Source Readings in Music History

Here is a comprehensive collection of writings on music, spanning the ages from ancient Greece to the close of the twentieth century. Seven leading scholars, working under the editorial direction of musicologist Leo Treitler, have thoroughly revised and greatly expanded Oliver Strunk's monumental "Source Readings in Music History", replacing some selections, adding others, contributing new translations, providing additional notes and commentary, and updating the texts in light of the latest scholarship.

Included in this new edition are writings from Plato and Aristotle, as well as three complete treatises, which teach us how the Greeks viewed music. We gain insight into the early Christian period and the Latin Middle Ages through scriptural commentaries of St. Jerome and works of St. Augustine, Boethius, Hildegard of Bingen, and Guido of Arezzo. We hear from Renaissance composers, theorists, poets, philosophers, courtiers, scholars, kings, and popes. From the era in music traditionally labeled "Baroque", the selections included here represent a constellation of personalities whose thoughts and opinions help define the period for us.

The age of Haydn and Mozart produced significant writings -in the form of pedagogical treatises, opinion pieces, and historical/descriptive accounts- on how music should be composed, performed, listened to, and understood. The nineteenth-century concern for social, intellectual, and cultural matters as they affected music is documented in a fascinating group of readings from that era. For twentieth-century music, which has been described variously as complex, vital, diverse, uncertain, experimental, self-concious, innovate, and more, the collection includes writings by composers, performers, and other active participants in the music world, as well as by authors such as Cocteau, Barthes, and Eco.

All seven sections boast introductory essays in which the period editors present new perspectives on the music of their separate eras. A headnote for each reading provides some background on the writer and places the selection in a broader musical and historical context. Finally, a master index brings together names, concepts, and musical genres from the two millennia of music history covered in the book.