![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Book Review
The Cambridge Companion to the Piano
by David Rowland (Editor)
This book, like all the Cambridge companions, consists of a series of essays written by musicologists (primarily British ones). It is a very solid volume, covering the history of the piano, its acoustical properties, piano repertoire, and performance styles. I especially liked the discussions of performance style and repertoire, as those chapters brought together a lot of new and old information in a coherent and engaging form. The chapters on piano history were good, too, but did not include anything that I didn't already know. The only disappointment was the chapter on popular music and jazz. The author only gave a cursory view of the piano's role in popular music, and completely missed the subtleties and complexities of race in American popular music.
by David Rowland (Editor)
This book, like all the Cambridge companions, consists of a series of essays written by musicologists (primarily British ones). It is a very solid volume, covering the history of the piano, its acoustical properties, piano repertoire, and performance styles. I especially liked the discussions of performance style and repertoire, as those chapters brought together a lot of new and old information in a coherent and engaging form. The chapters on piano history were good, too, but did not include anything that I didn't already know. The only disappointment was the chapter on popular music and jazz. The author only gave a cursory view of the piano's role in popular music, and completely missed the subtleties and complexities of race in American popular music.