A Brief History of Classical Music: A Tale of Time, Tonality and Timbre - Paperback

by Arthur Wenk (Author)

Learn about music history in musical terms
What distinguishes the major periods in music history: Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic and Modern? By focusing on twenty-four works by twenty-four composers--four for each historical period--I hope to create a picture that the reader can hold in mind all at once.
Time, tonality and timbre serve as points of comparison by which we can define both the style of an individual composer and the style associated with each musical period.

Author Biography

During his twenty-year career as a musicologist, Arthur Wenk published books on Claude Debussy (Claude Debussy and the Poets; Claude Debussy and Twentieth-Century Music) and music bibliography (Analyses of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Music; Musical Resources for the Revised Common Lectionary). Later he drew on his experiences as a university professor, church organist, choral conductor and concert pianist to produce a series of mystery novellas featuring musicologist Axel Crochet as sleuth: The Quarter Note Tales; New Quarter Note Tales: Axel in Quebec; Axel Crochet: Musicologist-at-Large; and Quarter Note Tales #4: An Axel Crochet Trilogy. Other books include A Guide to the Bookstores of Toronto, and Camerata: A Guide to Organizing and Directing Small Choruses. Dr. Wenk's subsequent careers as calculus teacher and psychotherapist have led to public lectures on graphing calculators, Geometer's Sketchpad, parenting and communication, separation and divorce, opera, western culture, and film. Since his retirement in 2014 Arthur Wenk lives in North Fort Myers, Florida and Lagoon City, Ontario.