The New Oxford History of Music: Volume I: Ancient and Oriental Music (New Oxford History of Music, Vol.1)

Features

• Cover Type: Hard Cover with 556 pages
• Published by: Oxford University Press, USA December 31, 1957
• Written in: English
• ISBN 10 Number: 0193163012
• ISBN 13 Number: 978-0193163010
• Book Dimensions: 10.1 x 6.5 x 1.5 inches
• Weighs: 2.6 pounds

Reader Reviews
This books is of course essential to travel through the musics of humanity from primitive music - considered as representing the music of prehistoric men, I guess, since the chapter opens the volume - to the music of Islam, hence up to just before European medieval time. We can note the time scale is European. But there is something more important to say about the book. Published in 1957, edited by Egon Wellesz and written by very important people in their fields, from Asia to Europe up to the beginning of feudal times, it covers the extremely important zone of the Near East and the confrontation of three linguistic systems and three cultures: Turkic, Indo-Iranian/Indo-European/Indo-Aryan and Semitic. But some of the most important discoveries had not yet been made concerning the archeology of the Middle east, or on the music of this zone in the millennia before Christ. Two important discoveries were to be made only in 1968. For one the Babylonian tablet on the tuning of the harp that enabled musicologists to deduct the musical scale of this time and the whole system of musical intervals at least 1,000 or 2,000 years before Pythagoras. The second discovery concerns the Tiberian musical inscriptions in the Old Testament. Officially added to the manuscript in the 9th century, the signs represent in fact the use of an old system that is in perfect phase with the Babylonian tablet I have just spoken of. From there a key was derived that enabled the transcription of both prosodic and psalmodic musics. We cannot of course criticize a book because it ignores what was to come after its publication. The positive point then is that the book is informative about what we could know in 1957 on the various musical systems of Asia, the Middle or Near East, and the Mediterranean up to the 9th century, i.e. before the Tiberian transcription. Rich and deep at times, but at the same time collecting elements and remaining contradictory, hence open to further work and interpretation. Thus he gives two words for "harp" (kinnôr, nebhel) with no real explanation, and he gives two words for "pipe" (`âgâbh, habîl) still without giving any explanation. On the other hand he gives three meanings for the word "nebhel" (harp, lute, psaltery) without really explaining the case. Yet he explains how the transition from Jewish synagogal (and Temple) music to Christian music might be envisaged: direct continuation and departure under Greek influence. A good reference on music of those times. Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines Comment | | (Report this)