Music in nature--Theories of the origin of music--Intervals and scales; contrast--The aborigines of Carribea, Polynesia, Samoa, Africa--The rhythmic element: music and the dance; instruments of percussion--Harmonic traces--Wind instruments and their scales; the xylophone--Instruments of semi-civilized peoples--The North American Indian--Influence of modern culture on savage music. II. EXOTIC MUSIC 42 Significance of exotic music--Classification; Aztecs and Peruvians--The Orient: China and Hindustan, the Mohammedans--Exotic instruments--Music as religious rite; music and dancing--Music and customs; Orient and Occident. III. THE MOST ANCIENT CIVILIZED NATIONS 64 Conjecture and authority--The Assyrians and Babylonians; instruments; scales--The Hebrews--The Egyptians; social aspects; Plato’s testimony; instruments--Egyptian influence on Greek culture and its musical significance. IV. THE MUSIC OF THE ANCIENT GREEKS 88 Significance of Greek music--Greek conception of music; mythical records--Music in social life; folk-song; general characteristics of Greek music--Systems and scales--Pythagoras’ theories; later theorists: Aristoxenus to Ptolemy--Periods of Greek composition; the _nomoi_; lyricism; choral dancing and choral lyricism; the drama--Greek instruments; notation. PART II. BEGINNINGS V. THE AGE OF PLAIN-SONG 128 Music in the Roman empire--Sources of early Christian music; the hymns of St. Ambrose--Hebrew traditions--Psalmody, responses, antiphons; the liturgy; the Gregorian tradition; the antiphonary and the gradual; sequences and tropes--Ecclesiastical modes; early notation. VI. THE BEGINNINGS OF POLYPHONY 160 The third dimension in music--'Antiphony’ and Polyphony; magadizing; organum and diaphony, parallel and oblique--Guido d’Arezzo and his reputed inventions; solmisation; progress of notation--Johannes Cotto and the _Ad organum faciendum_; contrary motion and the beginning of true polyphony--Measured music; mensural notation--_Faux-bourdon_, _gymel_; forms of mensural composition. VII. SECULAR MUSIC IN THE MIDDLE AGES 186