Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music [Hardcover]

Peter van der Merwe (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0193161214 | ISBN-13: 978-0193161214 | Publication Date: December 7, 1989

Analyzing popular music from a musical, rather than a sociological, biographical, or political viewpoint, this book surveys Western popular music in all its forms--blues, ragtime, music hall, waltzes, marches, parlor ballads, folk music--to uncover the common musical language uniting these disparate styles. The author examines the split between "classical" and "popular" music in the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and presents a wealth of musical illustrations from the Middle Ages to the 1920s to trace the tangled roots of today's popular music. His provocative, readable, and comprehensive study will inform anyone with an interest in how music evolves in our society.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Will have reprecussions not only on the study of popular music, but on those debates about cultural identity which are centred on blues and jazz....The range of scholarship here is extraordinary and, in its combination of available materials, unprecedented....A major intervention in the study of American popular music, and should be known not only to musicians and musicologists, but to anyone interested in the sociology of American culture."--Journal of American Studies

"Exposes many fascinating facets of popular music and provides a clear insight into jazz' formative years."--JazzTimes

"Contains a wealth of ingenious speculations....He seems to have an uncanny knack for drawing out musical patterns from an extraordinaryly diverse repertory....Anyone interested in exploring the musical syntax of popular genres would do well to take advantage of the insights presented so cogently here."--American Music

"This ground-breaking study examines the split between 'classical' and 'popular' Western music in the 19th century...and imparts fascinating insights about the derivation of blues types, classic ragtime, and parlor music....A truly original contribution....Strongly recommended for both college and public libraries."--Choice

"What an interesting book! Van der Merwe has raised fundamental questions about twentieth-century music and has dealt with them provocatively, thoroughly, and, in some cases, conclusively. His discussion of the origins of the blues form alone is invaluable."--Martin Williams

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Peter van der Merwe is at Natal Society Library. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (December 7, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0193161214
• ISBN-13: 978-0193161214
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,526,600 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very informative book, March 11, 2005

By 

Mikhail Lewis (Missoula, MT, USofA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music (Clarendon Paperbacks) (Paperback)

This book is great because it traces the origins of many musical techniques and a few genres, includes a great glossary and many examples in notation, and a lot of information about harmony and melody in popular and classical music.
Contents (just the top level):
Part One. The Historical Background
Part Two. The Theoretical Foundation
Part Three. The Blues
Part Four. Parlour Music and Ragtime

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Musicological History Of American Music, October 18, 2007

By 

Chris Luallen (Nashville, Tennessee) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Origins of the Popular Style: The Antecedents of Twentieth-Century Popular Music (Clarendon Paperbacks) (Paperback)

This book examines the influences on the American music of the 20th century from a musicological rather than a sociological perspective. But actually there is a fair bit of historical and cultural background included as well. For me this was a good thing, because I am a music fan rather than a musician and sometimes found all the talk of pendular thirds, eight bar patterns and the diatonic scale going over my head. But even here I found enough discernible to hold my interest.

The primary emphasis is on how African musical forms and European musical forms, especially those of the British Isles, interacted in the American South to create blues, jazz, country, ragtime, bluegrass and many other significant musical genres. The author finds some suprising similarities between traditional African music and the folk music of Europe in both instrumentation and style. He says this makes sense because both continent's music had been previously influenced by "The Old High Culture" music which had first developed in ancient civilizations, such as Egypt and Mesopotamia, and later been brought over to both Africa and Europe by Arab Muslims. This argument might at first seem a bit far fetched. But Van Der Merwe does make a very good case for it.

The latter part of the book focuses almost exclusively on musicological topics, not all of which were entirely comprehensible to me. But I did enjoy the examples of some classic blues and folk lyrics that were included along with the musical notation. So even for a non-musician like me there was still plenty to appreciate here.