A History of Music (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A History of Music<br><br>This book gives the student and the general public a short, easily read account of the whole course of musical history. It has been the object of the authors to place before the reader the fruits of their research rather than the research itself. The technicalities of musical history are, as a rule, either abstruse nor uninteresting. Most of them are beyond discussion and can be stated in simple language. Nor does this simplicity imply any evasion of stringent thinking about the "things that matter."<br><br>The plan of the book is this. A preliminary chapter deals with the Origins of Music, and then three more chapters take us through the Ancient World down to the invention of plural-melody.<br><br>Two chapters, one on the development of scales and note-forms and the other on the earliest stutterings of counterpoint, begin the second part. Up to this time musical history is scarcely the record of known composers. But from here onwards the composer's personal importance increases. Accordingly in the next two chapters we meet for the first time some well-known names - the vanguard of the great army of contrapuntists. Dunstable and Dufay are the troop-leaders here, and the big guns in the rear are Wilbye and Palestrina. It is at the moment when this host has just passed by that the most striking change - the reform of 1600 - comes over the face of music. Advantage has been taken of this fact to pause here and discuss the subject of Tudor Instruments. Without some knowledge of it the reader cannot hope to understand the period. No apology is made for vitalizing and clarifying it in a special chapter.<br><br>About the Publisher<br><br>Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com<br><br>This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.