Looks at ancient and oriental music and traces the history of western music from medieval times to the twentieth century.

This volume of eleven essays, compiled as a tribute to Winton Dean on his seventieth birthday, focuses on that area which has absorbed Winton Dean's interest throughout his distinguished career: opera and other theatre music. The first half of the book covers the period from the late seventeenth century to the mid-eighteenth. The second half of the book ranges over later opera: operacomique; Mendelssohn's operas; the influence of Wagner; the finales of Janacek's operas; and Britten's first two major operas, Peter Grimes and The Rape of Lucretia."

Monteverdi is still too often thought of as a revolutionary who single-handed overthrew the principles governing the composition of music for generations past. The Monteverdi Companion offers chapters on aspects of Monteverdi s work that relate his achievement to the music and ideas of his elders and contemporaries, illustrating the ways he learned from them and how he incorporated new procedures and principles into his music."