The Study of the History of Music

Extract

When the musical historian of the future comes to review the work directly connected with the Art of Music which has been achieved in this country during the closing years of the nineteenth century and the opening years of the present one, amongst that which will be regarded as the most notable and the most enduring will, I believe, be the work of our musical historians. It is, I think, only necessary to mention two such works as “The Art of Music” and “The Oxford History of Music” to remind you of the valuable contributions which have been made in recent years to this department of musical literature, to say nothing of the innumerable less comprehensive works belonging to the same class, whose authors have focussed their attention upon some limited period or concentrated their powers of research and criticism upon the work of some single composer, or upon the development of the Art in some special department. In addition to this permanent evidence of the interest which is now taken in the history of music and which is revealed by the publication of books upon so many aspects of the subject, evidence, less permanent, but hardly less convincing, is borne of the same fact by the large number of lectures which are given upon different phases of the subject. The lectures given upon matters connected with the history of music far outnumber those given upon any other musical subject, and I think they may even possibly outnumber those given upon every other subject put together.