Barney Zwartz, The Age
It is impossible to convey enough of the substance and value of this small treasure. It would be accessible to all regardless of their musical taste and knowledge. A pleasure to read, Ford’s book celebrates a form created by humans with infinite possibilities, and in myriad ways has had the ability to add a unique richness to life from the dawn of history ….
Patricia Simms-Reeve, Queensland Reviewers Collective
Andrew Ford is a brilliant guide to the inner sanctums of composition and the outer reaches of what we can even call music … The Shortest History of Music is for every music lover.
B.P. Marshall, Tasmanian Times
Andrew Ford, as his many readers and listeners will know, is a person of great and varied knowledge, but one who wears his considerable learning lightly, and is thus able to be both brief and witty, without being shallow or offhand – no mean feat when writing the history of an activity so fundamental to and seemingly coexistent with the whole of human existence.
Gordon Kerry, Loud Mouth
UK edition (Old Street Publishing)
Brilliantly readable and bursting with insight, wit and wisdom. Ford is a master storyteller.
Michael Spitzer, author of The Musical Human
A wonderful read […] as erudite as it is enjoyable; as riveting as it is revelatory. Andrew Ford’s history of music may be short, but it is deep. With the lightest of touches, he has excavated many layers of human history and global culture […] A highly readable (and persuasive) thesis of what music is, why it exists and how we couldn’t survive without it. Indispensable.
Clemency Burton-Hill, BBC broadcaster, writer and musician
Sometimes brevity allows boldness. Andrew Ford’s musical history is indeed short, just over 200 pages . . . But it never feels rushed . . . [He] jumps between the centuries (often in in the space of a paragraph or two) as he explores the impact of tradition and technology, religion and economy in a book that ranges far beyond the Western canon.
Teddy Jamieson, The Glasgow Herald
Ford’s historical and technical knowledge is vast, the depth of his research astounding… This book is fascinating, broad and (like all good histories) has humanity at its centre.
Lucy Hicks Beach, Prospect
Ford acknowledges the limitations of the format: ‘No history of music – let alone the shortest – can hope to be comprehensive.’ Ford’s answer to this dilemma is to focus on specific episodes that tell the macro-story.
Alice Loxton, The Spectator
It’s deeply researched and very thorough with the feel of a thesis squeezed into a reasonably accessible consumer book.
Stephen Armstrong, Tortoise Media
Ford’s writing is impressively engaging given the highly compressed format. There’s much to recommend in this book: a refreshingly non-European starting point … and pithy, thought-provoking statements and quotations which drive his energetic prose.
Katy Hamilton, BBC Music Magazine
Ford’s book does not so much give answers as raise further questions. It is also full of fascinating facts, and whilst reading it I kept giving my husband snippets of interesting trivia. Except, of course, in the context of Ford’s narrative, such small moments build into larger ones.
Robert Hugill, Planet Hugill
Order the Australian edition from Black Inc. August 2024
Order the UK edition from Old Street Publishing October 2024
Order the Indian edition from Picador India February 2024
Order the North American edition from The Experiment May 2025