This book began as an attempt to carry out a suggestion made in 1929 by Carl Engel in his "Views and Reviews"-to fulfill his wish for " a living record of musical personalities, events, conditions, tastes ...a history of music faithfully and entirely carved from contemporary accounts.
Published as a single volume in 1950. Published as 5 separate volumes in the 1965 edition. A single volume edition and a set of separate volumes published in 1998. The subtitles of the 1998 edition vary from the subtitles of the 1965 edition.
Forty-five years after the appearance of the first edition, Oliver Strunk's monumental anthology of writings about music has been thoroughly revised and extended by a team of scholars working under the direction of musicologist Leo Treitler. For this new edition, seven specialists in music history have replaced some selections, added others, contributed new translations, and provided additional notes and introductions. An entire new section, covering the twentieth century, significantly enlarges the book's scope. Readers can now acquire a comprehensive picture of Western musical thought and ideas through the ages. -- Publisher description.
The music of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries in its cultural, social, and intellectual contexts. Joseph Auner's Music in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries explores the sense of possibility unleashed by the era's destabilizing military conflicts, social upheavals, and technological advances. Auner shows how the multiplicity of musical styles has called into question traditional assumptions about compositional practice, the boundaries of music and noise, and the relationship among composer, performer, and listener. He also shows how composers and their works have played important roles in defining ideas of nation, race, and gender, and thus in shaping the modern world for better and worse. Western Music in Context: A Norton History comprises six volumes of moderate length, each written in an engaging style by a recognized expert. Authoritative and current, the series examines music in the broadest sense—as sounds notated, performed, and heard—focusing not only on composers and works, but also on broader social and intellectual currents.
Though traditionally labeled "Baroque," the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries in music could as easily be termed "early modern," since many of the genres that are popular today--were established during that time.