C. Hubert H. Parry

A great book to follow Scholes' The Complete Book of the Great Musicians, which familiarizes the reader with the boyhood experiences of composers as well as a few of their major works. With that background the student is now ready to learn about the positions which the most important composers occupy in the historical development of the art. Parry shows the relations of the composers to one another, how they followed in each other's footsteps, often sparking one another's musical interests through personal contact. For each of the eleven composers he makes clear the social, personal, and historical conditions under which they became the acknowledged masters of various branches and phases of musical art. Much emphasis is placed on the immediate external influences and traits of character which had so much to do with the style of their works, and the lines of art which they pursued.

C. Hubert H. Parry (1848–1918), knighted in 1902 for his services to music, was a distinguished composer, conductor and musicologist. In the first of these roles he is best known for his settings of Blake's 'Jerusalem' and the coronation anthem 'I was glad'. He was an enthusiastic teacher and proselytiser of music, believing strongly in its ability to widen and deepen the experience of Man. In this book published in 1893 (and later revised as The Evolution of the Art of Music, also reissued in this series), Parry examines the universal impulse to create musical sounds, traces the origins of music in 'primitive' societies using the research of contemporary anthropologists, and surveys the rise of western music from the ancient Greeks to the Victorian age.

C. Hubert H. Parry (1848–1918), knighted in 1902 for his services to music, was a distinguished composer, conductor and musicologist. In the first of these roles he is best known for his settings of Blake's 'Jerusalem' and the coronation anthem 'I was glad'. He was an enthusiastic teacher and proselytiser of music, believing strongly in its ability to widen and deepen the experience of Man, and this book, published in 1896 as a revised version of his 1893 The Art of Music, appeared in a series called 'The International Scientific Series'. Parry's intention is to trace the origins of music in 'the music of savages, folk music, and medieval music' and to show 'the continuous process of the development of the Musical Art in actuality'.