Music 121 - Nicholas Cook

Cristina Bugaian

Music 121

Music A Very Short Introduction

 By Nicholas Cook

This wasn’t an easy book to read for me but made me understand better the world’s different kind of music. Cook Describes the differences between traditional, folk, classical, jazz, rock, pop styles and  how each type of music tends to come with its own way of thinking.

It is true how Cook said in his book that each one made a stereotype about a music style:”Rock stands for youth, freedom, being true to yourself: in a word, authenticity. Classical music, by contrast, encodes maturity and, by extension, the demands of responsibility to family and society.” And that’s how I see it too; driving on a busy street I try to make some conclusion about other drivers by what kind of music they are listening to.

But music doesn’t reflect only people personality it also can say to us a lot about a movie or a commercial as the writer says. You can guess the movie genre only by listening to the music intro; is it a comedy or a drama or a romantic one. Same with a commercial, first the music relates what kind of commercial it going to be. “You only need to hear a second or two of music in a commercial to know what kind of music it is, what genre is being referenced, what sort of associations and connotations it brings with it.”

I think that there are as many opinions about music as how many genre it has, everybody sees it in there different way.