The History of Music (Art and Science)
From the Earliest Records to the Fall of the Roman Empire

A history of ancient Greek and Roman music, based on ancient sources and criticising Chappell's famous Victorian contemporaries.

William Chappell (Author)

9781108003711, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 July 2009

504 pages, 42 b/w illus.
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.8 cm, 0.73 kg

This 1874 account of the music of ancient Greece, Egypt and Rome was the only volume of the author's proposed history of music to be published. William Chappell, eldest son of the founder of Chappell's the music publishers, was noted for his interest in ancient and traditional music and was the founder of the Musical Antiquarian Society in 1840. Best remembered for his Popular Music of the Olden Time, Chappell justifies the need for his study of ancient music in a long introduction to the volume which criticises the approaches of Charles Burney and Sir John Hawkins and attacks the validity of Helmholtz's work on acoustics. The work explores theory, practice, science, philosophy and the instruments of the time through analysis of ancient sources such as Aristotle, Pythagoras, Boethius and Vetruvius and of iconographical materials. A comprehensive glossary-cum-index is included together with topic summaries for each chapter.

Introduction
Glossary
1. The first firm footing for history
2. How modern music is indebted to the Greeks
3. The Egyptian Hermes and his three-stringed 'lyre'
4. The improved or octave system of the Greeks
5. Greek figure of speech
6. Greek singing
7. Greek harmony
8. Three Greek hymns with music
9. Basis of the science
10. The musical instruments of the ancients
11. Instruments of percussion
12. Stringed instruments
13. Organs.

Subject Areas: Music [AV]