Explore how music has changed our world through 50 pieces across classical folk and world
traditions with BBC presenter Tom Service in this official Radio 3 compendium. Music
transports us and defines us. As a form of expression it has been passed down through oral
tradition musical notation and recordings in a chain of connection that spans the globe
across the millennia. A History of the World in 50 Pieces follows that chain collating 50
pieces of classical music that reflect our changing politics social structures and
technological development and how composers musicians and listeners have shaped those
currents of history. From Bach to Beethoven Songlines to Saariaho Hildegard of Bingen to the
Happy Birthday song Tom Service offers a fresh take on pieces that many of us think we know
and many more we might not. With each short sharp analysis he expands the typical canon and
tests the boundaries of what we understand to be 'classical music' - or even music at all such
as the sounds of the earth's rotation and the songs of humpback whales. An official BBC Radio
3 publication A History of the World in 50 Pieces is a book for anyone curious about the power
of music and how it shapes us and connects us.
