The Chinese Translation And A Review Of A Social History Of Music:From The Middle Ages To Beethoven

A Social History of Music:From the Middle Ages to Beethoven by Henry Raynor is a pioneering work that examines the relationship between music practice and the environment of social politics,economy and history,which demonstrates the closely interpenetrated relationship between the social history of music and the sociology of music.It is of great significance in the field of the music research on Western arts.In addition to the preface and the appendix,the book consists of 20 chapters,which intensively discusses the relationship between music and society in music consumption and music production basically in chronological order.The book covers the various fields of the whole society in the history from the Middle Ages to the 17^th century in which the music was greatly influenced by the development and changes of religion,politics,economy and culture,what kind of attitudes,inputs and costs to music the different classes had and what function of music occurred to the social situation at that time.The book review lays emphasis on discussing the theory of the discipline,surveying the structure of the book by referring to historical writing methods of social history,analyzing the positivist tendencies of the author,and providing the problems encountered during translation.