Music History and Appreciation

When you think of music history, you might think of a certain type of music. You probably think of classical music like operas and big orchestral music. This type of music is what is known as “art music,” a broad category of music that contrasts with folk music and popular music.

You can think of art music as music that is designed to say something philosophical about humanity instead of music that is for pleasure or casual use like what you hear on the radio. However, most people think this only means European or American music. Music history really just means the study of music of any genre or style from any country. This music can come from casual performers or professionals and can be instrumental or singing.

We learn about how music was created in the past from a variety of places. For really old music, we can use visual art that shows musical performances and instruments plus written books that talk about music. We can also use physical musical instruments that have survived. Once a way to write down music was created, we can use sheet music. For more recent music, we have the help of recorded music that we can listen to and can even go around and record new music ourselves.

Studying  music can help us understand history in general, as well as things like politics and other cultural things like fashion and visual arts. History, politics, and culture change music, but music also changes these things in turn.

Music is woven into culture and history and perhaps surprisingly religion. The early history of classical music might as well be a history of Christianity. Music history helps us understand how we as humans have enjoyed and thought about music throughout our past.

Library of Congress Music Collection includes more than 60 music-related collections. These collections can be searched or browsed in a variety of ways, including via the finding aids.

Theft! A History of Music is a graphic novel (available for free download under Creative Commons license CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0) covering the history of borrowing in music, written by two professors of law at Duke University. You can find sources used on their "Further Reading" page. Additional sources can be found on this references page and are organized by graphic novel page.

Open Access Musicology, Volume One is a collection of essays in the area of music history and related areas that are intended to be read by a general audience. They have been reviewed by both scholars in the field as well as students to ensure they are reliable as well as easy to read.

Burkholder, J. Peter, et al. A History of Western Music: Eighth Edition. New York, W.W. Norton & Company, 2010.