E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Linda Cantoni,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(/c/).
Thanks to Alex Guzman
for help with the modern transcription of neume notation.
A POPULAR HISTORY
OF THE
ART OF MUSIC
From the Earliest Times Until the Present.
With Accounts of the Chief Musical Instruments and Scales; the
Principles and Artistic Value of Their Music; together
withBiographical Notices of the Greater
Composers, Chronological Charts,
Specimens of Music, and
Many Engravings.
BY W. S. B. MATHEWS,
Editor of "Music" Magazine,
Author of "How to Understand Music," "Studies in Phrasing," "Twenty
Lessons to a Beginner," "Primer of Musical Forms," Associate
Editor ofMason's "Pianoforte Technics," etc., etc.
CONTENTS
CHICAGO:
THE "MUSIC" MAGAZINE PUBLISHING CO.
1402-5 THE AUDITORIUM.
Copyright by W. S. B. Mathews, 1891.
TO
DR. FLORENCE ZIEGFELD,
President of the Chicago Musical College
THIS WORK IS
RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED.
PREFACE.
HAVE here endeavored to provide a readable account of the entirehistory of the art of music, within the compass of a single smallvolume, and to treat the luxuriant and many-sided later developmentwith the particularity proportionate to its importance, and thegreater interest appertaining to it from its proximity to the times ofthe reader.
The range of the work can be most easily estimated from the Table ofContents (pages 5-10). It will be seen that I have attempted to coverthe same extent of history, in treating of which the standard musicalhistories of Naumann, Ambros, Fétis and others have employed fromthree times to ten times as much space. In the nature of the casethere will be differences of opinion among competent judges concerningmy success in this difficult undertaking. Upon this point I can onlyplead absolute sincerity of purpose, and a certain familiarity withthe ground to be covered, due to having treated it in my lectures inthe Chicago Musical College for five years, to the extent of aboutthirty-five lectures yearly. I have made free use of all the standardhistories—those of Fétis, Ambros, Naumann, Brendel, Gevaert, Hawkins,Burney, the writings of Dr. Hugo Riemann, Dr. Ritter, Prof. Fillmore,and the dictionaries of Grove and Mendel, as well as many monographsin all the leading modern languages.
I have divided the entire history into books, placing at the beginningof each book a general chapter defining the central idea and salientfeatures of the step in development therein recounted. The student whowill attentively peruse these chapters in succession will have in thema fairly complete account of the entire progress.
W. S. B. MATHEWS.
Chicago, May 5, 1891.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
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