A Popular History of the Art of Music: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

A Popular History of the Art of Music, credited to W. S. B. Mathews, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of A Popular History of the Art of Music, by W. S. B. Mathews. Read by Tony Oliva. Preface by W.S.B. Mathews: I have here endeavored to provide a readable account of the entire history of the art of music, within the compass of a single small volume, and to treat the luxuriant and many-sided later development with the particularity proportionate to its importance, and the greater interest appertaining to it from its proximity to the times of the reader. The range of the work can be most easily estimated from the Table of Contents (pages 5-10). It will be seen that I have attempted to cover the same extent of history, in treating of which the standard musical histories of Naumann, Ambros, Fétis and others have employed from three times to ten times as much space. In the nature of the case there will be differences of opinion among competent judges concerning my success in this difficult undertaking. Upon this point I can only plead absolute sincerity of purpose, and a certain familiarity with the ground to be covered, due to having treated it in my lectures in the Chicago Musical College for five years, to the extent of about thirty-five lectures yearly. I have made free use of all the standard histories—those of Fétis, Ambros, Naumann, Brendel, Gevaert, Hawkins, Burney, the writings of Dr. Hugo Riemann, Dr. Ritter, Prof. Fillmore, and the dictionaries of Grove and Mendel, as well as many monographs in all the leading modern languages.

Recording facts

• Recording title: A Popular History of the Art of Music
• Author credits: W. S. B. Mathews
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 40
• Listed recording duration: 14:49:48

Catalogue topics

• History of music

Opening tracks: first 24 of 40

1. 00 - Preface and Introduction — 21:16
2. 01 - Music among the Ancient Egyptians — 17:16
3. 02 - Music among the Hebrews and Assyrians — 11:24
4. 03 - Music among the Ancient Greeks — 46:07
5. 04 - Music in India, China and Japan — 11:39
6. 05 - The Nature of the Transformatin and the Agencies Effecting It — 12:01
7. 06 - The Minstrels of the North — 32:32
8. 07 - The Arabs or Saracens — 9:16
9. 08 - Origin of the Great French Epics — 11:31
10. 09 - The Troubadours, Trouvères and Minnesingers — 9:16
11. 10 - The Influence of the Christian Church — 13:20
12. 11 - The Didactic of Music from the Fifth Century to the Fourteenth — 26:04
13. 12 - The Rise of Polyphony. Old French and Gallo-Belgic Schools. — 24:49
14. 13 - The Schools of the Netherlands — 16:19
15. 14 - Polyphonic Schools of Italy. Palestrina — 20:45
16. 15 - The Changes in Musical Notation — 19:56
17. 16 - Musical Instruments. The Violin, Organ, Etc. — 29:52
18. 17 - Condition of Music at the Beginning of the Seventeenth Century — 20:19
19. 18 - First Century of Italian Opera and Dramatic Song — 22:27
20. 19 - Beginnings of Opera in France and Germany — 15:06
21. 20 - The Progress of Oratorio — 8:09
22. 21 - Beginnings of Instrumental Music — 14:52
23. 22 - General View of Music in the Eighteenth Century — 8:38
24. 23 - John Sebastian Bach — 14:54

Listen to this recording

Open the complete recording and player on Internet Archive. The player includes the full track list and available download formats.

Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.