| Method | Details | |--------|---------| | | Most academic libraries have an e-book license or physical copy. Check your library’s catalog or WorldCat. | | Institutional login | Via ProQuest Ebook Central, EBSCO, or Archive.org (borrow 1h at a time). | | Purchase | Used print copies are cheap (≈$20–40). PDF is not sold legally outside institutions. | | Open access | No legal free PDF exists (copyrighted). Avoid shady “free PDF” sites — they often host malware or poor scans. |
. It provides a chronological history of Western music through more than 200 primary source documents , including letters, reviews, and theoretical treatises. Amazon.com Core Overview To bring music history to life using eyewitness accounts and original writings rather than just modern summaries. Coverage spans from Ancient Greece to the late 20th century.
These documents touch on philosophy, history, literature, sociology, and even medicine (e.g., 19th-century theories about the effect of music on nerves). This makes the book invaluable not only for music majors but for any student of Western culture. music in the western world a history in documents pdf
While these narratives are necessary for scaffolding knowledge, they inherently sanitize the past. They iron out the contradictions, ignore the unpopular opinions of the time, and present history as a series of inevitable progressions. In a standard textbook, the history of music often looks like a museum exhibit: polished, curated, and silent.
Documentation covers Pythagoras and the numerical ratios governing pitch intervals. | Method | Details | |--------|---------| | |
This section is particularly rich in technical and aesthetic debates. We read Monteverdi’s defense of the "seconda pratica" (the modern style), where he justifies breaking the rigid rules of counterpoint to serve the emotion of the text. We see the rise of the virtuoso through descriptions of castrati and the inception of the public concert. The inclusion of documents regarding the Querelle des Bouffons in Paris highlights how music became a battleground for political and philosophical ideologies.
By engaging with these documents, the student ceases to be a passive recipient of facts and becomes an active historian. They must analyze the rhetoric, question the bias of the writer, and place the document within its social context. This shift from "what happened" to "how did people feel about what happened?" is the fundamental value of the Weiss and Taruskin approach. | | Purchase | Used print copies are cheap (≈$20–40)
The back index lists names, places, and concepts. If you are writing a paper on 18th-century opera, search the PDF for “opera buffa,” “castrato,” or “Gluck.” You will find documents you might otherwise miss.