     

enjoyed by people from all levels of society

accompanied by an organ sent by ship and mule from Portugal

Italian opera houses by simultaneously managing gambling tables and promot-

ing Gioachino Rossini
-
tic flight of Charles Lindbergh
Each volume of Western Music in Context is accompanied by a concise anthology
of carefully chosen works. The anthologies offer representative examples of a wide
variety of musical genres, styles, and national traditions. Included are excerpts from
well-known works like Aaron Copland’s Billy the Kid, as well as lesser-known gems
like Ignacio de Jerusalem’s Matins for the Virgin of Guadalupe. Commentaries within
the anthologies not only provide concise analyses of every work from both formal and
stylistic points of view, but also address issues of sources and performance practice.
StudySpace, Norton’s online resource for students, features links to recordings
of anthology selections that can be streamed from the Naxos Music Library (indi-
vidual or institutional subscription required), as well as the option to purchase and
download recordings from Amazon and iTunes. In addition, students can purchase
access to, and instructors can request a free DVD of, the Norton Opera Sampler,
which features over two hours of video excerpts from fourteen Metropolitan Opera
productions. Finally, for readers wanting to do further research or find more spe-
cialized books, articles, or web-based resources, StudySpace offers lists of further
readings that supplement those at the end of each chapter in the texts.
Because the books of the Western Music in Context series are relatively com-
pact and reasonably priced, instructors and students might use one or more vol-
umes in a single semester, or several across an academic year. Instructors have the
flexibility to supplement the books and the accompanying anthologies with other
resources, including Norton Critical Scores and Strunk’s Source Readings in Music
History, as well as other readings, illustrations, scores, films, and recordings.
The contextual approach to music history offers limitless possibilities: an in-
structor, student, or general reader can extend the context as widely as he or she
wishes. Well before the advent of the World Wide Web, the renowned anthropologist
Clifford Geertz likened culture to a spider’s web of interconnected meanings that
humans have spun. Music has been a vital part of such webs throughout the history
of the West. Western Music in Context has as its goal to highlight such connections
and to invite the instructors and students to continue that exploration on their own.

Walter Frisch
Columbia University