Price Curtis (eds.). The Early Baroque Era: From the late 16th century to the 1660s

The Macmillan Press, 1993. — 411 p.The Man and Music series of books- eight in number, chronologically
organized - were originally conceived in conjunction with the television
programmes of the same name, of which the first was shown
by Granada Television International and Channel 4 in 1986. These
programmes were designed to examine the development of music in
particular places during particular periods in the history of Western
civilization.
The books have the same objective. Each is designed to cover a
segment of Western musical history; the breaks between them are
planned to correspond with significant historical junctures. Since
historical junctures, or indeed junctures in stylistic change, rarely
happen with the neat simultaneity that the historian's or the editor's
orderly mind might wish for, most volumes have 'ragged' ends and
beginnings: for example, the Renaissance volume terminates, in
Italy, in the 1570s and 80s, but contines well into the 17th century in
parts of northern Europe.
These books do not attempt to treat musical history comprehensively.
Their editors have chosen for discussion the musical centres
that they see as the most significant and the most interesting: many
lesser ones inevitably escape individual discussion, though the patterns
of their musical life may be discernible by analogy with others
or may be separately referred to in the opening, editorial chapter. We
hope, however, that a new kind of picture of musical history may
begin to emerge from these volumes, and that this picture may be
more accessible to the general reader, responsive to music but
untrained in its techniques, than others arising from more traditional
approaches. In spite of the large number of lovers of music, musical
histories have never enjoyed the appeal to a broad, intelligent general
readership in the way that histories of art, architecture or literature
have done: these books represent an attempt to reach such a readership
and explain music in terms that may quicken their interest.