Music in the Western World

This classic anthology assembles over 200 source readings, bringing to life the history of music through letters, reviews, biographical sketches, memoirs, and other documents. Writings by composers, critics, and educators touch on virtually every aspect of Western music from ancient Greece to the present day.

Table of Contents
The Heritage of Antiquity
Orpheus and the Magical Powers of Music
Pythagoras and the Numerical Properties of Music
Plato”s Musical Idealism
Aristotle on the Purposes of Music
The Kinship of Music and Rhetoric
Music in Temple and Synagogue: the Judaic Heritage (Bible, Philo of
Music in the Christian Churches of Jerusalem, c. A.D. 400
The Middle Ages
The Church Fathers on Psalmody and on the Dangers of Unholy Music
The Testimony of St. Augustine
The Transmission of the Classical Legacy
Music as a Liberal Art
Before Notation
Embellishing the Liturgy
Musical Notation and Its Consequences
Music in Courtly Life
The Emergence of Polyphony
The Forms and Practices of Music, c. 1300
The First Musical Avant Garde
The Life of Francesco Landini
A Letter from
The Renaissance
The “Fount and Origin”
Music at Church and State Festivities in the Early Renaissance
The Triumph of Emperor Maximilian
Music as a Business
Music in Castiglione”s Courtier
Josquin des Prez in the Eyes of His Contemporaries
Luther and Music
The Swiss Reformers
The Reformation in England (cathedral injunctions
High Renaissance Style
Willaert the Reformer
Music at a Medici Wedding
Lasso and Palestrina as Revealed in The ir Letters
The Life of the Church Musician (Constitutiones Capellae Pontificae
The Genres of Music in the High Renaissance
The Counter Reformation
Palestrina: Fact and Legend
Madrigals and Madrigalism
Gesualdo, Nobleman Musician
The Most Musical Court in Europe
Music and Dancing as Social Graces (anonymous conversation book
Renaissance Instrumentalists
Radical Humanism: the End of the Renaissance
The Baroque
The Birth of a “New Music”
The “Second Practice”
The Earliest Operas
Basso Continuo and Figured Bass
From the Letters of Monteverdi
Venice, 1637: Opera Opens for Business
Schntz Recounts His Career
The Doctrine of Figures
Music and Scientific Empiricism
Music in the Churches of Rome, 1639
Music under the Sun King
Rationalistic Distaste for Opera
A New Sound Ideal
The Baroque Sonata (North
Modern Concert Life is Born (North
The Mature Baroque: the Doctrine of the Affections (Descartes
The Art of Music Reduced to Rational Principles
The Earlies