A Popular History of the Art of Music / From the Earliest Times Until the Present

E-text prepared by Juliet Sutherland, Linda Cantoni, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net/c/). Thanks to Alex Guzman for help with the modern transcription of neume notation.
Author of How to Understand Music, Studies in Phrasing, Twenty Lessons to a Beginner, Primer of Musical Forms, Associate Editor of Mason's Pianoforte Technics, etc., etc.
CHICAGO: THE MUSIC MAGAZINE PUBLISHING CO. 1402-5 THE AUDITORIUM. Copyright by W. S. B. Mathews, 1891.
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.
I have divided the entire history into books, placing at the beginning of each book a general chapter defining the central idea and salient features of the step in development therein recounted. The student who will attentively peruse these chapters in succession will have in them a fairly complete account of the entire progress.
W. S. B. MATHEWS.
Chicago, May 5, 1891.


Music defined — general idea of musical progress — conditions of fine art — qualities of satisfactory art-forms — periods in musical history — difference between ancient and modern music.
Sources of information — antiquity of their development — instruments — uses of music — their ideas about music and education — Song of the Harper — kindergarten.
Music among the Hebrews — Jubal — kinnor — ugabh — musicians in the temple service — psaltery — flute — larger harp — Miriam — liturgy of the temple — musical ideal in Hebrew mind — music among the Assyrians — types of instruments.