The history of music in twelve lectures

Author's Preface

TO THE SECOND EDITION.

The plan of these Lectures as also the grouping of the material are, notwithstanding considerahle enlargement of the several sections, the same here as in the first edition and in the lectures, forming the hasis of the book, delivered by me in 1877 and 1878 at Berlin. The chief aim that I then had in view was to awaken in larger circles an interest for music-history, and that by the examination not only of certain epochs lying closer to our intelligence but of its entire course of development. For proximately attaining this end in a limited time I had to content myself, as regards the representative characters of those epochs, with emphasizing in a general way their art-historical significance and referring to the excellent biographers that each of them has found in modern times: Bach in Philipp Spitta, Handel in FiiiEDRicH Chrysander, Gluck lu Adolph Bernhard Marx, Haydn in Carl Ferdinand Pohl, Mozart in Otto Jahn, Beethoven in Alexander W. Thayer. With reference to more remote epochs I recommend to the reader, provided I have at all succeeded in instigating him through my scanty recital to a more exhaustive study, the valuable works of a Fokkel, an Am- BROS and a Fetis ; moreover, with special reference to the music of antiquity, the no less meritorious works of Friedrich Beller- MANN, Westphal, Gevaert, Weitzmann; to that of the Middle Age, of Heinrich Bellermann, and of modern times, of Franz Brendel But if any should deem the leap too great from my small monograph to those authors, treating their subject as they do with extreme profuseness, to such the "Manual of music-history"

IV AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

(Handbuch der Musikgeschichte) by A. von Dommer (2* edition, 1878), also his "Elements of Music" (Elemente der Musik) and revision of Koch's "Musical Lexicon" (Musikalisches Lexicon) will afford a trustworthy basis for their study.

As to the scruples felt by some critics on account of my dragging the present time into the sphere of historical consideration — scruples that are at bottom well-founded, as I by no means deny — I judged that I might also in this edition disregard them, because the efforts of our prominent musical contemporaries almost entirely start out from historical premises, and we in profoundly occupying ourselves with them involuntarily direct our attention to the past. That Richard Wagner especially has, as writer and also as poet and musician, extensively contributed to enlivening the interest for the history of music, even the opponents of his art-tendency must concede, and I felt that even out of consideration for my knowledge I ought on this occasion not to overlook his labors as artist and esthetician. 1 do not by any means hold that the historian jeopardizes the objectivity necessary to him by retaining close contact with the development of his own time also; nay, I maintain even that he is bound never to lose sight of the relations between the "heretofore" and the "now", forasmuch as a great number of historical facts are comprehensible only in the light of the present. "It is the privilege of the living" — says Gustav Freytag in his "Pictures of German antiquity" (Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit) — "to interpret all the past according to the needs and claims of their own time. For the Monstrous and Inscrutable of historical life will be supportable to us only when we recognize in it a passing away corresponding to our reason and our heart's desire, in heaped up ruin an infinite source of new life, out of the Perishing the Becoming. Therefore a nation that rejoices in its Present loves also to recall its Past, because it recognizes in it the broadcast seed of its blooming fields."

Berlin, May, 1879.

W. LANGHANS.

TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.

In editing the present work I have taken the liherty of occasionally omitting portions of it, in the interest of English-speaking readers and for giving the book a more generally popular character. These few omissions concern chiefly material of interest to Germans, as such, exclusively, also one or two explanations of a strictly scientific character, for which I have referred, instead, to easily accessible works in the English language. At the same time, not only has every single point of general interest been scrupulously retained, but considerable additions from approved sources have been made, with a view to greater copiousness or clearness where cither seemed to me desirable.

New York, September, 1885.

J. H. COKNELL

Contents

L Antiquity. Aim and plan of the study of music-history. — Characteristics of the music of the East-Indians, Chinese, Egyptians, Hebrews. — Music of the Greeks. — The ancient Tragedy.

— Influence of Greek philosophy on art-development. — Lyrists instrumental virtuosos, theoreticians. — Decay of music under Roman dominion. — Emperor Need 1 — 14

II. The Music of the early Christian Age. Dependence of early Christian art upon the antique. — Continued influence of Greek culture even after the migration of the nations. — Theodoric, King of the Goths. — The Greek tonal-system as basis of the Christian. — Establishment of the first singing-schools at Rome.