Baroque Music

The problem with teaching a survey course that introduces a topic a broad and deep as the Baroque era of music (roughly 1600 - 1740) is that there is never enough time to do more than touch on the most important points. If you dive deeply into one area, say, the concerto, that's it. You are done for the term and maybe more. This text does a good job in supporting such a course. It allows the student to get a quick overview and use all those nice new terms they are learning. It is not comprehensive; no single volume book could be. There are many good music examples and the writing is clear and to the point. A professor using this text will likely provide his or her own supplementary material and focus in on certain areas more than another. Some chapters are likely to be assigned reading, but not discussed much in class. For the general reader, this is also a solid introductory text, but if you don't have a handle on a lot of musical terms, you might want to also pick up a good music dictionary as well.