A History of Western Music

James Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, Claude V. Palisca

W. W. Norton, 2010 - Music - 986 pages

Building on his monumental revision of the Seventh Edition, PeterBurkholder has refined an inspired narrative for a new generation ofstudents, placing people at the center of the story.The narrative of A History of Western Music naturally focuses on the musical works, styles, genres, and ideas that have proven most influential, enduring, and significant—but it also encompasses a wide range of music, from religious to secular, from serious to humorous, from art music to popular music, and from Europe to the Americas. With a six-part structure emphasizing the music's reception and continued influence, Burkholder's narrative establishes a social and historical context for each repertoire to reveal its legacy and its significance today.

What people are saying

User Review -

Who are we to review the Bible of western classical music history? I'll try.
What I do like: each edition gets slighly better at being more inclusive and more attuned to context.What I don't like: Middles of chapters get bogged down in theory and analysis - this is really only going to be comprehensible to undergrads if they already have a theory class or two under their belt. Women, minorities, and popular musics don't make sense in the narrative (not that they shouldn't be there, of course) - they are poorly glued onto the edges rather than integrated into the narrative. The CD set doesn't always have the most representative pieces of the concepts being described - and many of the pieces discussed in depth in the book don't show up on the CD. Some canonical composers and pieces are mentioned and said to be great, but there's no explanation as to why - we just have to trust the authors. Most chapters begin with historical/contextual information, but many chapters fail to integrate this information into musical discussions.
By this point in musicology history, we really should have better social history/ "new musicology" textbooks.
Lastly - I don't recommend this for a gen ed music history. You'll end up being frustrated because of the constant problem of what to do with the theory/analysis sections. And you'll waste time searching your school's music library (if you have one) or YouTube for better and more complete musical examples. 

Contents

• PART ONE THE ANCIENT AND MEDIEVAL WORLDS: 3
• Heritage: 21
• Divisions in the Church and Dialects of Chant 25 Timeline 29: 38
• Characteristics of Chant 52 Timeline 53 Genres and Forms of Chant 54: 54
• Song and Dance Music in the Middle Ages: 68
• Complaint: 83
• Polyphonic Conductus 101 Motet 102 English Polyphony 109: 112
• FourteenthCentury Music in Performance 138 Echoes of: 142
• Music Printing 164 The Legacy of the Renaissance: 166
• Masses: 190
• Political Change and Consolidation 191 Ockeghem and Busnoys 193 The Next: 209
• Sacred Music in the Era of the Reformation: 211
• Germany and Eastern Europe 236 Jewish Music 238 The Legacy of Sixteenth: 239
• The First Market for Music 240 Spain 242 Italy 243 Timeline 244: 263
• Social: 285
• France England Spain and the New World in the Seventeenth: 286
• Innovations: 306
• The Operatic: 328
• Italian Vocal Chamber Music 329 Catholic Sacred Music 334 Timeline 335: 335
• Lutheran Church Music 339 Jewish Music 344 Instrumental Music 344: 344
• Tradition and Innovation: 353
• Style and National Traditions: 382
• Sonata Symphony and Concerto: 412
• PART FOUR THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY: 413
• Europe in a Century of Change 414 Music in Italy 417 Timeline 417 Music: 427
• JeanPhilippe Rameau 430 A Volatile Public: 435
• Musical Taste and Style in the Enlightenment: 468
• The Public Concert 472 Musical: 482
• Italian Comic Opera 484 Timeline 485 Opera Seria 489 Opera in Other: 505
• Orchestral Music 520 The Singing Instrument: 525
• Joseph Haydn 527 Timeline 527 Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart 546 Classic: 565
• Opera and Musical Theater in the Later Nineteenth: 566
• Revolution War and Music 17891815 568 Timeline 570 Ludwig: 593
• Orchestral Chamber: 633
• Orchestral Music 634 Timeline 634 Chamber Music 648 Choral Music 652: 652
• Romanticism and the Classical Tradition: 659
• The Roles of Opera 661 Italy 664 Timeline 670 France 673 Germany 677: 677
• The United States 681 Opera as High Culture: 684
• Technology Politics and the Arts 685 Opera 689 Richard Wagner 690 Music: 702
• Music for the Stage and Its Audiences: 722
• Dichotomies and Disputes 724 Timeline 725 Johannes Brahms 728: 748
• PART SIX THE TWENTIETH CENTURY AND AFTER: 771
• Modernism and the Classical Tradition: 810
• Expressionism 818: 818
• Alban Berg 823 Anton Webern 826 Igor Stravinsky 829 Béla Bartók 839: 839
• Charles Ives 846 Composer and Audience: 854
• Between the Wars 855 Timeline 856 American Musical Theater and Popular: 876
• The Classical Tradition: 877
• The Soviet Union 888 The Americas 892 The United States 894 What: 905
• Beethoven: 955
• GLOSSARY: A-1
• FOR FURTHER READING: A-22
• INDEX: A-87

About the author

J. Peter Burkholder is Distinguished Professor of Musicology at Indiana University. He has written and edited four books on Charles Ives, as well as numerous articles on topics spanning from the Middle Ages to the twentieth century for The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Journal of the American Musicological Society, Journal of Musicology, Musical Quarterly, 19th-Century Music, Music Theory Spectrum, and other journals. He has served as President, Vice President, and Director-at-Large of the American Musicological Society and on the board of the College Music Society. His writings have received awards from the American Musicological Society, the Society for American Music, and ASCAP.

Donald Jay Grout, late professor of music at Cornell University, also wrote a standard history of opera.

Claude V. Palisca, late professor of music at Yale University, began his collaboration on A History of Western Music with the Third Edition. Among his many publications are a history of Baroque music and a collection of scholarly essays on Italian Renaissance music.

Bibliographic information

• Title: A History of Western Music
• Authors: James Peter Burkholder, Donald Jay Grout, Claude V. Palisca
• Edition: 8, illustrated
• Publisher: W. W. Norton, 2010
• Original from: the University of Michigan
• Digitized: May 19, 2010
• ISBN: 0393931250, 9780393931259
• Length: 986 pages
• Subjects: Music / History & Criticism