Baroque Music (Norton Introduction to Music History)

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 525 pages
• Published by: W. W. Norton & Company June 30, 2005
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0393978001
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0393978001
• Book Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.5 x 1.6 inches
• Weighs: 2 pounds

Book Description
In this colorful and comprehensive history of music during the Baroque period, John Hill illustrates how social, political, and cultural forces contributed to the development of Baroque musical styles and conventions. This text provides a balanced, well-illustrated account of the music from all decades of the seventeenth century and from all national cultures in western Europe.

Reader Reviews
Many have awaited this final volume in the new Norton Music History Series. Manfred Bukofzer's volume in the original series was written in 1947 - clearly, much has been discovered since then. Hill's text is designed to be for upper level music majors, as the writing can become quite dense. The book begins with an introduction of the social and political factors shaping Europe during the Baroque Era. Other chapters cover the birth of opera and monody, new genres of instrumental music, and other subjects, generally switching back in between France, Italy, England, and Germany (Spain and Portugal are also included in a chapter). Great aspects about Hill's book first. The scholarship is excellent, and is as thorough (if not more so) than any other Baroque textbook out there. His bibliographical notes at the end of the chapter (as in the other books from the series) are wonderfully helpful. The description on the Doctrine of the Affections is as clear and informative as I've ever seen. His brief explanation of dance steps and tempo descriptions reminds me of Leonard Ratner's book on topics and is an excellent resource. The optional Anthology can prove to be very helpful for teaching or illustrating Hill's explanations as well. Here are the things I think readers may not like as much, though I was not able to find many. The reading is dense and can be difficult to follow with interest at times, which is not surprising for a 500-page upper-level textbook. Of the books in the Norton Series, I found several other author's writings to be of much lighter prose than Hill's, including Hoppin's tome on Medieval music. Many others will argue over the relative weight of importance of some composers in the textbook (there are many second-tier Italian composers, and Bach only gets about 25 pages), but I believe that any professor worth his/her salt will be easily solve this difficulty by supplementing the text with a few other materials. Though I would not rank this book as the best in the series, I do think it is certainly an improvement from Bukofzer and Claude Palisca's Prentice Hall textbook (not bad, but much less thorough). Any upper-level course on Baroque music should consider adopting Hill's text and Anthology. Comment | | (Report this)