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.