| Contents |
Preface -- Part 1. The heritage of antiquity. Orpheus and the magical powers of music (Ovid) -- Pythagoras and the numerical properties of music (Nicomachus) -- Plato's musical idealism -- Aristotle on the purposes of music -- The kinship of music and rhetoric (Quintilian) -- Music in temple and synagogue: the Judaic heritage (Bible, Philo of Alexandria) -- Music in the Christian churches of Jerusalem, c. A.D. 400 (Egeria) -- Part 2. Middle Ages. The church fathers of psalmody and on the dangers of unholy music (St. Basil, St. John Chrysostom, Origen of Alexandria, Eusebius of Caesarea, Honorius of Autun) -- The testimony of St. Augustine -- The transmission of the classical legacy (Boethius, Shakespeare) -- Music as a liberal art (Scholia enchiriadis) -- Before notation (Isidore of Seville, St. Augustine, John the Deacon, Notker Balbulus, Costumal of St. Benigne) -- Embellishing the liturgy (Notker Balbulus, Ethelwold) -- Musical notation and its consequences (Odo of Cluny, Guido of Arezzo, Chaucer) -- Music in courtly life (Raimbaut de Vaqueiras, Roman de la rose) -- The emergence of polyphony (Aldhelm, Scotus Erigena, Hucbald, Regino of Prüm, Giraldus Cambrensis, Anon. IV, John of Salisbury) -- The forms and practices of music, c. 1300 (Johannes de Grocheo, Aegidius of Murino) -- The first musical avant-garde (Jean de Muris, Jacobus of Liège, John XXII, motet and madrigal texts) -- The life of Francesco Landini (Filippo Villani) -- A letter from Guillaume de Machaut -- Part 3. The Renaissance. The "fount and origin" (Martin Le Franc, Tinctoris) -- Music at church and state festivities in the early Renaissance (Manetti, d'Escouchy) -- The triumph of Emperor Maximilian -- Music as a business (Petrucci, Francis I, Tallis and Byrd) -- Music in Castiglione's Courtier -- Josquin des Prez in the eyes of his contemporaries (Glareanus [Glarean], "Gian," Coclico, Luther) -- Luther and music (Luther, Walther, parody texts) -- The Swiss reformers (Calvin) -- The Reformation in England (cathedral injunctions, John Bull) -- High Renaissance style (Aron, Zarlino) -- Willaert the reformer (Zarlino, Stocker) -- Music at a Medici wedding (Giunti) -- Lasso and Palestrina as revealed in their letters -- The life of the church musician (Constitutiones Capellae Pontificiae, Zarlino, etc.) -- The genres of music in the High Renaissance (Morley, Cerone, Vicentino) -- The Counter Reformation (Bishop Franco, Council of Trent, Palestrina, Animuccia, Ruffo, Gregory XIII, Coryat) -- Palestrina: fact and legend (Agazzari, Cresollio, Guidiccioni, Baini, Palestrina) -- Madrigals and madrigalism (Mazzone, Zarlino-Morley) -- Gesualdo, nobleman musician (Fontanelli) -- The most musical court in Europe (Bottrigari, Giustiniani) -- Music and dancing as social graces (anonymous conversation book, Arbeau, Byrd, Morley, Shakespeare) -- Renaissance instrumentalists (Tinctoris, Ventemille, cathedral and municipal documents) -- Radical humanism: the end of the Renaissance (Vicentino, Mersenne, Le Jeune, Galilei) -- Part 4. The Baroque. The birth of a "new music" (Caccini) -- The "second practice" (Artusi, Monteverdi) -- The earliest operas (Gagliano, Striggio) -- Basso continuo and figured bass (Agazzari, Banchieri) -- From the letters of Monteverdi -- Schütz recounts his career -- The doctrine of figures (Bernhard) -- Music and scientific empiricism (Milton, Bacon) -- Music in the churches of Rome, 1639 (Maugars) -- Music under the sun king (Pierre Rameau) -- Rationalistic distaste for opera (Corneille, Saint-Evremond, La Bruyère) -- A new sound ideal (Mersenne, Le Blanc) -- The Baroque sonata (North, Purcell, Couperin) -- Modern concert life is born (North) -- The mature Baroque: the doctrine of the affections (Descartes, Mattheson) -- The art of music reduced to rational principles (J.-P. Rameau) -- The earliest musical conservatories (Burney) -- Castrato singers (Burney) -- The conventions of the opera seria (Goldoni) -- Opera audiences in eighteenth-century Italy (Sharp) -- Domenico Scarlatti at the harpsichord (Burney) -- A traveler's impressions of Vivaldi (Uffenbach) -- Couperin on his Pièces de Clavecin -- The piano is invented (Maffei) -- Addison and Steele poke fun at Handel's first London opera -- Some contemporary documents relating to Handel's oratorios -- Bach's duties and obligations at Leipzig -- Bach remembered by his son -- Bach's obituary (C. P. E. Bach, Agricola) -- |
