LISTENING SERVICE

Sub-titled '101 Journeys through the Musical Universe', based on his critically acclaimed BBC Radio 3 programme, Tom Service takes an idea on an ear-opening and mind-expanding walk through the musical landscape every week. This book is a celebration of music's multidimensional power in our lives. With 101 short chapters based on the programmes and grouped thematically covering birdsong, magical forests, the power of love songs, silence, turning up the volume, textures, the semitone, riffs, the blues, improvisation, folk music, it covers instruments, innovations and voices, and curious ideas like earworms, musical hoaxes and extreme classical and a constellation of composers and their works, what they have done and how they have done it from the joy of Bach to new world symphonies, the master chef and maestro Rossini to Wagner's Ring Cycle, and from Toots and the Maytals to Miley Cyrus, Anna Meredith to Wolfgang Mozart - it all works its magic over us. With direct links to the programmes using QR codes, anecdotes and analogies as well as the latest scientific research, and above all a spirit of discovery and connection across genres, cultures and histories, at its heart is the conviction that music changes us. Beautifully imaginative writing on a whole star scape of sounds. 300pp.