Preface (to the fourth edition by Claude V. Palisca)
 
The purpose of a revision of a well-beloved historical survey is to improve the book and bring it into currency, not to recast it entirely.

Chapter I
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The State of Music at the End of the Ancient World
Anyone living in a province of the Roman Empire in the fifth century of the Christian era might have seen roads where people used to travel and now traveled no more, temples and arenas built for throngs and now falling into disuse and ruin, and life everywhere becoming with each generation poorer, more insecure, and more brutish.