Page:Pratt - The history of music (1907).djvu/22

 While the ideal scope of the subject is thus wide, the field of a particular written history is at once less and more. It is less, because it is utterly impossible to compress into a single book all the facts. It is more, because the practical historian must be something of a critic as he works, selecting certain groups of facts for emphasis, classifying them under logical heads, and seeking at every point to keep what he conceives to be of special importance in the foreground.

2. Its Value.—Historical study has often been neglected by practical musicians because its literary or scholastic character seems so different from the artistic efforts upon which they are engaged. The history of music has been much overlooked by general historical students, partly because of a curious disdain of the fine arts as essential parts of culture, and partly because of the lack, until recently, of adequate handbooks. Now, however, since music-history is fully established as a branch of critical investigation, such neglect by musicians or others is inexcusable. Its obvious utilities lie in a general broadening of thought about musical art, in disclosing dominant lines of progress and effort, in exhibiting the personality and genius of creative artists and leaders, in providing rational grounds for appreciation, criticism and practical procedure, and in showing how musical life has been interlocked with literature and the other fine arts and with the advance of social life in general. For these reasons, music-history appeals not only to the musician, but to all cultivated persons.

3. Its Natural Divisions.—Music-history divides into two great sections, of which the first deals with a variety of peoples that lie outside the present circle of civilized nations and whose musical activity has not affected the latter, while the second concerns the greater historic peoples from classical times until the present. The first section is much the less important, and can be treated only in a summary, descriptive way. The second presents a clear continuity and an organic development. The natural subdivisions are as follows:—

[** note: I'm treating the below as a chart or table, where relative indenting shows the structure of the information and makes it easier to read and compare different sections, (more obvious on following page) and so is kept]

I. Primitive—among races that have not reached the point of artistic organization. Although music of this sort has always existed, we     know it only as it has been recently examined.