The rise of music in the ancient world, East and West.

It is an exciting story, how music bas for thousands o£ years been

held in balance between the basic facts that, on the one hand, sound is

vibration o£ matter ruled by mathematical ratios and that, on the other

hand, musical art works are immateriaI, indeed, irrational. And a still

greater fascination is it to see in how many different ways the two

counterpoises bave been kept equal, and how, with ail these differences,

races living far apart went similar ways and met in strange, unwitting

teams: Greeks and apanese, Hindus and Arabs, Europeans and North

American Itadians.

This story bas never been toi& It is t.rue that an incalculable quantïty

of incompetent, and a less imposing number of competent, describers

bave dealt with primitive, Oriental, and Hellenic music. But they bave

only covered certain musical aspects of single countries, of China or

India or Greece. Wïth the exception of the excellent, though short, survey

in the one hundred smaI1 pages of Robert Lachmann's Musi k des Orients

(Breslau, 929), ot a single book has covered ai1 the different and yet so

dosely related styles of the Eastern world and the manifold problems

they involve. Sali1 Iess has the music of ancient Greece been organically

connêcted with the Orientnot to speak of the integration of both of

them in the urîiversaI history of music.

In studyïng thîs first attempt at a synthesis, the reader should hot

forger that this book treats the rïse of music in the ancient world and

consequentIy îs Iïtde concemed with the practïce, the conceptions, and the

mîsconceptions of medïevaI and modern Oriental music, except ïn so far

as they throw light on antîquity. Nor should he forger at what disad-

vantage such an attempt is placed by the incompleteness of our sources,

both musical and extramusicaI.

Despite ifs shortcomîngs, I trust that my endeavor is justified by

results" the more distinct outlines given to primitive styles; the reinter-

pretatïon o] Oriental systems; answers to a great many open questions

in the theory and practice of the Greeks; and an exposure of the roots

£rom whîch the music of the West has grown.