Howard Goodall's "Story of Music".
 

I thoroughly recommend this six-part series, which I learned about on another music forum. It apparently aired on the BBC a couple of years ago.

It is no longer accessible from the BBC site, but all the episodes appear to be available on Youtube. I probably cannot post links yet, and in any case there is little point in my doing so since it's just as easy to use your own favourite search engine (Note that I avoid using the 'G' word).

What I like about him is that he discusses the history and nature of music, rather than obsessing about genres. For example, in one particular episode all the following get a mention: Vivaldi, Corelli, Purcell, Procol Harum, the Moody Blues and Keane. He reminds us that, astonishingly when you think about it, "In centuries gone by the average person might quite easily go weeks without hearing any music at all. Even in the 19th century, if you were lucky you might hear your favourite symphony four or five times in your lifetime." How different that is from 2016, when music is everywhere you go, some might say there is too much of it and for most of us the problem is not how to get to hear music but how to filter out all the music we don't want to hear.

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Edit: Thanks to Black_Francis for locating this link to the playlist for the whole series:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0Y6...NQ8lihO--M1J99

You can embed youtube videos no matter how many posts you have, just follow this.

http://i539.photobucket.com/albums/f...psgcbzmk2y.jpg

Also, I'll check it out. That quote you posted is pretty true, but I'm glad for it. Better to have too much art than to be deprived of it. It's good to hear that he doesn't get bogged down by genres, too. Sam Dunn is pretty guilty of that, especially in Metal Evolution, where he goes across genres and pretends to be surprised that subgenres of metal had similar influences.

Thanks Frownland, I'll remember that in future if I want to post Youtube videos.

In this particular case however I would probably avoid embedding the videos anyway, since there are at least eight of them (because some of the episodes had to be split into two clips) and the total playing time is several hours. I know from experience that this adds to the time taken to refresh the forum page, which may be an issue for some users. Then you get the issue of some videos being blocked in certain countries, while another clip with the same content is not blocked. It really is easier all round to let people find the episodes if they are interested.

The length of the video doesn't really affect browser speed here, it's the number of videos that does it, but I get where you're coming from. There's also the spoiler option that you can access by doing an advanced reply and clicking on the Show/Hide button which would put the videos on the thread without automatically loading them unless they click the spoiler button.

That spoiler option looks very useful, and I wish they had had that on some of the other fora i have belonged to.

Sounds interesting. i'll give it a watch too.

This would make a good subject for a thread. it's true, nowadays you are constantly bombarded with music everywhere and it's not just corporate jingles anymore, given enough time your favorite songs from your favorite band will most likely end up in a tv commercial even if you never thought pop culture would like that sorta band.

Like, you tell me, what the hell is 'Where is my mind' by the pixies doing in a frickin Uncharted commercial?

I long for the day when I can hear Orange Claw Hammer at Sears.

Im telling you, give it enough time and you'll probably hear Santa's dog being used in some quirky holiday commercial about dog sweaters. Personally, i would like to hear some things last a long time in a camera commercial.

Some interesting comments here. But I am hoping some of you actually watch the series and discuss that.

Just watched episode 6, the last episode, "The Popular Age."

Obviously, in only an hour, he could not talk at length about all the variations of "popular", and understandably he spent quite some time discussing the Beatles and their influences. Still, given that he makes several mentions of the growing rift between popular and the classical traditions, I'm surprised he did not give at least a passing mention to bands like the Moody Blues, Yes, ELP and Genesis, who have unashamedly employed ideas from classical music and given them a modern angle.