MUSIC FROM THE EARLIEST NOTATIONS TO THE SIXTEENTH CEN-EFURY THE OXFORD HISTORY OF WESTERN MUSIC UNIVERSITY PRESSIntroduction: The History of What? The argument is no other than to inguire and collect out of the records of all time what particular kinds of learning and arts have flourished in what ages and regions of the world, their antiquities, their progresses, their migrations (for sciences migrate like nations) over the different parts of the globe: and again their decays, disappearances, and revivals; [and also] an account ofthe principal authors, books, school, successions, academies, societies, colleges, orders —in « word, everything which relates tothe state of learning. Above all things, I wish events to be coupled with their causes. All this I would have handled in a historical way, not wasting time, after the manner of critic, in praise and blame, but simply narrating the fact historically, with but slight intermixtare of private judgment. For the manner of compiling such a history I particularly advise that the matter and provision of it be nat drawn from histories and commentaries alone; but that the principal books written in each century, or perhaps in shorter periods, proceeding in regular order from the earliest ages, be themselves taken into consultation; that so (I do not say by a complete perusal, for that would be an endless labour, but) by tasting them here and there, and observing their argument, style, and method, the Literary Spirit of each age may be charmed as it were from the dead. FRANCIS BACON, DE DIGNITATE ET AUGMENTIS SCIENTIARUM LIBRIIX (1623) utatis mutandis, Bacon's task was mine. He never lived ro complete it; I \ | have—but only by dint of a drastic narrowing of scope. My mutanda are stated in my title (one not chosen but granted; and for that honor I extend my thanks to the Delegates of the Oxford University Press). For “learning and che arts” substitute music, For “the different parts of the globe” substitute Europe, joined in Volume 3 by America. (‘That is what we still casually mean by “the West,” although the concept is undergoing sometimes curious change: a Soviet music magazine I once subscribed to gave news of the pianist Yevgeny Kissin's “Western debut’ —in Tokyo.) And as for antiquities, they hatdly exist for music, (Jacques Chailley’s magnificently titled conspectus, 40,000 ans de musique, got through the first 39,000 years —I exaggerate only slightly —on its first page.*) Still, as the sheer bulk of this offering attests, a lot was left, because I rook seriously Bacon's stipulations that causes be investigated, that original documents be not only cited but analyzed (for their “argument, style, and method”) and thae the approach should be catholic and as near exhaustive as possible, based not on my preferences buton my estimation of what needed to be included in order to satisfy the dual requirement of causal explanation and technical explication. Most books that call themselves histories of Western music, ot of any ofits traditional “style periods,” are in fact surveys, which XIIxiv MUSIC FROM THE EARLIEST NOTATIONS TO THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY cover —and celebrare— the relevant repertoire, but make little effort truly to explain why and how things happened as they did. This set of books is an attempt at a true history. Paradoxically, that means it does not take “coverage” as its primary task. A lot of famous music goes unmentioned in these pages, and even some famous composers Inclusion and omission imply no judgment of value here. I never asked myself whether this or that composition or musician was “worth mentioning,” and I hope readers will agree that I have sought neither to advocate nor to denigrate what I did include. But there is something more fundamental yer to explain, given my claim of catholicity. Coverage of all the musics that have been made in Europe and America is obviously neither the aim of this book nor its achievement. A glance at the table of contents will instantly confirm, to the inevitable disappointment and perhaps consternation of some, that “Western music” here means what it has always meant in general academic histories: i means whatis usually called “art music’ or “classical music,” and looks suspiciously like the traditional canon that has come under so much justified fire for its long-unquestioned dominance of the academic curriculum (a dominance that is now in irreversible process of decline). A very challenging example of that fire is a fusillade by Robert Walser, a scholar of popular music, who characterizes the repertoire treated here in terms borrowed from the writings of the Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm., “Classical music,” writes Walser, is the sort of thing Eric Hobsbawm calls an “invented tradition,” whereby present interests construct acohesive past to establish or legitimize present-day institutions ot social relations. The hodgepodge of the classical canon—aristocratic and bourgeois music; academic, sacred and secular; music for public concerts, private soirées and dancing—achieves its coherence through its function as the most prestigious musical culture of the twentieth century? Why in the world would one want to continue propagating such a hodgepodge in the twenty-first century? The heterogeneity of the classical canon is undeniable. Indeed, that is one of its main attractions. And while I reject Walser’s conspiracy-theorizing, I definitely sympathize with the social and political implications of his argument, as will be evident (for some—a different some—all too evident) in the many pages that follow. Bue that very sympathy is what impelled me to subject that impossibly heterogeneous body of music to one more (perhaps the last) comprehensive examination —under a revised definition that supplies the coherence that Walser impugns. All of the genres he mentions, and all of the genres that are treated in this book, are literate genres. That is, they are genres that have been disseminated primarily through the medium of writing. The sheer abundance and the generic heterogeneity of the music so disseminated in “the West" is a truly distinguishing feature —perhaps the West's signal musical distinction. Icis deserving of critical study. By critical study Imean a study that does not take literacy for granted, or simply tout it as a unique Western achievement, but rather “interrogates” it (as our hermeneutics