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Part 5. The pre-Classical period. The cult of the natural (Heinichen, Scheibe) -- The advice and opinions of an Italian singing master (Tosi) -- From Geminiani's violin tutor -- From Quantz's treatise on flute playing -- Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach on playing keyboard instruments -- The rise of the Italian comic opera style (La serva padrona, d'Holbach, Hiller) -- From Rousseau's Dictionary of Music -- Part 6. The Classical period. A side trip into aesthetics (Rousseau, Avison, Beattie, Twining, Smith, Kant) -- Haydn's duties in the service of Prince Esterházy -- Gluck's operatic manifesto -- Some general thoughts on music by Dr. Burney -- Frederick the Great gives a concert (Burney) -- The young Mozart as a scientific curiosity (Barrington) -- From Mozart's letters -- Haydn's reception in London (Burney, London dailies) -- Sonata form and the symphony described by a contemporary of Haydn (Kollmann) -- A musical episode of the French Revolution -- Vienna, 1800 -- Beethoven's Heiligenstadt Testament -- The first reactions to Beethoven's "Eroica" Symphony -- A contemporary portrait of Beethoven -- The first performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony -- Part 7. The later nineteenth century: Romanticism and other preoccupations. Music as a proper occupation for the British female (Burgh) -- Leigh Hunt on Rossini -- Schubert remembered by a friend (Spaun) -- Paganini, the spectacular virtuoso (Hunt) -- The virtuoso conductor (Spohr) -- The state of music in Italy in 1830 -- From the writings of Berlioz -- The program of the Symphonie Fantastique -- From the writings of Schumann -- Liszt, the all-conquering pianist -- From the writings of Liszt -- Glimpses of Chopin composing, playing the piano -- Mendelssohn and Queen Victoria -- From the writings of Wagner -- Wagner's Beethoven -- The "music of the future" controversy (Schumann, Liszt, Brendel, Brahms) -- P.T. Barnum brings the Swedish Nightingale to America -- Smetana and the Czech National Style (Novotný) -- The "new Russian school" (Stasov) -- Musorgsky, a musical realist -- Chaikovsky [Tchaikovsky] on inspiration and self-expression -- Brahms on composing (Henschel) -- The "Brahmin" point of view (Hanslick) -- Verdi at the time of Otello -- Grieg on the Norwegian element in his music -- The post-Wagnerians: Mahler -- The post-Wagnerians: Richard Strauss -- Part 8. The twentieth century. Debussy and musical impressionism -- Questioning basic assumptions (Busoni) -- From the writings of Charles Ives -- Musical expressionism (Schoenberg, Wellesz, et al.) -- The retreat to the ivory tower (Berg) -- The death of tonality? (Webern) -- Arnold Schoenberg on composition with twelve tones -- The Rite of Spring (Stravinsky, Van Vechten, Cui, Du Mas) -- A futurist manifesto (Russolo) -- The new folklorism (Bartók, Stravinsky, Vaughan Williams) -- The cataclysm (Bartók) -- Between the wars (Sessions) -- The new objectivity (Stravinsky) -- Anti-Romantic polemics from Stravinsky's autobiography -- Schoenberg on Stravinsky, Stravinsky on Schoenberg -- The cult of Blague: Satie and "The Six" (Satie, Collet, Milhaud) -- Polytonality (Milhaud) -- The only twentieth-century aesthetic? (Thomson) -- The making of Wozzeck (Berg) -- Approaching the limits of compression (Schoenberg, Webern) -- The assimilation of jazz (Gershwin, Ravel) -- "New musical resources" (Cowell) -- Retrenchment (Hindemith) -- Music and the social conscience (Weill, Hindemith, Copland) -- Music and ideology (Russian Association of Proletarian Musicians) -- A composer on trial (Prokofiev) -- The outlook after World War II (Thomson) -- New developments in serialism (Boulez, Babbitt) -- Stravinsky the serialist -- Postwar compositional "issues" (Sessions) -- The master of "organized sound" (Varèse) -- The Music of Chance (Cage) -- New approaches to the organization of time (Carter) -- The contemporary composer and society (Babbitt, Rochberg). |
| Abstract |
Here is a rich selection of source readings that are not only important historical documents, but also fascinating eyewitness accounts of musicians and music-making from ancient Greece to the present day. More than 200 letters, notes, reviews, biographical sketches, memoirs, manifestos, works of criticism and theory, and a wealth of first-hand descriptions bring alive every musical period--and nearly every major theme, topic, controversy, and development in music history. Assuming no formal music background, this book features: more than 200 selections, many in fresh translations by the editors, ranging in length from a paragraph to several pages; writings by composers, critics, philosophers, poets, religious leaders, historians, theorists, performers, and others--many in their first modern translation; illustrations chosen to demonstrate the close links between the visual arts and the music of the period; chronological organization designed for easy use and maximum flexibility; witty, detailed headnotes that set each and every selection in its historical context. From the emergence of polyphony to the "death" of tonality, from composers' impassioned artistic statements to their revealing (and often delightfully malicious) letters,from the court music of Renaissance Ferrara to the heady cosmopolitanism of "Les Six," Boethius to Babbitt-performance to politics, this book is an essential guide to understanding the full scope of music history. |
